Books for Me Too!

Number of books I own: 'Way too many.

Last book(s) I bought: Tuesdays with Morrie. Ornamental Palm Horticulture. The Art of Electronics. Concealed Carry: The Shooter's Guide to Selecting Handguns. Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America. In the Gravest Extreme. Basics of Pistol Shooting.

Latest books I'm reading: Job. Angell, C. Roy, Iron Shoes. Stephenson, Neal, Cryptonomicon. Sowell, Thomas, Basic Economics. Schwartz, Stephen, The Two Faces of Islam. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956, Hill, Alexander, Just Business - Christian Ethics for the Marketplace. Covey, Stephen R., The 8th Habit. Boies, David, Courting Justice. The Brothers Karamazov.

Five books that mean a lot to me (there are many others in my life, too. These just occur to me now.)

1. The Bible - has to be. I've been listening to it, reading it, memorizing parts of it, thinking and rethinking it, arguing about it. Not another book comes close to how large it is in my life. And how intensely interesting it remains, week after week.

2. War and Peace. I've read it three times in my life, at differenct ages. The first time in high school. The second time in college, and then some time in my thirties. Each time I reacted differently - different things grabbed me.

3. Moby Dick. I read this in my forties for the first time. I don't know how I missed it up till then. Each night I read a chapter. The chapters are short. It took me months. But it easily rewarded the time, and I think its time to read it again.

4. The Cruel Sea. I think I've read this three tiimes too. The first time in high school. Its about transports sailing across the north Atlantic during WWII. How did these people do it? Do we have such people now? Could we fight and win such a war again?

5. Grant's Personal Memoirs. Having been raised with a Southerner's view of the War Between the States, this was a refreshing look at that war for me.

Honorable Mention: Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples; Michael Sharra's Killer Angels, easily the best war novel I have ever read. Its about the Battle of Gettysberg. The movie Gettsburg was based on it. Sharra is not to be confused with his son, who cannot write half as well, not 25% as well. Ambrose' Band of Brothers (and add the HBO series with that name to the all time great movie list.) Dumas, The Count of Monte Christo (unabridged version.). Hugo, Les Miserables.

Thanks, Sean!