Books of the 00's

Alright, I am only belatedly getting around to this, my promised selection of my best books of the noughties. The emphasis, I should stress, is very much on the personal pronoun - this is 'my' selection, in all its subjective, idiosyncratic, WTF!? glory. Feel free to agree, disagree, denounce my literary ignorance or best of all, riposte with your own selection. As an avid book lover, reading is as much about the anticipation of the unread book as it is about what you have already finished.

The other point I would like to make is that this is a selection purely of books I have actually read. There were many, many worthy books published in the last decade, but limited time has meant I could only read a fraction of them. So not only this list biased in its subjectivities, it is necessarily narrowed by the depth and breadth of the reading I managed.

Alright, enough of the yadda yadda, I am going to kick off with my Top 5 non-fiction titles. I will introduce each one in turn over the next week and today I am going to begin with...

"Think" by Simon Blackburn (2001, though I am cheating a little here. It was originally published in 1999, but the paperback edition didn't come out until 2001 and that is what I read. Hence the inclusion. Anyway, it is too good of a book to pass by).

Think is one of those books that makes you go all fervent and wild-eyed as you earnestly impress on your friends just how good it really is. No, it really is that good. Really.

It is a book on philosophy that acts as an introduction to the major topics in life: knowledge, consciousness, fate, God, truth, justice, goodness and the GAA, but done in a very unassuming, accessible manner. Like having a long, fulfilling conversation with a witty, erudite, compelling friend in a warm, comfortable pub on a slow, winter afternoon.