Stuff I intend to read

My sister gave me an Amazon.com gift card again for X-mas. The perfect gift for me. But, I'm not so good at getting back to people. I should probably try to get into the holiday spirit more than I do. Thanks Steph. It is greatly appreciated. Better late than never? Anyway, the kind of books I like to buy are usually kind of deep and not necessarily easy to read. It can take a while to get through some of them. I don't have a huge amount of time to read stuff that doesn't pertain to classes that I'm currently enrolled in. But I still try. The library is great, but sometimes someone else has the book on reserve and I can't always finish books before I have to return them. I also tend to check out more books than I can read at one time. There are just so many books that catch my interest.

I finally got around to deciding what to get and placing my order. I'm embarrassed to admit how much time I spent deciding which books to get and how much of my own money I was willing to spend on stuff I don't actually need. I think it will be time well spent. At least that's the story I tell myself. This time I decided to buy some recommended assorted economics-related books. I went ahead and spent a little bit of my own money to get a few extra books. I think I did really well by buying mostly used books (all but one). I bought one new book instead of used because it was cheaper than any of the used copies (??!!!). They were still all relatively cheap, especially when I compare them to the textbooks I've been buying. I had an initial list of 16 books and narrowed it down to half of that. I paid $16, $12, $12, $10, $9, $8, $5, and $5 for them. All but one had free shipping. And most of these aren't available from the Mult. Co. Library so I feel OK about that.

I'm really tempted by an e-reader like the Kindle. I'll bet they will be even better and cheaper in a couple of years. I've been seeing a lot of the books I'm interested in for free or $.99. Newer and currently popular stuff is a lot more. I think more and more stuff is avail. from the library for e-books too, but I think they expire and you don't get to keep them forever. The Kindle has an insane 3500 book capacity. Have I even read that many books ever? I really like the tactile part of reading books though.

Oh yeah. I really need to get some reading glasses. Soon. It just keeps slowly getting worse. I'm not pleased about this.

So here is the list of books that will probably take me at least a year to read. Most likely much longer than that. Each book is linked to Amazon if you want to find out what they are (economics - history, theory). The editorial reviews are pretty general and the reader reviews are usually more specific, but should be taken with a grain of salt. For what it's worth, most of these books have high overall reviewer ratings. The first book arrived today. Thanks again, sis. You're helping to feed my brain.

• Teachings from the Worldly Philosophy

• The Making of Economic Society  - I got the 1968 edition for $5 instead of the 2007 edition for $50 or the used 2007 ed. hardcover for $285!!!

• The Fable of the Bees: And Other Writings - Apparently the only one that hasn't shipped yet.

• The Essential Adam Smith 

• Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy  - This is the one I got today and is the only new book I ordered.

• Economics and the Philosophy of Science 

• Truth versus Precision in Economics

• Essential Works of John Stuart Mill 

The books I cut from the list were The Unbound Prometheus, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, The Origins of Scientific Economics (this was quickly out of the running when I saw that the cheapest I could get it for was $46), The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism ($30 - another expensive book), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy - Vol. 1, Imperialism , The Portable Veblen, and More Heat than Light (second most expensive - $40). I do hope to eventually be able to read some of these. There are a lot of economics-related books out there that sound interesting to me.

It's all pretty exciting stuff, right?