It is the end of a busy semester in which I had my usual over the top teaching load. I seem to not be able to say no. Truthfully, I really enjoy the classroom and strive to be a team player. I know I should probably trim back, but it won’t be this academic year. Perhaps, I will do it in the Fall of 2022. We shall see.
Because of the overload schedule, I did not have a lot of free time for blogging and reading for enjoyment. I have been looking forward to this time between semesters to do more of both. I have a stack of books that I have wanted to read. I assembled it during the pandemic and have slowly been getting through it. The problem is that the stack is growing faster than I can read them. For safety reasons, it is now actually two stacks.
First on my list is to finish the classic novel, The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck. It was life in rural China. It was a time when people who lived off the land had no safety net. The success or failure of their livelihoods, welfare, and wellbeing of their families was entirely in their hands and the backs of their labor. The book takes place in Anhui Province where I actually taught for two summers at the Anhui University of Finance and Economics.
I also want to read another Saroyan’s Rock Wagram. My friend and colleague Paul Hawkinson was my secret Santa in the School of Business. He bought me two of his favorite books. One is The Code Book: The Science of Secret from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography. The second is The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret.
One of my interests has always been retail. It is a bit of an obsession since I took over teaching Marketing Challenges and Supply Chain at North Park. The focus of the course was not clear. I made it all about the constantly changing landscape of retail. The change has been fueled by what has been called the Amazon Effect. I am also interested in the history of retail. To that end, there is a must read in my stack of books, The Great A&P and the Struggle for Small Business in America. It was such an important retailer when I was a kid… and then it just went away. My guess is the innovative, entrepreneurial, founders of the company turned it over to corporate wonks who couldn’t keep up with the changing times. I will have to read the book to find out for sure.
One book I will not be reading is the latest by John F. Kennedy, Jr. It is called The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health (Children’s Health Defense). It came out in November and like, most things in America these days, people either love it or hate it. I just saw an ad for it in the New York Times Review of Books. It is a current best seller on Amazon.com. Science? Reality? Conspiracy fodder? Who knows? I am just plain old weary of the politicization of the pandemic right now.
I would rather read a few novels and business books right now.
No comments:
Post a Comment