Oh, Books! Yeah, many books have influenced me on many subjects, both fiction and nonfiction.
Last month I read the whole Old Testament for the first time ever. It gave me a better understanding of Western Culture, our history and the decisions people made in the past two thousand years. This month, since I’m on the Island where Napoleon was last exiled by the British after Waterloo, I’m reading his Memoirs. Extraordinary life, and amazing childhood. I’m checking other sources on the net as I go along. He was very well read and repeatedly refers to Niccolo Machiavelli’s works, especially The Art of War (Not to be confused with Sun Tzu’s treatise by the same name).
So, of course, I’m reading Machiavelli at the same time, which naturally made me curious about Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz’ (a contemporary who had opposed Napoleon on the battlefield a few times) book, On War. I usually don’t read military theory, but I find it easier to get into Napoleon’s head by doing so. I also downloaded a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War because I think it should give me a good example of the differences of western and eastern thinking on the same subject… and so I’m reading Napoleon and picking at the rest simultaneously. It’s raining a lot here.
But it has had quite an effect on me, especially after the Old Testament. I’m not sure what that effect is yet, however, but all experiences change us if only a little bit. As the books mellow into my memory and have time to cook, I’ll moderate, I always do. But right now, Brrrrrrrrrrrr. Weird. I’ll be OK in a couple of weeks, I think.