Professor Rodgers
College Writing

Reading Journal

First, please decide whether you plan to keep an electronic or a paper reading journal.  Depending on your choice, please set this up.  I would like you to keep notes about your reading, as well as any reading journal assignments in this journal.  Then, please select a book to read from one of the titles listed below, or come talk to me about selecting a book that you are particularly interested in reading.

Some Suggested Books

Non-Fiction

Education
Radical Possibilities by Jean Anyon

Economics
Nickel and Dimed in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman

History
The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation by Jim Cullen

Music
The Language of Music by Deryck Cooke

Technology and Media
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan

Food
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan
The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace

On Reading
How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler
On Reading by Marcel Proust and John Ruskin

Architecture
Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies by Reyner Banham

Memoir
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

Fiction
City of Glass by Paul Auster
City of Glass by Paul Auster (graphic novel version)
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Black Boy by Richard Wright
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Macho Camacho’s Beat by Luis Rafael Sánchez
Flight by Sherman Alexie
For a complete list of suggested books, please see Professor Rodgers’ A Highly Subjective Reading List and the other readings lists on her Digital Composition Web site.

Second, please read Chapter 2 of Bazerman’s The Informed Writer, which you will find here: http://wac.colostate.edu/books/informedwriter/, paying particular attention to the section on keeping a Reading Journal.  After reading this chapter, please in your reading journal what you have learned from reading the chapter. 

In one Reading Journal entry discuss the following:

a/ why you selected the book to read that you did
b/ how you plan to approach reading the book, e.g., as a writer, as a casual reader, as a student of a particular discipline, etc.

In your subsequent reading journal entries:
Based on the structure of the book–is it in chapters, sections, etc.–and your own individual reading goals–comprehension, enjoyment, inspiration, etc.–please make at least four additional entries in your Reading Journal about the book you are reading.  These may include:  your reactions to a particular chapter/section/passage/sentence in the book, that you have to the book, questions that you have about a particular chapter/section/passage/sentence in the book, discussions of what a particular chapter/section/passage of the book is about, descriptions of and feelings related to your experience of reading a particular chapter/section/passage of the book, connections to other books/media/personal experiences and ideas that a particular chapter/section/passage of the book made you think of, notes about other books/media mentioned in the book that you would like to read/see/find.

You will be handing in this Reading Journal at the end of the semester as part of your Portfolio of work for this course.

FOR EXTRA CREDIT, before the end of the semester, please write a blog post about  the book you have read and why or why not you would recommend reading it and post it to the following City Tech Open Lab Site:

https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/whatwearereading/

You will be graded on this assignment based on its completion (50%) and your overall sense of engagement with the assignment (50%).  You must have at a minimum five (5) journal entries for the assignment to be considered complete.