23rd March 2010, 6:18 PM
Not too many, really. I read the news a lot, and read quite a few history books, and sometimes political science ones, but mostly I get politics from magazines, websites, etc., not books. I did read quite a bit of stuff about the Japanese political system for my thesis on how Japan's poor handling of World War II legacy issues hurts them, for example, but books about politics... I don't know. I know there are lots of current-events politics books out there, but I generally feel like I get a pretty good picture of that by following the news... I have read a few here and there, though.
Political history is definitely something I find very interesting, though, like most kinds of history, so recent political history (the last century or so, say) is certainly something I've read quite a bit about over the years.
On another note, one other kind of 'book' that I like that I didn't mention there are cartoon collections. I've never been into comic books (superhero comics, etc.), but I do like cartoon collections, both of good newspaper comics or of political cartoons. The Funny Times, a monthly liberal "newspaper" full of comics and humor articles, is something I've read for many years now for instance (my mom has subscribed for a long time now), and love... or other things like the interesting "Dr. Seuss Goes to War" collection of some of Dr. Seuss's World War II cartoons, or one I got just a few months ago, "Herblock", compiling the works of a liberal editorial cartoonist who wrote editorial cartoons for somewhere around seventy years in the 20th century. (In addition to the book, it comes with a DVD with 13,000 cartoons on it... :)).
Non-political cartoon books I love include Calvin & Hobbes, of course (the best cartoon ever! I have all 10 of the yearly books and most of the other collections as well.), The Far Side (we have all 15 yearly collections and some other books), For Better & For Worse (we have maybe eight or ten of these), etc. Doonesbury is the best comic in newspapers today, no question, but for some reason we never bought those books...
Probably my overall favorite cartoon books, though, are Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe series, which was just recently completed and is five volumes. Volumes 4 and 5 changed the name to "The Cartoon History of the Modern World", but it's the same series. I should write about these in a separate review or something though, because I've loved this series for a long time, and thing his work is just brilliant... I've learned so, so much about history from these books, and read them over and over.
Political history is definitely something I find very interesting, though, like most kinds of history, so recent political history (the last century or so, say) is certainly something I've read quite a bit about over the years.
On another note, one other kind of 'book' that I like that I didn't mention there are cartoon collections. I've never been into comic books (superhero comics, etc.), but I do like cartoon collections, both of good newspaper comics or of political cartoons. The Funny Times, a monthly liberal "newspaper" full of comics and humor articles, is something I've read for many years now for instance (my mom has subscribed for a long time now), and love... or other things like the interesting "Dr. Seuss Goes to War" collection of some of Dr. Seuss's World War II cartoons, or one I got just a few months ago, "Herblock", compiling the works of a liberal editorial cartoonist who wrote editorial cartoons for somewhere around seventy years in the 20th century. (In addition to the book, it comes with a DVD with 13,000 cartoons on it... :)).
Non-political cartoon books I love include Calvin & Hobbes, of course (the best cartoon ever! I have all 10 of the yearly books and most of the other collections as well.), The Far Side (we have all 15 yearly collections and some other books), For Better & For Worse (we have maybe eight or ten of these), etc. Doonesbury is the best comic in newspapers today, no question, but for some reason we never bought those books...
Probably my overall favorite cartoon books, though, are Larry Gonick's The Cartoon History of the Universe series, which was just recently completed and is five volumes. Volumes 4 and 5 changed the name to "The Cartoon History of the Modern World", but it's the same series. I should write about these in a separate review or something though, because I've loved this series for a long time, and thing his work is just brilliant... I've learned so, so much about history from these books, and read them over and over.
![[Image: logo_bos_79x76.jpg]](https://www.tendocity.net/logo_bos_79x76.jpg){kind=logo}