George of EU Rota has kindly tagged me. Here we go:

Number of Books I Own: Some 500, at last count.

Last Book I Bought: No idea. They come in bulk when Irene and I order our periodical Amazon delivery. The last book I got, as a gift, was Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Given its theme it's one I'll definitely read.

Last Book I Read: An End to Evil by David Frum and Richard Perle. It's been on the stack of "to read" for a year thinking I knew most of what the writers had to say already. I did, but it was still a good read. Frum on his own however, is better.

Five Books that mean a lot to me:

The Hidden Force, by Louis Couperus. From the turn of the century, this Dutch classic about love and hate is set during the colonial years in the former Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia, and epitomizes the clash between two cultures. I don't know how the translation comes across, but going by the Amazon reviews it's not an easy read for some. The atmosphere it so vividly created has stayed with me until this day.

Wild Swans, by Jung Chang. Read it on the eve of my deprature to Hong Kong in 1992 shortly after its release. Probably the best book on China's cultural revolution (a series of crappier ones followed shortly after Jung) and a riveting introduction to Chinese culture in general. Jung Chang has been silent for quite a while, but apparently she has been working on a weighty biography of Mao Zedong which will come out in October/November this year. That promises to be a must-read too.

O Jerusalem, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre. Read it as a young teenager in the late 70s. This is one of the best historical overviews of the birth of Israel. What sticks in my mind above all however is how the under-equipped and under-staffed Jewish forces we're able to carve out a state against an overwhelming Arab force.

East and West, by Christopher Patten. The one book in my collection that was autographed by the writer. My term in Hong kong coincided with that of the colony's last Governor and Patten's book is poignant. His attempts to bring democracy to HK were ridculed as the Asian Model (little or no democracy = good for business) was the flavor du jour, but the subsequent financial crisis of 1998 proved Patten's points. Thriving markets need freedom of information, transparency and thus democracy. It's all condensed in this book.

1984, by George Orwell. No comment necessary I believe, it's been dicussed here before. By the way the year 1984 was one of the most boring and uneventful years of my life, but I fail to see the significance of that in relation to this book.

OK, time to pass the tag to: Mitch, Jeremy, Sari, Rogier and Matt.