John Miedema

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Reading List for Next Draft of I, Reader

6 December 2009 3 Comments

This entry is part 45 of 45 in the series I, Reader

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Update, Dec 7: I am maintaining my I, Reader reading list at LibraryThing.

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This is my starter reading list for the next draft of I, Reader in 2010. Recommendations most welcome.

Battles, Matthew (2003). Library: An unquiet history. W.W. Norton.

Borges, Jorge Luis (2000). The library of Babel. David R. Godine.

Brand, Stewart (2006). From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University of Chicago Press.

Buzbee, Lewis (2008). The yellow-lighted bookshop: A memoir, a history. Graywolf.

D’Angelo, Ed (2006). Barbarians at the gates of the public library: How postmodern consumer capitalism threatens democracy, civil education and the public good. Library Juice Press.

Darnton, Robert (2009). The case for books: Past, present and future. Public Affairs.

Dehaene, Stanislas (2009). Reading in the brain: The science and evolution of a human invention. Viking.

Doctorow, Cory (2009). Makers. Tor.

Engard, Nicole, C. (2009). Library mashups: Exploring new ways to deliver library data. Information Today.

Hoover Bartlett, Allison (2009). The man who loved books too much: The true story of a thief, a detective, and a world of literary obsession. Riverhead.

Lanier, Jaron (2010). You are not a gadget. Knopf.

Piper, Andrew (2009). Dreaming in books: The making of the bibliographic imagination in the romantic age. University of Chicago Press.

Vaidhyanathan, Siva (2004). The anarchist in the library: How the clash between freedom and control is hacking the real world and crashing the system. Basic Books.

Wilson, Daniel H. (2005). How to survive a robot uprising: Tips on defending yourself against the coming rebellion. Bloomsbury.

Wright, Thomas (2009). Built of books: How reading defined the life of Oscar Wilde. Henry Holt.

Also some yet to be chosen material by Foucault and a good overview of critical theory.

Any recommendations?

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3 Comments »

barbara said:

great reading list.

# 7 December 2009 at 4:51 pm

Tim said:

It is a great list. A few extra recommendations:

1) Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading;
2) Roger Chartier, The Order of Books;
3) Ted Striphas, The Late Age of Print;
4) Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain;
5) Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word;
6) Jerome McGann, The Textual Condition;
7) Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine;
A History of the Book in America, vols. 1-4;
9) Jerome Rothenberg et al, A Book of the Book;
10) DF McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts;
11) Gerard Genette, Paratexts;
12) Walter Benjamin, The Origin of the Work of Art and Other Writings on Media
13) Stephane Mallarmé, Divagations (includes “The Book as Spiritual Instrument”

If you’re looking for a Foucault volume, I would recommend Language, Counter-Memory, Practice, which includes the great essays “What is an Author?” and “Fantasia of the Library.”

Also, as a general introduction to lit theory/lit crit, Jonathan Culler’s Very Short Introduction to Literary Theory is a very astute and focused take that returns again and again to reading, language, the text — very well suited for what you’re proposing here.

# 10 December 2009 at 2:08 am