The Book Meme

…and now for Martin Rundkvist who tagged me with the book meme. It’s a difficult one because it keeps saying one book. I think, apart from question seven, I could give at least five examples in each section.

1) One book that changed your life? It’s one I’ve mislaid. Integration in the Early Roman West : the role of culture and ideology edited by J. Metzler, M. Millett, N. Roymans and J. Slofstra. I picked it up in the Musee National d’Histoire et d’Art in Luxembourg while out there on my first dig. I was digging at a Gallo-Roman villa which dated from at least the Roman conquest of Gaul to around the third century AD so it was a time capsule of how the area became more and more Romanised. This book helped put what I was digging into a broader context. Sadly I can’t remember where I’ve put it.

2) One book you have read more than once? I have a poor memory so if a book is any good then I’ll read it twice anyway. One that bears repeated re-reading is Figments of Reality by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. It’s an interesting take on how you get a personality from the point of view of evolutionary biology. The reason it’s so much better than a typical sociobiology book is that Stewart and Cohen don’t simply see society as biology writ large but as something qualitatively different. Biology has to obey chemical laws, but you can’t derive a lion from a chemical formula. Similarly Society has to be biologically viable, but that doesn’t mean that you can derive Societal behaviour from biological laws.

3) One book you would want on a desert island?How to Get Off a Desert Island With Just This Book. I don’t cope well with the heat so I’ve no desire to hang around on desert islands.

4) One book that made you laugh? I’ll go for Expecting Someone Taller by Tom Holt. It’s about how the end of the era of the Norse Gods happens in near Taunton in the 20th century.

5) One book that made you cry? It’s hard to remember not from any faux-macho posing, simply that I can’t remember. I’d be surprised if I didn’t cry reading Reaper Man as the Good Guys die in the end, apart from one who I’ll not mention to belatedly avoid typing up any spoilers.

6) One book you wish had been written?Akousmata by Pythagoras. Pythagoras is one of the strangest people to have lived. These days he’s known for the Theroem, but in ancient Greece he was a spiritual leader, a bit like Jesus with an abacus. Like many top thinkers such as Jesus or Socrates he didn’t write down his own work. However, unlike other mystics and philosophers there seems to have been a vow of silence surrounding his cult, so there’s not a lot known about what they did. We know they had a big influence in the politics of Magna Graecia (modern day Southern Italy). It appears they accepted women into the cult and educated them, possibly as equals. They certainly researched a lot of number theory, but what we get is second-hand. The two principle sources for his life are by Porphry and Iamblichus dating from the late third to fourth century AD, over 800 years after he lived. The Akousmata were the sayings or rule of the Pythagorean cult. If we had those then we would know a lot more about how ancient cosmology and politics worked.

7) One book you wish had never had been written? My MPhil thesis. If I were doing it now it would be very different. Da Vinci Code was tempting though

8) One book you are currently reading?Classical Athens and the Delphic Oracle : Divination and Democracy by Hugh Bowden. I’ve just finished it and I’m starting over again. It’s extremely good as it very neatly ties Greek ritual which was largely practical with Greek politics. It’s easy to work yourself into ever more narrow and more specific boxes. This book builds on the very intense detail that others have brought to their fields and shows how it fits together and why it matters across ancient Greece. He’s also happy to have a poke at some of the debate surrounding religion and politics in the modern world.

9) One book you have been meaning to read?Human Evolutionary Genetics: Origins, Peoples and Disease by Mark Jobling. I keep on hearing various genetic claims. Some are nonsensical. Some claims however are plausible and would be incredibly helpful if true and they’re the dangerous ones. If you accept something you don’t understand because it ties in with what you want to think then you’re fooling yourself. Prof. Jobling is doing some ground breaking work at Leicester and it would be helpful to be able to evaluate how much confidence I should have in some genetic data.

10) Now tag five people Any five who want to take it.