I suffered temporary madness just a few hours ago. Or maybe, I was just a little drunk.<\/p>\n
It was Friday and merely a few days before Christmas. With having nothing to do, I decided to give Kinokuniya a visit. With me running out of books to read, I felt it was the perfect time for me to go on book shopping.<\/p>\n
Initially, I had a specific title in mind and probably one or two other titles I would decide once I actually saw them. For that one specific book, I was looking for Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last of Man<\/em><\/a>. I thought, I have never read Fukuyama despite being familiar with his ideas. At the book store, I went straight to the counter, asked for Fukuyama’s and got it. One thing though, Kinokuniya placed The End of History<\/em> at the history section…<\/p>\n The girl at the counter was cute though.<\/p>\n Then, the random walk amid the racks began.<\/p>\n First was The Undercover Economist<\/em><\/a>. It was right beside Freakonomics<\/em><\/a>. And yes, I admit, I haven’t read Freakonomics<\/em>. I know it’s pop-econ but I feel I know enough economics that I wouldn’t feel too astounded to the facts in the wildly popular book. What’s more, I actually had read some of its content and while entertaining, I could say I’m familiar with it. Besides, I prefer not to read what most others read. As with The Da Vinci’s Code<\/em>, I only read it after a friend incessantly told me I should read it day in day out. I read Da Vinci’s<\/em> just to shut her up. Digression aside, I picked that book.<\/p>\n The third book was Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indian<\/em><\/a>. I don’t know why I picked it up but I suspect it was because Nik Nazmi mentioned it earlier in his blog<\/a>. For all I know, Nik Nazmi probably run a subliminal message that would sound like “read Sen. read Sen.” And The Argumentative Indian<\/em> became the third book I picked up.<\/p>\n I thought I would stop at three books but soon, I spotted Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion<\/em><\/a>. I remember Dawkins from an article on New York Times. Furthermore, the title was on Kunikoniya’s top ten non-fiction list. I picked that one up too. So much for “don’t really like reading what most people like to read<\/em>“, eh?<\/p>\n The fifth book was The Affluent Society<\/em><\/a> by John Kenneth Galbraith, one of the more prominent economists in our times. I have great respect for him, despite the fact that some of his ideas aren’t too friendly to libertarianism.<\/p>\n The sixth was The Origin of Wealth<\/em><\/a> by Eric D. Beinhocker. The reason I picked up this book is pure curiousity. At the back of its jacket, it writes “There is a revolution underway in economics and you need to know about it.” Call me a sucker but I really wanted to know about the revolution. And judging from the selection of the books, you could probably guess which section I was lingering at.<\/p>\n