What I’m Reading: ‘Book Breaking and Book Mending’

Putting together an annotated bibliography for an academic essay last winter after months of reading whatever I wanted felt a little grim. I like doing scholarly research, but skimming around texts with a researcher’s eye just doesn’t feel as good as really reading. What I was doing isn’t exactly what Douglas Hunter, a recent doctorate recipient in history, would call “book breaking” — mastering a book’s essential content through selective reading — but it seems similarly bare.

Hunter’s essay on Slate, “Book Breaking and Book Mending,” criticizes the way reading requirements for Ph.D. programs force students to read for arguments and talking points instead of reading carefully for content and context. He suggests that academic writers resist catering to that style of consumption and instead focus on making their writing readable.

Hunter comes to academic historical writing as an established journalist and author. While I never completely abandoned literary scholarship, I turned a lot of my attention to personal and popular writing since graduating from my master’s program in English literature a few years ago. That transition happened pretty naturally for me, and it made me a better writer, as I could see when I dared to look back at some of my writing from graduate school. Back then I was compartmentalizing too much of what I knew about creative versus academic versus journalistic writing. Rereading Hunter’s essay reminded me to keep my voice in my scholarship and to take the time to read more deeply while doing research.

Rachel Wagner is a writing instructor for first-year students at Seton Hall University and a writer.