Books Acquired Recently: More Birthday Goodies

I recently received these two books as birthday gifts from my sister and brother-in-law. I’ve been wanting to read both since I read reviews of them in recent months.

Block, David. Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2005.

I have been interested in the early roots of baseball since coming across a reference to “base-ball” in Margaret Fuller’s Woman in the Nineteenth Century, which was first published as an essay in 1843, several decades earlier than I had thought the term existed in widespread usage. I am looking forward to learning more about how the game began creeping into the public consciousness before its explosion onto the scene in the 1860s.

Eisner, Shiri. Bi: Notes for a Bisexual Revolution. Berkeley: Seal, 2013.

As someone who is attracted to men and women amongst other gender expressions, I am excited to encounter some new thinking about bisexuality and its potential for sparking social change. While I have used the term “bisexual” to describe myself in the past, and sometimes still use it because it is more broadly understood than my current preferred term, “queer,” I have grown uncomfortable with it because it implies that there are only two genders that one may be attracted to. I am thus intrigued to see what Eisner thinks about the continued usefulness of this term (which, let me make clear, is still a legitimate and important one for people to use if they feel so inclined) and what it can signify.

Books Acquired Recently

I just received two books from a friend as gifts for my upcoming birthday. Both look intriguing and enjoyable, and I hope to read them over my forthcoming Spring Break.

Corin, Lucy. One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses. San Francisco: McSweeney’s, 2013.

I recently heard about this book via a “Best Feminist Books of 2013” list on Facebook, and was immediately smitten with the title. The book itself is a beautiful object (as is normally the case with McSweeney’s publications), with an arrow cut out of the cover to reveal the title and author, as can be seen in the photograph below.

Jack, Belinda. The Woman Reader. New Haven: Yale UP, 2012.

I have been interested in the history of readers since reading Ian Watt’s description of the eighteenth century English reading market in his classic The Rise of the Novel in graduate school. Jack’s book on the history of female readers will certainly feed this interest.

Book Acquired Recently: Wieland, Norton Critical Edition

Brown, Charles Brockden. Wieland and Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist. Ed. Bryan Waterman. New York: Norton, 2011.

I just received this exam copy in the mail. I am going to teach Wieland in my American Literature to 1865 course in the fall, and am trying to decide between assigning the Penguin Classics edition or this Norton edition. My default mode is to assign Penguin paperbacks because they are inexpensive, authoritative, and aesthetically pleasing, but Wieland is a difficult enough text that I thought it might be helpful to have students read some of the supplementary material that Norton always includes in their critical editions. The volume is nearly 600 pages long, but less than 240 of it are the novels themselves (Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist is Wieland‘s sequel). Make of this ratio what you will.

Book Acquired Recently: David Luthy’s A History of the Printings of the Martyrs’ Mirror

Luthy, David. A History of the Printings of the Martyrs’ Mirror: Dutch, German, English 1660-2012. Aylmer: Pathway, 2013.

I acquired this book directly from Pathway Publishers as part of my research for a project on Stephen Beachy’s novel boneyard, which draws heavily on Thieleman J. van Braght’s Martyrs Mirror (note that this book’s title does not actually include an apostrophe after “Martyrs” although one would be correct, thus it is an interesting [and, frankly, I think an erroneous] choice on Luthy’s part to include one in his title, as this emendation is not normally made), thus I am trying to get my hands on all of the recent scholarship on van Braght’s book. I’ve briefly flipped through Luthy’s book, and it is lavishly illustrated and written in what looks to be a methodical, comprehensive style. It was delightfully inexpensive: only $8.95 despite being a hardcover.

A New Book Review

I just had a review of Ewuare X. Osayande’s poetry anthology Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin & Marissa Alexander published in Your Impossible Voice. As I say in the review, it is an important book, and its proceeds go to a worthy cause. You can buy the book here under the “Buy the Book” tab.

Books Acquired Recently: W.W. Norton Edition

I recently received a visit from my local W.W. Norton representative, and just received a number of exam copies that I requested during our meeting.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. 2006. New York: Norton, 2007.

I have wanted to read this book since I saw Appiah speak in 2012. The world seems more and more fractious, thus I am excited to explore his ideas for how cultures can work to come together.

Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. 1962. Ed. Mark Rawlinson. New York: Norton, 2011.

I have also wanted to read this book for quite some time. Norton’s Critical Editions of older texts have always been excellent, and I am happy to see that in recent years they have begun expanding this series to include more recent texts.

Carr, Nicholas. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. 2010. New York: Norton, 2011.

The loss of reading skills, intellectual curiosity, and print culture as a result of the rise of the internet is a constant worry of mine. I have tried to teach about this issue in my writing courses several times, but my students find many of the texts on this subject unengaging. Carr’s book looks like it might provide a solution to this problem.

Defoe, Daniel. A Journal of the Plague Year. 1722. Ed. Paula R. Backsheider. New York: Norton, 1992.

I love Defoe’s work, and have been wanting to read this book as a result of my recent explorations of psychogeography because it has been adopted as one of the foundational texts of the field.

Le Guin, Ursula K., and Brian Attebery, eds. The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990. New York: Norton, 1993.

When I told the Norton representative that I am interested in science fiction and sometimes teach it, he mentioned this anthology. I was aware of it, but was surprised to find that it is still in print. I like that it is organized year-by-year based on when the pieces it includes came out rather than by the birth dates of its authors as most Norton anthologies are. The former method allows readers to get a better sense of how the field has developed.

Lunsford, Andrea, et al., eds. Everyone’s An Author, with Readings. New York: Norton, 2013.

I am using another one of Lunsford’s anthologies in my current composition course, but this new one looks like it does a better job of encouraging students to claim their already-extant identities as writers.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Ed. G.R. Thompson. New York: Norton, 2004.

I love Poe and normally teach him in my American Literature to 1865 course. However, most collections of his work focus only on one genre, whether poetry or short story. This edition includes a number of examples from each genre as well as Poe’s one novel. It is by far the most superior edition of his works that I have seen.

Books Acquired Recently

Cole, Teju. Open City. 2011. New York: Random, 2012.

I recently taught the first chapter of this novel in one of my writing classes as an example of psychogeography. A colleague had passed it on to me, and I was completely enthralled, so I decided to buy the book, and I look forward to reading it soon. Cole has a reading scheduled for April 10 in Ithaca, which is less than two hours from Utica. It will be good to hear him in person after reading his book.

Janzen, Jean. Entering the Wild: Essays on Faith and Writing. Intercourse: Good, 2012.

Janzen is the godmother of Mennonite poetry, one of my scholarly interests, thus I expect this memoir to be a fascinating one. I got it new for only $0.65!

Lachman, Becca J.R., ed. A Ritual to Read Together: Poems in Conversation With William Stafford. Topeka: Woodley, 2013.

I’ve been feeling the need to read more poetry lately, and had heard that several poets whose work I enjoy (Jeff Gundy, Todd F. Davis, and Ann Hostetler, among others) have poems in this anthology. Lachman herself is an up-and-coming Mennonite poet, thus I’m interested to see what I can glean about her aesthetic proclivities from the poems she has selected.

These three books were acquired via amazon.com’s network of independent sellers.

Luthy, David. Dirk Willems: His Noble Deed Lives On. Aylmer: Pathway, 2011.

My current research focuses on Stephen Beachy’s novel boneyard, which takes some of its essential elements from Thieleman J. van Braght’s 1660 collection of Anabaptist martyr stories, Martyrs Mirror. I’ve thus been reading a lot of the recent scholarship on van Braght’s text (there is a surprisingly large amount), and the acquisition of Luthy’s book is a part of this effort, as Dirk Willems’s story is by far the most famous one in Martyrs Mirror.

I acquired this book directly from the publisher.

Murphy, Yvonne C. Aviaries. Durham: Carolina Wren, 2011.

Murphy gave a reading at Utica College last week that was entertaining enough to entice me to buy her poetry collection. It includes a number of poems inspired by New York City that I have been enjoying.

Books Acquired Recently

Arthur, Anthony. The Tailor-King: The Rise and Fall of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster. New York: St. Martin’s, 1999.

Queer Mennonite literature has been the primary focus of my scholarship over the last year and a half. I keep discovering more and more of it, and as I do, I realize that it is a much larger, longer-tenured tradition than I first thought, as is the queer Mennonite tradition in general. As I have been thinking about the deep-rootedness of queerness in the Mennonite community, I’ve begun to wonder about the Münsterites, a group of radical Anabaptists that practiced polygamy and took over the city of Münster in Germany in 1534. Present-day Mennonites disown the Münsterites because of their sexual transgressions as well as their use of violence, and as a result of this bias I know very little about the group. I am interested in learning more about their sexual rebelliousness, so I bought this book, which is the standard popular account of the group’s brief history.

Lipsky, David. Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip With David Foster Wallace. New York: Broadway, 2010.

I am a huge fan of David Foster Wallace’s work, but I just recently found out that this book existed. I am very excited to read it, as it sounds like a Wallace-esque work (think “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”) about Wallace himself.

Scholder, Amy, Carla Harryman, and Avital Ronell, eds. Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker. London: Verso, 2006.

I’m only slightly less obsessed with Kathy Acker’s work than I am with Wallace’s, and I will be teaching Acker’s novel Blood and Guts in High School later on this semester, so I am in the process of reading criticism on Acker’s work. I acquired this book as a part of that endeavor.

All three books were purchased from independent sellers on amazon.com.

Two New Book Reviews

I’ve just had two book reviews published, both on exciting new texts in the field of Mennonite literature.

The first is a review of Jessica Penner’s novel Shaken in the Water (pdf–scroll down to page 157), which appears in Mennonite Quarterly Review, the leading journal of Mennonite studies. It has been my goal to publish in MQR since I was in college, and Penner is a good friend of mine, so I am quite excited about this piece.

The second is a review of Jeff Gundy’s new collection of poetry, Somewhere Near Defiance, which appears in Your Impossible Voice, a crackling new literary e-journal. Gundy has been one of my favorite poets for years, and I am pleased that his new collection lives up to the high standard of his previous work.

Books Acquired Recently

Ferguson, Alex. My Autobiography. London: Hodder, 2013.

I am a huge Manchester United fan, so of course I had to buy Sir Alex’s autobiography. It will be interesting to see what events from his 26-year reign at Old Trafford (not to mention his successful time at Aberdeen) stood out to him enough to write about. The book includes lots of photographs, which is also exciting.

Morrison, Toni. Sula. 1973. New York: Vintage, 2004.

This is a desk copy for my course on Teens and Twenty-somethings. I haven’t read Sula for about five years, and thus am very excited to interact with it again. People often view it as one of Morrison’s “easier” novels, but it is just as weird and disturbing as the others.