15 Favorite Books

Facebook has a quiz to ask for your 15 favorite books. I simply cannot do that. There are some staples that I always come back to like A Christmas Carol (Dickens - I seem to read it every year) and the Federalist (parts of it are memorized). Then there are books that have been influential for me - The Wealth of Nations (I am one of the few who actually has read Smith's work) and Atlas Shrugged (As I commented a few days ago Rand could have benefited from an editor but her thoughts are challenging) - but neither of those are books I want to pile through again. Then there are authors I could not live without - Dickens (and I would add Great Expectations and a Tale of Two Cities - but most all of his writing is worth working through), Hesse (especially Magister Ludi and Steppenwolf - most of the hippies did not get the latter) and then there is Twain (I would always debate between the Gilded Age and Innocents Abroad and Roughing it and even possibly Pudd'nhead Wilson). Walter Brooks is also an important author in my history - he wrote the Freddy the Pig books which I adored as a child. His books got me interested in reading and had a good sense of fun in them. Then there are the economics books - Economics in One Lesson is a great short treatment of economic principles. The Long Tail (Chris Anderson) and Ten Rules for the New Economy (Kevin Kelly) taught me a lot about the new economy (Free - Anderson's new book is certain to be a classic). James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock are important in my thinking about economics as is Mancur Olson - but it is not one book but their collected works over time. There are more than 15 but that gives you an idea why this request is so impossible.