Share your recommendations for books, articles, and posts that are on your list or sitting on your bedside table. Are you reading on paper or screen? What resonates for you in this piece of text? (And it doesn’t just have to be about OER)!
I just finished Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble. It’s got me thinking a lot about search results as a cultural artifact. Then I tumbled down a worm hole of worry about what would happen if my search history were to be used as a primary source in some future historian’s work.
What would a future historian’s image of 2019 be if they used your search results as a primary source? It’s a frightening thought.
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I just got Competency-Based Education and Assessment: The Excelsior Experience in the post, but it’s a very slender volume, so we’ll see how much is really in it.
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I’m waiting on my book club’s next selection, but will be putting forward Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown in hopes we choose it! It’s been on my list for a while, and I think it could have a lot of applications in the work we do.
(And I’m also getting back into sci-fi/fantasy with N. K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season and Marlon James’ Black Leopard, Red Wolf!)
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I just finished reading Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes and now I’m reviewing some travel books for Foreword’s 2018 INDIES awards.
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This article was fun: Don’t Pee on My Leg and Call it Science! …:
“SCIENCE is only ever used to sustain the mythology or comfort of adults. The only time educators are ever asked to provide “evidence” is to justify something kids like – laptops, recess, band, making things…
The burden of proof is quite different for defending the status quo. What was the last time you heard anyone ask for evidence to support homework, 42-minute class periods, Algebra II, AP classes, textbooks, worksheets, times tables, interactive white boards, or the countless forms of coercion, humiliation, and punishment visited on students daily?” http://stager.tv/blog/?p=4381
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I have a couple of things on my list to read next:
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Small Teaching, by James Lang (about small things you can do to improve student learning without having to revamp one’s entire course).
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Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City, by Tanya Talaga. I recently read the text version of her Massey Lectures, All Our Relations, and thought it was really well done. Seven Fallen Feathers is about seven Indigenous teenagers who died within a short time of each other in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I haven’t read it yet, but I think she talks about whether the ruling of each as accidents makes sense. Probably not an easy read, but I think an important one in learning more about Indigenous communities in the northern region of Ontario.
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Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. I really enjoyed American Gods and apparently this is set in the same storyworld.
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Currently listening to The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann and The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells. Both interest me for the immediacy of their content as well as for the environmental historical contexts.
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Zoe, I don’t get to read as much fiction as I’d like, but I loved, loved, loved N. K. Jemisin’s book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms! My current non-work book is REAMDE by Neal Stephenson. I’ve been a virtual currency guy for twenty years, so it’s my jam. 
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Oooh I’ll have to add it to my list! I don’t get as much time for fiction these days either, it’s always a bit of a treat.
I have been trying to read more indigenous authors, too - @christina.hendricks I’d love to hear what you think of Seven Fallen Feathers. I’ve listened to (and recommend) the Thunder Bay podcast that touches on the cases, but I’ve heard the book is really good. Tough, but good.
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I’ve been reading more fiction off-late, and thoroughly enjoying it! I’ve just finished Thrity Umrigar’s The Space Between Us, which is a phenomenal book about class, women, gender, hardship. It had been collecting dust on my bookshelves for a long time now, so quite pleased to have finished reading it! I’m sure many can relate to this feeling of accomplishment. 
I’m now beginning Can Xue and Eileen Myles’ novel Love in the New Millennium, translated from Chinese to English by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen.
If anyone has suggestions for more fiction, N.K. Jemisin’s other books, ones from the Foreword 2018 Indies award lists, or more, let me know!
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I just finished The Fifth Season and the rest of the Stone Earth trilogy myself, @zoe. Fantastic read - really good for walking away from day-to-day drama.
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I’m saving the last in the Stone Earth Trilogy because I blew through the first two too quickly. Thrilled to see so many Jemisin fans here. I wonder if she knows the OER community is behind her.
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Ok, all the Jemisin love is making me want to read it even more!! Leigh & I were also talking about Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men today, too. So many books, so little time…
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I was reading The Fruit Hunters by Adam Leith Gollner, but then I gave it to a friend who was in need of something distracting. Now I’m reading the ingredients on a box of Fruit Roll-ups. (jk–that crap’ll kill ya.)
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I haven’t read The Fruit Hunters yet, but Adam’s other book The Book of Immortality was fascinating. It includes a great romp through David Copperfield’s weird private island and a visit to Copperfield’s supposed fountain of youth.
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What great suggestions! I just finished Austentatious, by Holly Luetkenhaus and Zoe Weinstein. A fun look at Austin fan-fic!
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Fans, fiction, fantasy, feminism – looks like the book is packed with fun things! Makes me wonder if ‘OER fan-fiction’ and Adaptations can be equated in some way… I can see some parallels!
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I’m reading When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink which is very interesting non-fiction. I just finished The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith which is fantasy about Hell’s Library so that was a must read.
