No hiding place

I’ve been caught by Tim. For what it’s worth, here goes.

Number of books I own: 800ish, excluding journals.

Last book I bought: ABRSM Scales and Arpeggios for Guitar, Grades 6-8.

That’s’ 6 to 8 peeps. 6 to 8 .

Last book I (re)read: Marcus du Sautoy’s Music of the Primes.

Five books that mean a lot to me (apart from these):

1. Kahneman and Tversky: Judgment under Uncertainty. The classic description of how thinking goes wrong.

2. Penguin Essays of George Orwell. Kahneman and Tversky teach us how to think. Orwell teaches us how to write. Who needs more?

3. John Cochrane: Asset Pricing. One for the day job. It reminds me of the enormous gulf between real thinking about stock markets and everything you read in the dead tree business.

4. David Ricardo: Principles of Political Economy. Partly because it reminds me of my college days, but also because Ricardo was a better economist than Smith – just as Kalecki was a better economist than Keynes (a claim I’ll justify one day).

5. Peter Kennedy: Guide to Econometrics. I’d never have gotten through my masters course without it.

People I’m passing the baton to (with apologies to them): Ken, James, Blimpish, Jamie and Shuggy.

Comments

[edward]

"Orwell teaches us how to write"

No, no and no. What was it Cabrera Infante said, "if language is a pain of glass, on Orwell's view it should be transparent, you shouldn't even notice it, whilst mine is like frosted glass, you have to peer to see through, and you're always reflectively aware that there's something else between you and the 'meaning'." Well, he didn't actually put it exactly like that, we are talking about a radio programme 20 odd years ago, but the point stands fine I think. Jakobson's Poetics wouldn't be among those 8000 tomes I suppose :).

[rjw]

I just noticed your hat tip to Elster in the earlier post. I concur fully. Elster's "sour grapes" was one of the most remarkable books I read as a student, and opened up a whole range of issues that, humble economist that I am, I might have missed through solving too many equations. I recommend his stuff to anybody I can, at any time.

[Ken]

Hi, thanks for nominating me. I'm in the process of working it out, but things are busy at the moment and I want to make the process worthwhile. Will be done before the end of the week!

[alberto]

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