Birthday and a Meme

Today is my birthday! I don't care if it's silly, I still get excited about birthdays. As far as I'm concerned, it's "me-day." And everyone knows how great that is! Today we're going to get brunch (I discovered brunches in NYC. Where have you been all my life?), go see Clerks II (where I plan on getting a TUB of popcorn), and have mexican food for dinner (which Brazen Hussy never lets me eat). And there are PRESENTS! Does this make me juvenile? Yes. Do I care? No.

Anyway, on the book meme I've been waiting for someone to tag me for....

1. One Book That Changed Your Life?
John H. Elliott's Imperial Spain. It got me interested in history and the problems of great power decline, economic development, and the importance of the middle class. Of course I had no idea when I was reading it that the U.S. was facing some of the same problems.

2. One Book You Have Read More Than Once?

The Count of Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. It was the first real book I ever read, and I've been re-reading every couple of years since. When I was a kid I thought the adventures and revenge were cool. When I got older I realized the book was about revenge being pointless. So it has sort of grown up with me.

3. One Book You Would Want On A Desert Island?

The Complete Works of Shakespeare. It's rich enough that I would never run out of things to think about. A close 2nd would be Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, because it's going to take the rest of my life to figure it out.

4. One Book That Made You Laugh?

Machiavelli's The Prince. Brazen Hussy thinks that I have a sick sense of humor and she's right.

5. One Book That Made You Cry?

I'm not really a crier, but the first time I read The Stand (when I was about 14) I bawled when Nick Andros died. No wait, a more recent time was at the end of Mountain of Black Glass by Tad Williams (part of the Otherland series) when Orlando died. Not cool! If you haven't read Otherland, you should. It's excellent. Even my literary snob wife liked it.

6. One Book You Wish Had Been Written?

Wow this is a hard question. How about a biography where the author doesn't psychoanalyze the principal subject in some ridiculous fashion?

7. One Book You Wish Had Never Been Written?

I know that Lisa already picked the Fountainhead, so I won't use that one. My 2nd choice is Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom, which is to libertarianism as the Fountainhead is to assholes.

8. One Book You Are Currently Reading?

The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party, by Michael Holt. If it were 1840, I'd be a Whig.

9. One Book You Have Been Meaning to Read?

My Life, by Bill Clinton. What a coincidence!

10. Now Tag Five People.

Everyone has already been tagged!!! Wait, has Shrinky been tagged?