Book blogger tagged

Stuart of Independence and Gareth of Little Man in a Toque  have seen fit to inflict the following meme on me, so here goes:

How many books do i own?

Between about 400 and 500

What’s the last book I bought?

A History of the Great Civil Warby SR Gardiner. Vol1 1642-44.

What’s the last book I read?

The last one I actually finished must be The Annals of Imperial Rome by Tacitus. A great writer who saw clearly the relationship between Rome’s Imperial conquests and the decline of her republican institutions. He always gives the ‘barbarians’ the best speeches.

What are the five book that mean the most to me?

Difficult but let’s say the following:

The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper.

Good for liberal theory of knowledge.

Civilisation and Capitalism, by Fernand Braudel.

A sumptuous, three course meal of of a book. What the Lord of the Rings is to fantasy fiction, this is to early modern history. Stands here also as the start of a tradition that includes Immanuel Wallerstein, Janet Abu-Lughod and Andre Gunder-Frank.

Untimely Meditations, by Nietzsche

Especially, the first chapter of Schopenhauer as Educator. Standing in also for the rest of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, the better bits of Freud and Joseph Campell.

Notes from the Underground, by Dostoevsky.

Didn’t feel so much like reading a book, as having an intense lived experience. I was annoyed subsequently to see it dismissed somewhere as a favourite of young people.

Free-born John: The Biography of John Lilburne, by Pauline Gregg.

Bolshie Geordie who stood for an idea of English liberty which seems to have been forgotten, but is needed more than ever.

Five to tag:

It appears I have to inflict this on five more unfortunates, so i nominate United Irelander, Balrog, A Tangled Web, Neither Indifferent Nor Sceptical and Gerry O’Sullivan.