The semester is over and grades are in. My family just moved to a bigger place — one block down the street, actually — thanks to my wife’s tenure promotion. And the stress of the two combined, plus Herculean applications of caffeine and alcohol (I thought they were supposed to cancel each other out, no?) has got me nursing a stubborn infection. While I convalesce I am enjoying being reunited with my book collection, which has mostly been in boxes in the attic since 2007. Last night I picked up Frazer’s The Golden Bough, one of many texts I purchased in a fit of compulsive consumerism but never read, and have resolved to read things I enjoy this summer.
What will you be reading now that classes are out?
Stefan Helmreich’s “Alien Ocean,” David Graeber’s “Debt” (finally!), and Amitav Ghosh’s “The Hungry Tide” (because you need to treat yourself to some fiction in the summertime).
Well, must be lucky in the Northern Hemisphere to be all done…while we in the South still toil away in lectures 🙂 There will be a short break soon though, semester break, and I’ll try to finish Graeber’s 5,000 Years of Debt, which I’ve been intermittently reading during the semester.
I plan to pick up Debt too. And will finish a couple nonfiction forensic-y books I’ve been reading off and on. Plus a bunch of articles as I start a new research project this summer. Like you, I’ll have a new house soon, and it’ll be great to get all the books out of boxes finally!
Yikes, Hope you recover quickly Matt!
I just finished Philippe Descola’s In the Society of Nature (very excited about the copy of Beyond Nature and Culture that should be in the mail soon!) , today will dig into Toni Huber’s ethnohistorical classic The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain…but my Summer Reading Resolution is to return to a promise I made last summer (already not a good sign) to dig into the work of C.S. Peirce…particularly since I too purchased volumes of his complete works in a similar fit of uncontrolled consumerism 🙂
Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo’s “Poor Economics”
Shove, E., Pantzar, M. and Watson, M. (2012). The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. London, UK, SAGE.
PS – would be interested to converse about this book with others, e.g. via Savage Minds.
I’m currently reading ‘The Substance of Civilization’ bu Sass.
I just finished “The Meaning of Whitemen: Race and Modernity in the Orokaiva Cultural World” a profound book by Ira Bashkow about whom Rex has posted here before, “Neoliberal Genetics” by Susan McKinnon, and “What Kinship is..and Is Not”- 2013 book by Marshall Sahlins. I am about to read “Escape Routes: Control and Subversion in the 21st century by Dimitris Papadopoulous”, Language Shift and Cultural Reproduction” by Don Kulick, and “After Kinship” by Janet Carsten.
“Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life” by John Miller and Scott Page; “Debt” by David Graeber; “The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided society Endangers our Future” by Joseph Stiglitz.
Since I’m still in comps mode as a PhD student reading hasn’t entirely left the academic mode even with the semester ending, but I’m finally just wrapping up Passage to Manhood by Liu Shao-Hua; a great medical ethnography of Southwest China’s Mosuo, which I plan to teach for my advanced online Chinese Culture Ethnography course in the fall. Of course this has also been sitting on my shelf for almost two years since I frantically bought it up. Next up is Geographical Diversions by Tina Harris, a very promising new piece in economic anthro on the global trade of Tibetan goods and commodities.
Well, to add a non-academic book to this list: _Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity_ (Andrew Soloman) which I am hoping will be an interesting addition to work on normalcy and bodies. Also about to re-read some Stoler, namely _Haunted by Empire_ and _Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power_.
I’m working on Unequal Childhoods by Anette Lareau and Forcellino’s biography of Raphael. Then its on to Theatrical Liberalism by Most and some Jonathan Israel for my upcoming trip to the Netherlands.
No paper involved, but some links here and there that make a book of themselves :
http://yannickprimel.wordpress.com/2012/07/06/devoirs-vacances-prospective/
(Blog post in french, but all links lead to english content).
Cheers !
The only books I can stand to read are the ones I’ve written myself:
http://soundingthedepths.blogspot.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Aliens-Among-Us-ebook/dp/B005BYWAY4/
http://doktorgee.worldzonepro.com/Book3000/Book3000.htm
http://doktorgee.worldzonepro.com/MontageBook/MontageBook-intro.htm
Right now I am reading Siddartha by Hesse, and The Man Who Walked Through Time by Colin Fletcher. I am also reading through a quirky old book called “Shelter” by Lloyd Kahn that was published in the early 1970s. I am reading this last one because I have become completely obsessed with the idea of building my own house. I realize that makes me sound like a crazy hippy, but them’s the brakes. Oh, I also want to re-read The Gift and The Great Transformation.