Category Archives: The Mixed-Up Bookshelves

A Generalist’s Work, Day 1

I’m still feeling rankled by various casual dismissals of generalism and synthesis as a mode of academic and intellectual labor. It’s particularly odd coming from humanists given that the cultural work that many humanists study has frequently been created by … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 2 Comments

My Books, My Selves

Having one of those stretches where it is really hard to get my head above water. Most of the time March and April are like this. One thing I’ve been doing when I have a spare moment is adding books … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 2 Comments

Fantasy Bests

It’s a New Year, so I’m going to get back in gear on this blog, which I’ve had to leave a bit moribund for a while as I concentrated on some other things and did some travelling. Many entries to … Continue reading

Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 13 Comments

One-A-Day: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration

I’m going to start trying again to write comments on the reading I’ve been doing over the last six months. It hasn’t been quite one-a-day, but there’s a lot of books and articles in my backlog to talk about. Pathfinders … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 4 Comments

One-A-Day: Louis Sachar, Holes

I know some people are skeptical about whether you can teach people to write fiction in a conventional classroom. At the very least, I think aspiring writers can benefit by reading marvelous examples of particular kinds of writing or particular … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Popular Culture, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 2 Comments

One-A-Day: Oona Strathern, A Brief History of the Future

Historians divide themselves by areas and by periods of specialization, but also by the methodological focus of their scholarly work: social history, political history, economic history and so on. This isn’t just an abstract division: it defines the real-world allocation … Continue reading

Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 6 Comments

One-A-Day: Norman Rush, Mating

This is an essay on Norman Rush’s Mating that I wrote up for the National Book Critics Circle Board of Directors blog, Critical Mass.

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One-A-Day: David Weinberger, Everything is Miscellaneous

Cory Doctorow makes a lot of sales to me through his recommendations on Boing Boing. He tends to have an eye for things that I at least think I’m interested in. Sometimes, though, I feel a bit let down, feeling … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Miscellany, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 6 Comments

One-A-Day, David Birmingham and Phyllis Martin, eds., History of Central Africa Volume 1

Students looking at the piles of books strewn over my desk, my windowsill, my bookshelves and my floor sometimes understate things a bit and say, “You have a lot of books”. (One reason I don’t really want to move again, … Continue reading

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One-A-Day: Alexander Galloway, Gaming: Essays in Algorithimic Culture

Remember: these aren’t reviews. If I were reviewing Galloway’s Gaming, I’d spend a long while talking about why I like much of it, and think it works very well alongside similar works of critical theory applied to games and digital … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Games and Gaming, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves | 7 Comments