Episode 197 - Law & Legal Non-Fiction (for the layperson)

Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast

This episode we’re discussing the genre of Law & Legal Non-Fiction (for the layperson)! We talk about how so much of our lives are affected by laws, the challenges of reading (and understanding) legal non-fiction, and whether a whale is a fish.

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray 🦇 | Jam Edwards

Vote for What Book We Should Read!

Things We Read (or tried to…)

• The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back by Madiba Dennie
• Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection by Aaron Schwabach
• Media Law Through Science Fiction: Do Androids Dream of Electric Free Speech? by Daxton Stewart
• Telling it to the Judge: Taking Native History to Court by Arthur J. Ray
• The Law Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
• Wage Slaves by Daria Bogdańska, translated by Hanna Strömberg
• Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature by D. Graham Burnett
• Is Eating People Wrong?: Great Legal Cases and How they Shaped the World by Allan C. Hutchinson

Other Media We Mentioned

• Why I Adopted My Husband: The True Story of a Gay Couple Seeking Legal Recognition in Japan by Yuta Yagi
• Punk Rock Karaoke by Bianca Xunise
• Unauthorized Bread by Cory Doctorow
• Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli
• 5-4 Pod
• LegalEagle (YouTube)
• About Here (YouTube)

Links, Articles, and Things

• Amendments to the Constitution of Canada (Wikipedia)
  • “An Act to amend and continue the Act 32–33 Victoria chapter 3; and to establish and provide for the Government of the Province of Manitoba, 1870”
• Crown Copyright (Wikipedia)
• Jaffa Cakes: Legal Status (Wikipedia)
• Circulating Ideas: 261: The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow – Summer Reading Spectacular
• Reproducibility through Identifiers: Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for research facilities and instruments (Matthew’s gave this presentation recently)

15 Law and Legal Non-Fiction books by BIPOC Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

• Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat
• Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis
• Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal
• Looking White People in the Eye by Sherene H. Razack
• 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• Refugee Law After 9/11: Sanctuary and Security in Canada and the US by Obiora Chinedu Okafor
• Aboriginal™: the Cultural and Economic Politics of Recognition by Jennifer Adese
• Peace and Good Order: the Case for Indigenous Justice in Canada by Harold R. Johnson
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
• Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present by Robyn Maynard
• Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice by Paul Butler
• A Matter Of Law: A Memoir Of Struggle In The Cause Of Equal Rights by Robert L. Carter
• America's Constitution: A Biography by Akhil Reed Amar
• Say It Loud! On Race, Law, History, and Culture by Randall Kennedy
• Crisis and Command: the History of Executive Power From George Washington to George W. Bush by John Yoo

Give us feedback!

• Tell us what your favourite library, librarian, or library worker in fiction is! (For episode 200!
• Vote for What Book We Should Read!
• Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

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Join us again on Tuesday August 6th when we’ll be talking about the romance genre(s?) of yaoi and danmei!

Then on Tuesday, August 20th it’s time for our Summer Media Update! What have we been reading, playing, listening to, etc. over the summer?