Great. Just great. I've been tagged twice today: by Keith and by Cyrano.
You may have seen that book tag thing making its rounds through the blogosphere over the last several months. It is basically a chain letter spreading through the blogosphere, sucking five bloggers into its maw at a time. Oh well, as chain letters go, it is kind of fun. Here goes:
Number of books I own: I have no idea. Most of my books are packed away in boxes at my dad's place, and have been so since last September. At a rough guess I would say around 100. My library has been somewhat diminished over the years; it never really recovered from a fire back in 97 that left me with nothing but the clothes I happened to be wearing at the time. Back then, I had several hundred books and probably about a couple thousand (mostly technical or science) magazines.
Last book I bought: Now that is a tough one. I haven't bought any books for quite a while... probably the last one was Atlas Shrugged, back in December of 2003, a Christmas gift for my dad.
Last book I read: I am mostly finished reading Mind, Machines, and Evolution by James P. Hogan, and have just started reading Baudolino by Umberto Eco.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
1) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Yes, it is long-winded, even pedantic. Yes, the ending is weak. However, Atlas Shrugged lays down the best defence of capitalism and indictment of socialism I have ever seen.
2) The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky. An excellent treatment of the mechanics involved in artificial intelligence, stripped of any dependency on specific implementation. Shows the mind as an emergent behaviour of a system of mindless computational units networked together in sufficient complexity. A must-read for anyone who has been deluded by Roger Penrose's atrocious The Emperor's New Mind, if only to serve as counterpoint.
3) The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks. In the vein of The Lord of the Rings, it is a rollicking adventure story of magic, myth, heroism, and the triumph of the underdog. The scope of this series makes LOTR look like a pamphlet.
4) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. With Atlas Shrugged, this book is one of the cornerstones of the libertarian anarchocapitalist movement. One of the few science fiction books that I would like to see turned into a movie (Jeri Ryan as Wyoming Knott would suit me just fine).
5) Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey. One of the first sci-fi/fantasy books I ever read, and probably the only one I have read more than a dozen times. It made me wish I had a dragon of my own.
And now, I get to choose five
Rand Simberg
Jay Manifold
Jason Verheyden
Darryl Payment
Angry
They will be receiving an email in a few minutes. Heck, some of them might even continue this chain.
UPDATE: I see Jay Manifold went and linked his book list to the Amazon website. Seemed like a good idea, so I did it too.
1 comment:
Ecco! Of course! I forgot to include in my list! I suppose that I forgot because various people have borrowed all of my Umberto Ecco books and so I had none on the shelf to remind me. Ah, how the memories fade. I enjoyed Baudolino thoroughly, to the point of reading passages out loud to the one friend I have who could appreciate them. Enjoy! The Island of the Day Before is almost as good. Oh, yes, and apologies for the tag (not really).
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