Stacks and stacks of books

Although it is the intellectual equivalent of smoking cigarettes, I am on X, aka, Twitter. The Surgeon General should put a warning on the site to the effect that “This site has been proven to make consumers 10% dumber.” Like the addict with his two pack a day habit, I just keep coming back even though I know it is bad for me.

One thing you learn from academic X (oh how I hate that name) is that academics love to talk about books. Books, books, books, and books. How I must have this new book. Then there is the perennial, “Oh golly, where am I going to put all of my books? I have such a book problem!” There is the fanboy/fangirl post of “Eek! Look what just came in the mail!” There is even, “Look at this funny picture of my toddler holding Aristotle’s De Anima.” Because when my kids do something amusing my first instinct is to take a picture of it and share it with the world.

Just beneath the surface of all the book-talk is the unstated claim, “See how smart I am.” A standard of academic X is the stack-of-books picture, so everyone knows how much you are reading and how highbrow your reading tastes are. That book-stack photo never includes Steven King, fantasy novels, the Henry Winkler memoir, or There’s A Wocket In My Pocket.

When I see these pictures it calls to mind reality television. You ever watch American Pickers? I used to. I always wondered how Mike and Frank could cold-call on a farmhouse and yet magically there was a shot from inside the house when Mike and Frank walk up. If this was a spontaneous visit, how did the camera crew get inside the house? And why are the homeowners acting surprised that Mike and Frank are knocking at the door when Mike and Frank’s camera crew is currently standing in the kitchen? It’s almost like this is all a set up pretending to be spontaneous, to be “reality.” Same with the book stack. How much time and thought did this person put into selecting the books, finding the right place to arrange them (an oak table is best), and what order the books should be in? This is then presented with, “Golly, look at this random pile of high class literature perfectly stacked on an antique coffee table with the sunlight hitting it just so. Just me and my silly books!”

I don’t feel the need to share my book reading habits with the world, unless I am writing a book review or something of that sort. I read my share of academic books and what we’d call classic literature. My most recent pleasure read was Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (see how I cleverly worked in a reference to my superior tastes!). But I also read my share of popular books.

I was once on a search committee for a dean position within my university’s College of Arts and Sciences (my college). In the days before Zoom and Skype the traditional first round of interviews was over the phone, with the goal of winnowing down to the three or so candidates you’d actually bring to campus. During this search we phone interviewed a chemist. One of my standard interview questions is “What’s the last book you read and what did you learn from it?” It’s a way of judging someone’s ability to answer a bit of an off-beat question as well as a gauge of the candidate’s basic literacy. This chemist confessed that he hadn’t read anything that wasn’t a scholarly chemistry work in years. Sorry buddy, wrong answer. No soup for you.

Academics do sometimes face the threat of never reading outside of their discipline. This is a danger of the hyper-specialization of modern academia. One of the benefits of being at a small institution is I am called on to be a generalist. While my political science specialties are nominally American political thought and American political development, I’ve taught classes in international relations, constitutional law, American foreign policy, congress, presidency, philosophy, politics and literature, and a Freshman Seminar course. I am forced to read outside of my specialty all the time.

Also, the older I get the more I desire breaks from academic reading. I tend to have two books going at any one time, one for work and one for pleasure. I recommend this course of reading precisely to avoid the problem of the chemist, i.e., never reading outside one’s discipline. Work reading for me could mean reading on any of the above academic subjects, particularly if I am searching for course books. My research interests are also eclectic, so I might be reading works on history, political thought, education, technology, literature, etc.

I also, then, have one “pleasure” book going at any given time. This is usually my late night and weekend reading. I typically am reading a novel, though the pleasure read before Tolstoy was Ron Chernow’s massive biography of Ulysses Grant (truth in advertising: I set it down mid-way through Grant’s presidency as I needed a break from this 900-page book. I’ll come back to you President Grant!). I tend to go back and forth between more demanding works and easier fare. I have a guilty pleasure of detective novels. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James. These are among my favorites. A few years ago I got into the Harry Bosch and Lincoln Lawyer novels of Michael Connelly. Now I am working my way through Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series (which I wrote about here) and the J.K. Rowling Cormoran Strike novels. Yes, sometimes I want to set my brain to “stupid” and just enjoy a ripping good read.

Academics don’t have to be pretentious about what they read. It’s like the demand of some academics to be called “doctor.” Not only is that the wrong salutation (read your Miss Manners), but it also smacks of a kind of insecurity, like you need everyone to know you have a doctorate. The same with books. We get it. You like books. Especially high brow books that mark you off as smarter than the average bear. If it’s relevant, feel free to tell us about it. Otherwise, perhaps some modesty is in order. And please, enough with the book-stacks.