Book Tag

[wolf]

Okay, I've stolen this from another forum I read regularly. It's one of those questionnaire dealies, but no stupid crap like "Have you ever been in love?" "What's on your mousepad?" "Are you wearing lacy underwear?"

This one is about books.

Total number of books I've owned: Thousands. Impossible to count, they tend to move around a lot, and unlike sheep, I can't just count the legs and divide by four. I sometimes joke about being competition for the Library of Congress. At least I hope its a joke. I know I have better stuff than the local library, because if I didn't, I'd go there.

Last book I bought: A quick check of my Amazon.com receipts tells me that it was Two Trains Running, a novel by Andrew Vachss. This book has not yet been published and I'm still waiting for it to be shipped. I'm big on preordering stuff. Amazon knows this and reminds me when my favorite authors come up with new books.

I also recently bought and received the first six volumes of Frank Miller's Sin City Graphic Novels, as well as three books by Chuck Palahniuk, the Author of Fight Club.

Last book I read: According to "The List" (for whatever reason when I graduated college I started keeping a list of every book I had read. I continue to do this. I have been out of college for 22 years) my last completed book was Fit from Within by Victoria Moran and also Stranger than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk.


Five books that mean a lot to me:

This is a much harder question than I thought when I read it ... Every book that I have read has touched me in some way, or at least left it's mark.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - This is a book that my father read to me as I was recuperating from a compound fracture and dislocated shoulder as a first grader (I broke my arm at school on the first day of school. Heck of a way to start an academic career). So, the book has a lot of family memories attached to it to begin with, and it's one heck of a fine story. I think it helped to established my very strong sense of right and wrong.

The Chronicles of Narnia - Okay, so it's a bunch of books. But they taught me about magic as a child. Childhoods need magic.

Black Beauty - Hmmm. These are mostly children's books ... does this mean that everything I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten, or that my literary choices as an adult are really, really shallow.

For me, comfort books are like comfort foods ... a preference established in childhood.

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid - This is one of my desert island books. I've read it a couple of times, and there is usually a point where my mind starts wandering just enough not to entirely get it. It might be time to search it out of it's hiding place in the closet and read it again. I have Hofstader's Metamathmagical Themas also.

The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Another of my desert island selections. I am endlessly fascinated with Arthur Conan Doyle's storytelling. Even though I know whodoneit, seeing Holmes get there is intruiging enough to keep me going back.

Beyond these, there are other books that I've read more than once ... a behavior, I notice, that was more common in childhood ... I've read Arthur Haley's Airport at least a half-dozen times, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury enough that I just might be able to choose it as MY book, same for many of the works of R.A. Heinlein.

All of these answers are subject to change without notice.

And I will admit to having left stuff out, lest you all think I'm some kind of a freak.