Books I Might Have Read

New meme comes to me from Julian, the question is "What 5 books are you vaguely embarassed to admit you haven't read?" Hm. Well, there are lots of books I would like to read but haven't yet, trying to think about embarassment I get:

• As mentioned yesterday, Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. This always winds up being low-priority, because I know the basic outlines of classical economics pretty well for independent reasons, and because having read Theory of the Moral Sentiments I feel I can already do a better context than most of putting Smith's brand of free market advocacy in the proper broader context. Still, it's obviously a very famous book, the sort of thing that comes up a lot. And Moral Sentiments is really great and I like to talk about it, but it's hard to say anything about it without Nations coming up, and bad to go around discussing books you haven't read.
• David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. I like my Scottish Enlightenment, as you may guess. I'm a huge fan of "Humean" positions on most philosophical topics, which is to say positions that are said to be along the lines of what Hume advocated. I know a lot, from secondary sources and contemporary Humeans, about what Hume wrote and said. But aside from a few excerpts here and there, I've read very little actual Hume. Again, embarassing, because I find myself referring to Hume reasonably often and wanting to do so more. It's good to have actually read the stuff you want to mention.
• Theda Skocpol's Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. This doesn't have the sort of classic status as the two aforementioned books, but it's something I now and again find myself pretending to have read. The book is very relevant to a lot of my professional interests, and since I took Skocpol's course on American social policy I more-or-less know what it says. As a result, I've on occassion recommended it to other people, or referenced it as an authority, both activities that certainly seem to imply I've read the thing. In fact, not so much.
• Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. I've got lots of stuff to say about anti-intellectualism in American life, and lots of stuff to say about Richard Hofstadter. I've even cited Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in print. Haven't, you know, read the book. A bit of a problem.
• Thomas Frank, What's The Matter With Kansas? I've skimmed it. I read some excerpts in magazines. I think I get the gist. But at times it seems this is the only thing anyone talks about in Washington, so I just sort of play along. Certainly, one can't be a pundit at the moment and not have an opinion on the subject. So I ought to read it. But life's too short.

There you have it. These almost certainly aren't the most worthy five books I haven't read. My fiction library is comically bare, among other things. But I think they meet the embarrassing standard in that my non-reading of them is something I frequently find myself needing to talk around, elide, misrepresent, etc. I pass to Ezra Klein, Mark Schmitt, and Brad DeLong.