Book Meme

From Steve Scott.

One Book That Changed My Life:
I'd probably to with First Things: An Inquiry into the First Principles of Morals and Justice by Hadley Arkes. I read it in college, and made me think more critically and analytically than many of the Great Thinkers I was assigned to read did. (Many Great Books are hard to enjoy because their very status as a Great Book is a distraction. Kind of watching Citizen Kane for the first time - kind of a let-down.) This is not to say that I agree with Arkes, and much less now than I did then.

One book I have read more than once:
It's football season, so what springs immediately to mind is Instant Replay by Jerry Kramer and Dick Schaap. I think it's still considered a classic in the non-fiction sports genre. Kramer was the all-pro guard for the Packers in the 1960's, and kept a diary of the 1967 season. Coincidentally, that was the season of his famous block in the Ice Bowl and got his name all over the papers and television. It was a great instance of inadvertent marketing.

One book I'd like to have on a desert island:
Probably the World Almanac. I like passing time learning useless facts.

One book that made me laugh:
Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley.

One book that made me cry:
I think an algebra textbook in the 8th grade did.

One book I wish I'd written:
Well, my favorite part of Ludwig von Mises Human Action is where he completely demolishes the epistemological foundations of the social sciences. It'd be cool to write something like that.

One book I wish had never been written:
Consider a book, like Marx's Kapital, with harmful ideas. What can we say but, "Well, there it is, and here we are." Everything in the past affects everything today, good and bad.

That said, some books are written that makes one think of the author, "Boy he really jumped the shark." Robert Bork's Slouching Toward Gomorroah is a case in point. Stick to law, Bob.

One book I'm currently reading:
Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt. I hadn't before, and am reading it to sharpen my thinking and writing.

One book I have been meaning to read:
The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson

Five bloggers to tag with this meme:

1. Tom Ender
2. Logan Ferree
3. August Ecklund
4. Eric Lemonholm
5. You