Book Tag

Everybody else is doing it, so why not me? I was tagged by the Critter to answer these questions:

# of Books I own:

Scores. Even hundreds. Not thousands. The number I really care about keeping is probably around 100. I've never been much of a fiction reader, so that keeps down the number.

Last book I bought:

Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 50 cents used.

Last book I read:

They Also Ran by Irving Stone. Profiles of men defeated fro the Presidency from Henry Clay through 1940's Wendell Wilkie (published in 1943).

Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me:

1. The Sneetches and Other Stories by Dr. Sseuss. Parables on the evils of group identity.
2. The Last Days According to Jesus by R.C. Sproul. An introduction to "preterism," the belief that all of the New Testament's prophesies about "the last days" were fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Places the entire meaning and purpose of the NT's writers in a new and, I believe, more accurate context.
3. For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand. A summary of her philosophy largely through excerpts from her novels. Very powerful and inspiring stuff.
4. Dr. Deming: The American Who Taught the Japanese About Quality by Rafael Aguayo. A critique of "management by objectives" and systems of reward/punishment within a business. Most often, it is the system and the procedures that are in error, not the people following them.
5. Discourses on Livy by Niccolo Machiavelli. One of my great frustrations with the State is that even when politicians think they're being "pragmatic," they are still imbicilic. Machiavelli provides the real deal, including saying that its better for a country to lose her honor or credibility, then it is to lose her life.

The last question is to "tag" five other bloggers so that they answer these questions:

1. Steve (absit invidia)
2. Dr. Lenny
3. Vache Folle
4. Mike Tuggle
5. Matthew Bryan