I was actually tagged on this one last Monday by Liam O'Brien over at Responsible Government League and since the Governor General herself has gotten into the act, I guess it is time for lowly ole me to get in on this latest cyberspace chain letter.
(Yes, Liam, while you didn't ask, I will add a link to you from my blog when I next update my right-hand menu bar. Actually I am going to breakdown the blog list into Newfoundland and Labrador blogs...and everyone else.)
Number of books that you own:
The rough count puts the number somewhere between 750 and 1,000. There are still some in boxes and on shelves at my parent's place. There are few circulating among friends who borrowed them but haven't returned them yet. There are a bunch more I have read and would love to own but just couldn't afford at the time.
Last book that you bought:
Frankly, I can't recall. It has been a while - maybe a few months - but whatever it was it is now mixed in among a pile of older stuff that I have been re-reading.
Last book that I read:
Since I have been teaching a course in public relations writing and a course in research methods, the most recent books I have been pouring over are the texts for those courses.
Somewhere in there I devoured Jeffrey Deaver's The vanished man, a clever novel by the author of The bone collector. An old friend loaned me that one and a collection of his short stories, which waits unread so far. If we count back to Christmas, I re-read Pierre Trudeau's Federalism and the French-Canadians, and Brinco: the story of Churchill Falls by Philip Smith.
Books that mean a lot to you:
This is perhaps the toughest question but here's a stab at it:
1. Gus Hasford's The short-timers. There's a link over on the right to a website maintained in his memory containing his three novels. The short-timers was the basis for Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket but there's a sequel which I had never found in a bookstore anywhere but the website. Print them off and read them back to back; you'll understand why FMJ is actually a pale version of what could have been one of the most powerful (anti-) war films ever made.
Hasford was a Marine Corps combat correspondent in Vietnam and later turned to writing to exorcise his demons. Dale Dye, who some of you may recognize from his work in Hollywood on movies like Platoon and Saving Private Ryan, was one of Hasford's buddies and served as the model for the character Daddy D.A. The short-timers is a relatively short book but it is intense, dark, funny in places and full of insights into the minds of men thrown into some of the most appalling situations imaginable.
I go back and read it often, if for no other reason than to rediscover that payback is a mother******.
2. Peter Neary's Newfoundland in the North Atlantic world. Those who know me understand that while I love this place dearly, I have never been a local nationalist. Neary's book was the first attempt to analyze the two decades before Confederation using all the insights of one of the province's best professional historians. The format is accessible for non-historians, meaning Neary doesn't use a lot of big words that mean nothing.
Next to it, I would put Ray Blake's Canadian's at last: Canada integrates Newfoundland as a province. It's too bad this book isn't on more reading lists but I keep plugging furiously whenever the chance arises. Ray is a Newfoundlander currently teaching history at U Sask.
3. Pierre Trudeau, Federalism and the French Canadians. Sadly long out of print, this collection of essays and articles from Cite libre had a profound affect on my understanding of issues affecting the country when I came of age in the 1970s and 1980s. This is still the template for a book on Newfoundland and Labrador waiting to be written.
4. Biographies and memoirs are a category of book I have grown increasingly fond of over time. There are too many favourites to mention. Shag the stuff by guys like Donald Trump; I prefer books by people who have risen, dropped and then risen again let alone actually accomplished something. As a rule, anyone who has no experience of genuine failure in life doesn't have to say worth hearing.
There are a few I'd recommend:
- Kimchi, asahi and rum by Robert Peacock. A young infantry officer during the last year of the Korean War, Peacock is an old friend of my father-in-law. The book is good stuff for a young person to read who may find himself or herself in the position of leading men and women through anything. Look past the military stuff and you will see some insights into leading people in any setting.
- Mud and green fields, by George Kitching. Another war memoir by a man of great ability and dignity even if the average Canadian wouldn't know him from a hole in the ground. This book took on a special meaning after I had met Kitching's son, while the fellow worked on a project we were both involved in. The fellow was genuinely astonished when I asked if he was any relation of Major General Kitching.
- Farley Mowat's The regiment and My father's son along with Spike Milligan's series of memoirs on the North African, Sicilian and Italian campaigns. I find these books especially hard to read as they manage to strike a strong emotional chord. They are intensely personal and on those two counts worth going through when one needs to come back to Earth.
5. My mother would be surprised to know that The Bible has influenced much of my attitude toward life, the world and my place in it, even if I seldom darken the door of a church. Spiritual beliefs are not something I am in the habit of discussing with people, but I would be remiss in not acknowledging it publicly. The Golden Rule, incidentally, is just a kinder expression of the payback thing Hasford talked about.
6. Others may be surprised to find that Robert Tucker's The Marx-Engels Reader and The Lenin Anthology have helped shape my analytical approaches to a great many things. Bill McGrath suffered through reading my papers during a few political science courses but the dialectical approach has a certain usefulness that has proven itself in the oddest of places.
7. In the same vein, Karl von Clausewitz's On war is one of those books people claim to have read when they actually didn't. I did read it, and again this is a book where how Clausewitz looked at his subject is more useful in certain cases than his dense prose or his over-quoted dictum that war is the continuation of policy by other means.
All of that has helped shape by approach to public relations, but that's really another post for another time.
8. Winkin, blinkin and nod. I shall always cherish and never be able to convey adequately the feelings that come from reading over and over again this charming little book to two precious children as they nod off to sleep. They are long past it now, but I am not. Heaven to me would be spending eternity putting the wee ones to bed.
There.
Done.
Now I just have to go off an tag a few unsuspecting e-mail victims and see what they reply.