Reading List

One of my many issues, is that I have too many hobbies, too much interest in a multitude of things, too little time and too short of an attention span. Although, reading, is one of my more enduring hobbies, that has yet to fall of the wagon - no reference to party related wagons ha ha ho ho.....

Anyway, I try to keep a list of the books i've read online (usually on my facebook) , because I just simply forget what I read and I am too lazy to actually keep the books themselves or a physical list of them. Seinfeld was kind of right when he wondered why George wanted his books back from his ex-girlfriend, when he has already read them!

True, although, it's nice to have a library- we have a huge one at my Dad's place, and I try to send him the books I read to store them, coz I tend to loose, or spill coffee on them - and one can always go back to them. Techie or no techie I am not into these e-books crap, I still enjoy flipping through pages , and having a room full of books and papers and scribbles - well, at least until I move again.

So here is my list: (I forgot some books, and some of the authors, so take this with a pinch of salt)

• Nasser, the Last Arab – Anne Alexandre (Biography)
• Seeds of Hate - Lawrence Pintack (Politics, Lebanon & USA)
• The Four Seasons - Faisal Ziadeh (Arabic, Biography of Lebanese Author)
• To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee (Story on Black Oppression in USA)
• The Republic - Plato (Classic)
• The Epic of Gilgamesh - (Classic)
• A Cage without Bars - Ibrahim Yared (Memoirs)
• The Odysse - Homer (Classic)
• Confessions - St. Augustine (Classic)
• 20,000 Leagues under the Sea - Jules Verne (French, Fiction - Classic)
• Fermat's Enigma - John Lynch (Mathematics, Science and History)
• E= mc2 - David Bodannis (Science and History)
• The Strategy of Games Theory (Mathematics)
• David Cooperfield - Charles Dickens (Classic)
• Les Miserables - (Classic)
• Out of Place - Edward Said ( Autobiography)
• War and Peace – Edward Said (Politics)
• The Secrets of World Espionage - **** (Research)
• The Muslim Christian-Tarif Khalidi (Arabic - Research)
• Islam - A. Guillaume (English, Research)
• Sunday, Friday - *** (Culture and Religion)
• Lebanon - A quintessential culture - *** (Culture)
• Above the Rim - Nelson George - (History of the USA)
• Selected Articles on the History of the United States - (Politics)
• Away from My Desk- Rif K. Haffar (Adventure, Personal Experience)
• Michelle Aoun, Dream or Fantasy - Sarkis Naoum (Politics, Lebanon)
• No More Leaning On Lamp posts - Managing Uncertainty the Nick Charles Way - By Ian O. Angell (Business)
• Free Software, Free Society - By Richard M. Stallman (Computer Science, Philosophy)
• Does IT Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage - By: Nicholas G. Carr (Business and Information)
• The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia - By David Hoffman (Political Economics)
• In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind - by Eric R. Kandel (Science)
• Listen Rida – Anis Freiha (Culture, Lebanon)
• Before I forget – Anis Freiha (Culture, Lebanon)
• Cross Roads to Civil War - Kamal Salibi (Politics,Lebanon)
• Global Political Economy - Robert Gilpin (Political Economy)
• The Road Ahead - Bill Gates (Technology)
• This Side of Peace - Hannan Ashrawi (Politics, Palestine and the Middle East)
• My Life - Ahmad Amin (Biography)
• Assad , The Struggle for the Middle East - Patrick Seal (Politics, Biography of Syrian President Hafez el-Assad)
• The World Is Flat: The Globalized World in the Twenty-first Century - Thomas L. Friedman (Politics, Economics )
• The Google Story - by David A. Vise (Business)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer- by D. Leavitt (Biography)
• Democratizing Innovation - By Eric Von Hippel (Economics)
• From Beirut to Jerusalem - by Thomas L. Freidman (Politics)
• When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long Term Capital Management - By Roger E. Lowenstein (Finance)
• The New Barbarian Manifesto: How to Survive the Information Age - Ian O. Angell (Business and Information )
• Rafic Hariri and the Fate of Lebanon - Marwan Iskandar (politics)
• China Inc - David A. Friedman (Economics)
• 50 Years with the People - Youssef Salem
• Software as Capital
• Fooled By Randomness - Nicholas Nassim Taleb (Finance )
• The English : A portrait of a People - Jeremy Paxman
• The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
• The Last Lecture - Randy Paush (Memoir)
• Bear-Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008 (Finance)
• Beiurt I Love You - Zena El-Khalil (Memoir)
• Lord of The Flies (G. Golding)

and I already have these books in my room, and yet to be read, hoping 2009 will see them covered!

• Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (Satire)
• The Black Swan - Nassim Taleb (Finance)
• The Wealth of Nations- Adam Smith (Classic)
• Killing Mr. Lebanon - Nicholas Blanford (Politics)
• Rafic El-Hariri - The Phenomenon - (Biography)
• Welcome to Everytown - Julian Baginni (Culture)
• Six Days - How the 1967 War Shapped the Middle East - Jeremy Bowen (Politics)

and a whole load of books I need to read! My Italian seriously needs to be attended to, and so does my C++ skills, so that calls for some readings, besides my already well blogged (blabbered) about tri-interests to which this infamous blog is entitled.

50+ books isn't much is it? I quote my good man Prof. Carsten Sorensen when he said "Some of you will read more books in a year that people would read in a lifetime" - well, I dread being the latter, and strive to be in the latter, every year. Although, on the flip side, I had a joke with another former professor of mine, Prof. Yahya Sadowski, when I walked into his office stacked with a wealth of books,

Me: "Doc, you read all these books right?"

Doc: "No, I just don't like empty shelves."

Yeah, I need three lifetimes and a time capsule to catch with his readings!