Our May meeting convened this morning; our fourth, still enjoyable and well attended. We celebrated our continued existence with the launch (!?) of our bookmarks. (One can’t help wondering if champagne flutes would not have been more appropriate 🙂 ).
The format today was for each of us to ‘sell’ one book to the group. Consistent with our headstrongedness (!!!) most insisted on selling at least two. Subjects ranged from history to psychology, economics to travel and beyond. The choices seem to have struck a number of chords as the meeting concluded with a number of library transactions.
Brendan offered war and history:
- Afghan Guerilla Warfare: Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet Afghan War by Ali Jalali and Lester Grau
- The Man Who Invented Hitler by David Lewis
Michael went for weight with about 2000 pages of history 🙂 :
- Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama
- The Decisive Battles of the Western World (Volume 1) by J.F.C. Fuller
Don restrained his mathematical gene and tried psychology and behaviour with:
- Opening Skinner’s Box by Lauren Slater
- The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
Tony reminded us “we are all Keynesians now” by opting for:
- The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes
- On Keynesian Economics and the Economics of Keynes by Axel Leijonhufvud
- The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath by Ben Bernanke
Richard, just returned from Morocco, regaled us with the pleasure of dipping into familiar poetry around a campfire (no specific title recommended) and counselled us to trust our parents by choosing a hand-me-down classic such as:
- The Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc
Eugene offered optimistic (imho realistic) statistics and did a bit of member psych-analysis, concluding that we are a bunch of people with a deep “distrust of woo” who were in need of a title with God in it so he suggested:
- The Mind of God by Paul Davies
- Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Richard suggested a theme for a future meeting:
Books we’re tempted to read but really shouldn’t
… because deep down there’s something awful about them.
Brendan also introduced us to Document Number Nine, by the Chinese Communist Party, also known as a Briefing on the Current Situation in the Ideological Realm.
Summer is upon us and the club is being put in mothballs for a few months. Our next meeting is pencilled in for the third Thursday of September (20th). Get it in your diary.
Have a great summer. Stay in touch on WhatsApp.
Asynchronists 