R in a Nutshell –  More and more statisticians are moving to R, but it is primarily a command line system.  I constantly hear about how powerful it is, though, so it is the number one technical item I want to get up to speed on.

R Cookbook – Ditto – Specific solutions for over 200 specific problems.

Data Mashups with R – This book falls into the category of inspiration.  It is a case study of some very interesting online data work that could inspire new research ideas!

Beautiful Visualizations and Beautiful Data – After going to an Edward Tufte seminar, I’ve become convinced that the best way to communicate is through well-designed visualizations of complex data.  Anything to help me do this better is on my list.

Information Dashboard Design – Relevant to my day job, but also as a way to think about how to present data. Stephen Few is one of the best in this area, so anything by him works.

slide:ology – Tufte hates powerpoint, but it is a fact of life in american business.  Anything that can help me come up with better visualizations and make better use of those presentations is a good thing.

Statistics Hacks – I teach statistics, and I am constantly on the lookout for better ways to teach or more examples.  This one sounds like it contains some great stuff!

Head First Physics – OK, this is just one of those topics I wish I knew more about.  The Head First books are good for helping you learn and pedagogically sound, so what the heck; I’ll give it a try….

Cooking for Geeks – I love to cook.  I’ve spent most of the last 3 weekends cooking things because I finally had the time.  Heck, even when I don’t have the time I make my own bagels.  So learning more of the science just fascinates me.

Of course, this adds up to over $350 for the ebook formats, more on paper, and would keep me reading for weeks.  But who knows – those are at least the topics I want to start looking into….

Books about the Graduate School Process

The graduate school process is a thing onto itself.  From application to oral exams to thesis/dissertation defense, the process is like nothing else in the world.  Here are some books that can help.

Demystifying Dissertation Writing: A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text Unlike Destination Dissertation below, this book provides excellent techniques for some of the very mechanical tasks you will be doing.  What is the most expedient way to take notes on the literature?  How do you organize all that material?  Destination Dissertation also contains these kinds of tips, but frankly I find the ones in Demystifying Dissertation Writing more usable.   Check out my review as well for more ideas of what is in this book.

Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School This book is one of the more realistic books I’ve come across with respect to the actual process of graduate school.  It’s also irreverent and funny.  It starts with asking an important question; do you REALLY want to do this and why?  If yes, it then plots the shortest possible path from application to graduation.  It further helps you clarify where you should cut corners and where you shouldn’t.  I’m pretty sure most faculty don’t want us thinking about the process this way, but frankly given the crappy academic job market this type of fore-thought is a leg up on finding a job after graduation.  That alone makes it worth the money.

Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation While this book is focused strictly on the end process of completing your dissertation (which is far and away the hardest part), it contains a remarkably down to earth approach.  Specifically, it lays out the steps you need to go through and estimates of how long each should take (in working hours).  This may sound like no big deal, but the hardest part of project management is always figuring out what all the steps to the plan are.  These guys have done it, AND given you an idea of the level of effort required.  Whether you can work on it every day all day, only on weekends (like me) or just a couple of nights per week after the kids are in bed, this book provides a structured plan and an idea of how much further you have to go.

Note that I have left out one of the most commonly cited books in this area, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis. This is for two reasons; First, it is somewhat out of date in terms of technology and process.  Second, there is one principle piece of information you get out of it, and I can sum it up for you right here:

Write a little every day, even if what you write sucks or you do nothing more than type “I don’t know what to write” over and over.  Write often, don’t wait for bit chunks of time.  The more you do it, the better you will get.

I’m certainly not telling you NOT to read this book, as it’s considered a classic for a reason.  But If you take that one piece of advice and use the techniques and processes from the other books it will get you just as far.

Books about the Academic Process

Being an academic requires changing your approach and integrating new ways of writing and communicating with other scholars.  These books can help with that process.

The Craft of Research, Third Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Also a classic, this books goal is to help you move into clear, concise research writing.  It will help while in school and for years to come as you work on becoming published and later teaching others how to do the same.  It isn’t short, but it is comprehensive and can be used as a reference book when you get stuck.  Think of it as the old 5 paragraph essay format you learned in middle school all grown up.

“They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Second Edition) This book is all about the process of entering the conversation.  Scholars use specific phrases that vary only slightly between fields, but in essence every paper amounts to a recitation of what other scholars have said, either an acknowledgment of why they are right and important to your argument or a polite disagreement, and then presenting your own argument.  This book gives you a leg up on integrating these types of arguments into your writing smoothly and respectfully.  Additionally this is a short, easy read.  Given some of the stuff you will read in graduate school that will be a welcome change.

The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Even if you plan on writing a qualitative dissertation, you will still be talking about other people’s numbers and this book will help you learn to do so clearly and concisely.  This is not as easy as it sounds, as anyone who has seen a page full of numbers or a junk chart knows.  This book isn’t about artistic infographics; it’s about clarity in research papers, which are going to be your entire world for a while.

Books about the Writing Process

We all like to think we are decent writers, but we all need some help.  Here are some of the best:

The Elements of Style (4th Edition) Strunk and White’s classic book is as relevant today as ever.  What really amazed me is that it is short, concise, and easy to find things in.  Read it through if you can (or at least skim it) then keep it close at hand as you write.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Who thought punctuation could be funny?  This book never ceases to make me laugh while FINALLY explaining where I should and shouldn’t use a comma.  (I still use too many in casual writing.)  This book is useful as much because it is an easy and pleasant read as the fact that you will learn something from it.

Economical Writing, Second Edition While written for economists, this book is a quick, easy read that makes a strong case for getting rid of the weasel words, writing in active tenses and being concise.  People outside economics may not recognize the names she throws around or understand what the quotes she uses means, but you will quickly see how you can improve your writing while making it clearer to your reader.  Probably one of the most valuable skills out there.

Your Field’s Style Manual

Every field has a chosen style manual.  Own it.  Social sciences generally use APA, Humanities generally use MLA, History generally uses Chicago, etc.  Whatever it is have a copy close at hand.  (Since you only need one, this counts as just one book.)

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Edition
The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition

If you are short on time I would suggest going for the first book in each section.  Those are the books I turn to again and again.  They aren’t necessarily the shortest or the most amusing.  They are, however, the must reads on this list (along with your style manual) and books that will serve you well throughout your career.

Let’s start with the bottom line:  Buy This Book.  It provides practical, useful tools and techniques that you can immediately apply to your academic writing, as well as a ton of things to consider as you move through your degree.  It doesn’t matter how early you are in your graduate career; in fact I wish someone had given me this right away.  The note taking method alone would have helped as I went through my coursework, and the thoughts on how to choose a topic and advisor are helpful very early in the process.

The book begins with a discussion of some of the statistics around dissertation completion; to say the least, they are kind of scary.  In the social sciences, only 20% graduate within 5 years and only 56% graduate within 10.  She emphasizes how a writing group can improve both your likelihood of finishing and your time to completion, and makes it clear that she understands the challenges that all too many graduate students face today (like families, full time jobs, etc.)

The second chapter focuses on questions of topic and advisor, and most critically interaction between these two parts of the decision.  Single talks about all the possible considerations in choosing an advisor, putting together a committee and then managing the process.  Her advice here is down to earth, practical, and realistic; a welcome change to many of the more philosophical approaches.  Frankly, I wish I had read it much earlier in my academic career.

The core chapters of the book focus on what she calls the “Single System for Academic Writing”.  It includes 8 steps:

1. Interactive Reading
2. Interactive Note-Taking
3. Citeable Notes
4. Focus statement
5. One-Page Outline
6. Long Outline with References
7. Regular Writing Routine
8. Dissertation

The first 6 steps fall into the category of pre-writing.  This is critical in the system because it is hard to know what to say until you’ve completed these steps.   Nonetheless it helped me a lot to hear that so explicitly.  I had been feeling rushed to finish reading and start writing, when in fact it is critical to do the first stages correctly.

She talks extensively about how the point of the reading and the literature review is to enter into the academic conversation, and how part of the goal of the reading is to learn the tone and style of that conversation.  The book provides extensive hints as to what questions to be asking as well as examples of what does or

One of the interesting features of this system is that you begin with the great stack of reading to do, work down to a focus statement of 3-4 sentences, then back up again to the completed dissertation.  Each step prepares both you and your materials for the next stage, although there is some extent to which you can move back and forth between the different steps.

Steps 1 and 2 are covered in chapter 3.  I’ve read it 3 times now and continue to find new nuggets of wisdom.  Single argues that you should read each article once, get the key notes out of it you need and, if done well, never have to go back to it again.  Further those notes should be organized and focused on the major elements of the article like theoretical framework, methods, hypothesis and results.  She also touches on when and how to use quotes.

Chapter 4 moves on to talk about how to distill those notes into usable citeable nuggets that can be used for your dissertation, as well as suggesting that you do this as you go rather than at the end.  Her system for both chapters 3 and 4 are practical, easily implemented and well thought out.  Not surprising since this book grew from her experience teaching a dissertation-writing seminar, which means that many of the kinks have already been worked out.

Chapter 5 talks about creating a focus statement to clarify where you are going.  While I understand why she places this step after the the others, I would advise any person beginning work on their dissertation to at least read through to this point and start to pull together a focus statement early.  You’ll revise it several times, but the process of writing and revising as you read will help you clarify your own thinking about your topic and express it to others.

There is so much great stuff in just these first 5 chapters that I haven’t made it past them.  As I said, I’ve gone back and re-read sections in order to get the steps down.  I can’t even begin to summarize all the nuggets I’ve pulled out so far and the changes it has made to how I approach my reading and note-taking.

The bottom line here is that you should buy this book.  Demystifying Dissertation Writing is about the most practical book on the topic I’ve found, and provides the tools you will need to move your research forward.  Even if the remaining chapters were blank (they aren’t) or advised only writing under the full moon by candlelight, the book would still be worth the money, time and effort to read.  Since a quick scan shows that the remaining chapters are every bit as useful, I can unreservedly recommend this book to anyone involved in a thesis or dissertation.  You will get the skills necessary to be a prolific and ORGANIZED academic writer.

—
From Gabriel: I would just make sure the extra work from the voice recognition part is not taking a toll on your work schedule.
This is a really important comment, for two reasons.  First, it is taking quite a bit of time to fix up the notes.  Second, it is taking all that time in part because I’m even wordier when I talk than when I type.  What I come out with isn’t “notes” so much as a summarized narrative.  I’m not sure that’s such a good thing.

A simple example:  I took a quick read through last weeks notes and tightened them up.  When I started I had 6 pages of text.  When I finished I had 2, mostly bullet points.  No meaning was lost, just unnecessary detail and wordiness.  Frankly, it is making me rethink the voice recognition piece.

From Cal:  How do you keep track of what you need to read?
I have started using Zotero for tracking references, and I have a specific reference library for things in the queue.  Since I am working on my dissertation right now it is all pretty consistent.  I suppose if I had more irons in the fire I might maintain several queues. 

My Next Actions list contains a pointer to where I left off.  That way when I have time again I pick up reading from there.  I have toyed with setting specific reading goals, but find that if I just track where I need to start next I can decide when I open the book how much time I have to devote to the effort.

I have taken all the anti-multitasking literature to heart though, and am trying to force myself to only be in the middle of one book at a time.  Part of that process is differentiating between items I need to read cover to cover and those I only need a chapter or two out of.

Also from Cal: How do you store and organize your notes?
This is a bit more difficult.  I read the article you posted about note-taking databases and it makes total sense, except it doesn’t really reflect the way I take notes.  So for now I have a series of word documents in folders relevant to each topic.  One document per book.  I’m still debating whether that is the best method, but for now it is the lowest impact to capture the material in a searchable manner.

From Jacob:  If you’ve got access to a reduced price/free license to the thing,
Endnote is among the best software for organizing and saving academic
research.
My school is cheap – they only provide Refworks, with which I wasn’t impressed.  I suppose I could buy Endnote, but I am so impressed with Zotero‘s ability to just suck the citation in that I can’t not give it a chance.  Zotero also has note taking capabilities, and I’ve played a little with it.  I just am unclear on what the search capabilities are like.
—

As I mentioned in my response to Gabriel above, I am rethinking the voice recognition piece on account of wordiness.  I need to learn to use it either for bullet points or for musing on a topic.  Note taking should be succinct and to the point, and that format encourages neither.

I also am becoming convinced that I am taking too long to get through a single book.  Partially this is because I am filling in a lot of background details for the specific time period, but I need to get past that and be able to get the jist of the arguments, any new facts, and move on more quickly.  One recommendation I’ve seen is that a book of 250-400 pages should take no more than 2-3 hours of concentrated work.  Another suggests that with practice you can get it down to an hour.  

Regardless of which method I look at, they are all telling me one thing; I’m taking to long, reading to linearly and taking too extensive of the wrong kinds of notes.  *sigh*

So, I have one more chapter in my current book, then I will use one of these new approaches for the next one.  Test, assess, adjust, retest.  Or something like that.
 

BOOKS:
• From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods
• A Pocket Guide to Writing in History
• Writing History: A Guide for Students
• Going to the Sources: A Guide to Historical Research and Writing
• Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge
• Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse
• That Noble Dream: The ‘Objectivity Question’and the American Historical Profession (Ideas in Context)
• Telling the Truth About History
• Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past
• History in Crisis? Recent Directions in Historiography (2nd Edition)

ARTICLES:
• Tilly, Charles (1990). How (and what) are historians doing? American Behavioral Scientist
• Volume 32, Number 2, 2003 – History of Education Quarterly (Journal). All articles. (Special issue on the theory and methodology in History of Education.)

COURSES:
American Public University – Accredited (North Central) Online Classes. May 5-August 24 – Auditing:
RC575 – Historiography Books included for this class:
• Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, 3rd Ed
• Modern Historiography: An Introduction
• The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-Century History and Theory
RC576 – Historical Research Methods Books included for this class:
• Historians Fallacies: Toward Logic of Historical Thought
• Major Problems in American Military History
• Short Guide to Writing About History, 6th Ed

CONFERENCES:
ISCHE 30: International Standing Conference for the History of Education. Education and Inequality: Historical Approaches to Schooling and Social Stratification. Rutgers University, Newark NJ, July 23-26

Part of the issue is unrealistic expectations about what I can really get done.  Or rather, unrealistic expectations of how much time I can spend productively on my academic work.  I am revising my graduate student work day to reflect my lack of life or rather the need for me to HAVE a life if I’m going to finish successfully.

Key features:
1 free day per week – completely free.  SUNDAY tentatively, but that can change week by week
1 hour of reading on workday evenings, Monday through Thursday.  No expectation of more
1 hour of EXERCISE 5 days per week.  Fridays and Sundays off. 

That gives me 12 hours of work on my dissertation per week – not much, but maintainable.  If I have no other plans on a Sunday, then that is a bonus.  But I need to stop requiring myself to work 7 days per week and 14 hours per day.  Hopefully this will be more sustainable over the long haul.

I also plan to talk to my adviser and give up my assistantship.  2 reasons – 1) I don’t have time to do the work and 2) he can use it for someone else.  I just would prefer not to be committed to work that I won’t have time to do and will then feel guilty about.

Here’s the revised version:

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Feel free to swat me up-side the head for taking this long to figure it out.  It seems so very basic now.

So, I need to build a new habit and it goes something like this.  I will arrange my work such that I can spend at least 2 hours every single day reading material that is related to my research but not directly for a class.  That 2 hours after dinner, before relaxing for the evening will become the time I spend reading something relevant. 

Each of you reading this can help keep me honest.  There is now a sidebar item called “What I’m Reading Now”.  It should be changing regularly.  I read slowly, but not that slowly.  If it hasn’t changed by the middle of the week, you all have permission to ask uncomfortable questions about why I’m not making any progress. 

OK – Page 113 of a 181 – that should be doable tonight so that I can start something new tomorrow.

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One of the first things you are taught in a speed reading class is that it is as important to know WHAT to read as it is to develop the skill to just move your eyes faster.  That doesn’t mean knowing which books to read but knowing what parts of the book or article to read and how far you have to go to get what you need from the book.  This is important because often we don’t have the choice of which books we need to read.

Whether for a class, an interview, or a meeting with “the boss”, there have been many times in my life when I’ve had to read a book (hundreds of pages) very quickly.  I was once schedule for a next-business-day interview with a company that uses Good to Great as a defining mantra; I discovered this while doing familiarizing myself with their website the night before.  I’ve had class assignments to read an entire book in a week at a time when other classes or work had to take priority.

For my husband, this would be trivial.  He reads quickly.  I don’t.  And while I have taken speed reading classes and learned some skills, reading a book for me is still a long effort.  So here are some tips and tricks regarding what to read that I use to deal with these types of situations.

1. Figure out what you need from the book: This is also the first lesson of speed reading.  Get clear on the question you need to answer, the level you need to understand the material and and the context in which you will need to use that information.  If you just need the basic theme you can get that from the Amazon summary.  If you need to understand the key ideas, keep reading.
2. Review the table of contents:  Make sure you understand the overall structure of the book.  It’s also good to read the back matter at this point if you haven’t already.
3. Review the Amazon web page:  This page generally has a summary of the book from a couple of sources, one of which may be something like Publisher’s Weekly.  This may have some critique of the book as well.  Skim some of the user reviews (both good and bad), but don’t get  bogged down here.  The quality of user reviews varies wildly.
4. See if the author has a web page: The author of Good to Great, Jim Collins, has an extensive website that includes supplemental materials which can help you get the gist of the book quickly.  Academics often have websites as well, so don’t dismiss any of these steps just because it is an academic book.  You never know what you will find.
5. If this is a mainstream book, such as a business book, check out sites like Executive Book Summary or Business Book Review for abbreviated versions.  The first site does excellent chapter by chapter summaries (and allowed me to fly through the aforementioned interview without having read the book).  There are other fields with review and summary services like this, as well as hundreds of sites that contain book summaries.  Whether you will find one for your book depends on its popularity.
6. If this is an obscure academic book use your library’s search tools to look for book reviews published in academic journals.  These will often be just a few pages as opposed to a few hundred but will give you both a feel for the book and some critiques to give you an idea of the weaknesses.  (This can work for business books as well but is generally less necessary.)  Google Scholar can help find these if you aren’t sure where to look, although you will probably still have to go through an academic library to see the articles.
7. Read the introduction/first chapter: This is straight out of speed-reading.  The introduction of a book will usually lay out the argument for you, provide basic definitions and show you where in the book to look for more on each major element.  The exception is some postmodernist or inspired works where the structure is not that clean cut.  In those cases you generally need to read it all or not bother, since once you get past perhaps the prefix the text is decidedly non-linear.
8. Read the last chapter, and look at all graphs or charts: The last chapter should pull it all together and tell you why you care.  The graphs and charts can help you see for yourself the numbers and patterns.

I can walk through steps 1 through 7 on an academic book in about 2 hours, which is far faster than I can skim 200 pages, and frankly my understanding will be better. 

I am by no means advocating that you do this instead of reading every book.  I tend to do most of these steps even if I intend to read the entire book, since reading other critiques tends to give me a deeper understanding of the books perspective, particularly if its in an area with which I am not as familiar.  When you have the time, do the reading.  When the book is on a key area of interest, do the reading (even if it has to be after the fact).  When your CEO is remaking the company according to the book’s principles, do the reading.

However when you don’t have the time to read and consider every page before a specific deadline, these techniques can help you make a credible showing and ensure that you are not lost in the subsequent conversations. 

Scarily enough, I would have been even more of a bookworm if audiobooks were included.  I am currently listening to The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance on my ipod….how much geekier can you get.