Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Five books

OK, the five books meme has got round to me, courtesy of dhyb.

How many books do I own?
Pass. There's boxes full in my parents' attic and boxes in my own attic. I would guess something like 500. I have tended to read in phases - novels in my teens, then history, then science and now politics. There's a big section on China, where I lived for a couple of years.

Last books purchased
Brendon Chase by "BB"
Actually I borrowed it rather than purchased it having read it many years ago. A children's book of the 1940s, it's about three small boys who run away to live like outlaws in the forest of the title. For those of a squeamish, green or politically correct disposition this is a most inadvisable read. There is a wholesale slaughter of just about every kind of wild fauna in the English landscape - rabbit, deer, badger, fish, birds, you name it, the reader is treated to an in depth description of their slaughter, and subsequent processing for meat or skin. Also features small boys wielding firearms, openly purchasing ammunition and smoking. It really is heartwarming stuff and a must for libertarians, gun enthusiasts, nature lovers and small boys young and old. I'd like to see a film made of this book.

Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
Exactly what it says on the tin.

Last books read
Liberty and Freedom by David Hackett Fisher
The history of America told through the development of ideas about these two founding principles of the republic. By the author of the wonderful "Albion's Seed"

The Great Deception
by Booker & North
Probably needs no introduction to anyone who visits this site. A history of the EU from a sceptical point of view, which shows how the eminences grises behind the European project lied and dissembled their way to where we are now.

Five books that mean a lot to me
Nature's keepers by Stephen Budiansky
How the US landscape is being destroyed by mismanagement, principally by the government.
Albion's Seed by David Hackett Fisher
How the British took their regional cultures to the New World and created the different folkways of the USA.
I, Claudius by Robert Graves
I just keep reading this again and again.
History of the Countryside by Oliver Rackham
Everything worth knowing about the British landscape through history. As the Economist put it, "it is full of the answers to questions that others have not the wit to ask". Country walks were never the same after this.
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
Nature versus nurture and why peer groups matter so much.


And there you go. Now as DHYB points out this will grow exponentially and I'm not sure I can find five blogs I frequent that haven't already done the quiz, so I'll bottle out of tagging anyone else.

Update:
The Adventuress says she's not been tagged yet. So here you go Irene....TAG!