I’ll admit it, I have one. A pile of articles I’ve collected, and am really, really meaning to read. Not just that, but some of them I know are going to be useful, important to my work, even from the abstract. A few I’m nearly embarrassed that I haven’t read yet. One or two of stare at me, mocking me: how could you have not read me yet, it’s absurd!

For me it’s not an actual pile with actual dust, of course, but a virtual one. But the PDF is there on the computer, the citation is in Mendeley, its starred and put in the special reading list dedicated to my current project, and… I just haven’t quite gotten to it. You have a pile too, I surmise.

I thought it would be a fun, useful, revealing way to share citations: what article, from our field(s), is on top of your unread pile? The one you just can’t believe you haven’t read?

Add yours in the comments to this post. Formatted as a citation is a doubleplus. Links are deeply appreciated.

In fairness, I’ll go first — with apologies to its author, who is a colleague and friend, and is even writing an article for an anthology I’m helping to edit. I’ve been deeply impressed by other articles by her, loved her talks, I know this one is going to be excellent, and will thoughtfully and thoroughly cover an important area. Yet there it is, waiting to be read. I’m sorry, Biella.

Coleman, E. Gabriella, Ethnographic Approaches to Digital Media (October 2010). Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 39, pp. 487-505, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1692542 or http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.anthro.012809.104945