A book meme from somewhere or other...

1. The last book you read:

Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah.


2. The book(s) you're reading right now:

K.S. Augustin, War Games (very slowly), Karl Marx, Capital (Oxford Classics abridged, likewise slowly).


3. Prefer fiction or nonfiction:

Depends on the day.


4. Why?

Because. I mean, fiction is lovely and wonderful and all that, but sometimes history is the only thing that scratches the itch.


5. A classic author whose work you've never read:

Jane Austen. Also Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, any of the Brontes, any of the 19th-century Russians, Trollope, Gaskell... I could go on. It'd be easier to name the ones I have read, to be honest.

Although I keep meaning to read the women authors of the 18th and 19th century.

So many books. So little time.


6. A book you'd like to read but probably won't have time for:

That's a hard one. Just one?

(Let's add "or money for," too, why don't we?)

Then we can start with The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. How about Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy? Von Humboldt's Journey to the Equinoctal Regions of a New Continent! The letters of Sophia of Hanover! What about a history of Italy in the nineteenth century? Or Yehuda Halevi's poems? Or a history of Thailand? Or this book on West Africa?

The list, it is too long. So many books! So little time!


7. A book you've recently (for whatever values of "recently") added to the list of your all-time favourites:

I've got four. Leah Bobet's Above, Elizabeth Bear's Range of Ghosts, Mary Gentle's Black Opera, and Amanda Downum's Kingdoms of Dust.

(What do you mean, three of those people are friends of mine? Still counts, right?)