That book meme

[oyceter]

rilina and avrelia made me do it.

1. Total number of books I've owned:

Uh. Good question. Approximately one bookshelf full at home, triple-stacked, with assorted other books lying around randomly. A lot in college that I sold back. Five bookshelves full here, though three of them are short bookshelves. I think I just should have said: "A lot, but not enough."

2. Last book I bought:

Books. Sometimes I get carried away.

3. Last book I read or am currently reading:

The last book I finished was Laura Kinsale's For My Lady's Heart. The books I am currently reading are:

Brooks, Martha - Paradise Café and Other Stories
Brooks, Martha - Traveling on into the Light and Other Stories
Bujold, Lois McMaster - Cordelia's Honor
Diamond, Jared - The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal
Dirda, Michael - Bound to Please
Feynman, Richard - Pleasure of Finding Things Out, The
Fowler, Karen Joy - Artificial Things
Fowler, Karen Joy - Sarah Canary
Fowler, Karen Joy, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith, eds. - The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1
Gourevitch, Philip - We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories From Rwanda
Jansen, Marius B. - Making of Modern Japan, The
Kinsale, Laura - Shadowheart
Knapp, Caroline - Appetites: Why Women Want
McKillip, Patricia A. - Fool's Run
McKinley, Robin - Sunshine
Roberts, Nora - Key of Light
Sayers, Dorothy L. - Murder Must Advertise
Stephenson, Neal - Quicksilver
Tatar, Maria, ed. - Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, The
Walker, Alice - In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
Walton, Jo - The Prize in the Game
Winchester, Simon - Krakatoa
Yuki Kaori - Angel Sanctuary, vol. 11
Zia, Helen - Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People

Some of these are more in progress than others.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:

Der. This is bound to change at any whim.

Robin McKinley, Beauty and Rose Daughter (I cheat!)- My favorite fairy tale, by one of my favorite authors, twice. I love both takes, and they've actually mixed in my mind to form some grand ur version of "Beauty and the Beast," with roses and books both, with a shy yet awkwardly adolescent Beauty, with a Beast who is both prince and beast.

Patricia A. McKillip, Winter Rose - More roses, along with Faerie, Tam Lin and a nearly obsessive, destructive love. This hit hard the second time I read it, and something of the images has taken long-term residence in my brain.

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths - probably permanently skewed my brain toward myth and legend and fairy tales at a very, very young age. It probably also made me think that things like being impregnated by a swan and birthing children from your head were perfectly normal and everyday, albeit slightly god/goddess-influenced.

300 Tang Poems - I haven't read the whole thing. I don't even understand most of it. But something about memorizing bits and pieces of poetry in it must have stuck around, because I am still utterly in love with Chinese poetry, despite not being a big poetry person.

Neil Gaiman, Sandman - It even gets its own bookcase, it's that special ;). The Sandman universe gets its own special corner in my head, and it is large and dreamy and filled with unwritten but dreamed of books. Really, that's all I need to know.

I think I'm the last person on earth to do this meme, so no tagging others.

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

*is a Jared Diamond fangirl*

[oyceter]

Yay! My sister still makes fun of me because she was assigned to read Guns, Germs and Steel for school, and I ended up stealing it from her because I thought it was so interesting.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

d00d, that is a lot of BIP. I thought I was the only one who did that.

[oyceter]

Eh, yes. Well, some are more in progress than others. But I have not abandoned any of them yet!

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

It takes a lot for me to abandon a book once I get, say, 100 pp into it -- I still think of myself as "reading" Proust, altho I think the last time I did any serious reading in that was about 7 years ago! But I still think of myself as "reading" it and remember a lot of it and am sure I'll go back to it. Maybe one could make a bargain with some Infinite Power -- "You can take me as soon as I'm done reading Proust." And then spin it out forever....

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

See, what amazes me about the BIP list is your ability to remember them all. I do this thing where I start a book, put it down to eat dinner, put something on top of it, finish the thing I was reading last Wednesday, go to the library and haul home a huge bagful, find something behind the couch that I vaguely recall starting to read last April, have a housemate hand me something and tell me to read it, shove something pocket-sized in my pocket for the T and eventually, post-housecleaning, find the first book on the list again, to discover that I have forgotten the main character's name but remember the silly little anecdote on page twenty-nine. If I tried to make a list, it would inevitably leave out half of the things I am actually reading at any given point, especially since I usually exist in a Heisenbergian bibliophilia, in which I can either remember where I am in something or where I left it, but not both.

So I really kind of admire your list.

[oyceter]

Er. It's actually because I'm a giant dork I keep an Excel files of all the books I read/review. Haha. Yes. So I just had to copy-past and format a little.

Otherwise, I do that thing you do too.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

I usually exist in a Heisenbergian bibliophilia, in which I can either remember where I am in something or where I left it, but not both

Oh, I love that. That's beautiful. I may steal it to describe my own perpetual state....

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

So how did you like For My Lady's Heart?

I really enjoyed All Through the Night, by the way-- thanks for the rec. Sexy, angsty-- I read it while miserable in Japan and it was exactly what I was in the mood for.

[oyceter]

I still like it, though not as much as when I read it the first time. The language still bugs me. But I like Melanthe, who is decidedly not virginal, not innocent and has stretch marks. That last bit was awesome.

Oh, I'm glad you enjoyed the Brockway! I love that one. Angsty, sexy thief sex, mmmm.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Gosh. I don't think I've ever had more than three books in progress even counting research reading, I do not think I could handle it.

wrt the Sandman universe, do you read Lucifer ?

[oyceter]

I think I just change moods really rapidly, and I find it very hard to read something I'm not in the mood for. Usually I don't have quite so much going on at a time, but I do read about five books at a time or so.

I haven't gotten my hands on Lucifer yet! I've heard good things though.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I very rarely feel not in the mood for anything I can imagine wanting to read much at all, I do not think what I am drawn to changes that much beyond having a weird selection of comfort books.

wrt Lucifer, I really like it so much as to have difficulty expressing critical judgement on it; I will say that the first collection is very unevenly paced [ being a three-issue miniseries plus the first four issues of the ongoing series ] and that to give it a fair shot one really has to read the first two collections, because its greatest strengths are at that scale of storytelling.

[oyceter]

I've got a whole bunch of moods, it's odd. I go through the occasional romance novel streak, and then non-fiction streaks, and then bits in which I feel like more "serious" fiction, then historical/world-building fantasy types... I've also found that when I don't feel like reading anything because my brain is off, a good, cherished YA favorite will get me back in the groove.

I really have to see if one of my local libraries has Lucifer now.

[dremiel.livejournal.com]

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

There's a wonderful book on CD (http://www.airplayaudiobooks.com/products.html//) of this (unabridged) with Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, Matthew Broderick, and Kathleen Taylor reading. HIGHLY recommended!

And I think you'll love Sunshine. A very nice twist on the genre.

[oyceter]

Oh nifty! Thanks for the rec!

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

I forgot to say, this was one of the BIG picture books of my late childhood -- along with a prose retelling (yes) aimed at adolescents (yes) of Spenser's Faery Queen, which I fell in love with because of Britomart. Those two books taken together probably explain much more about my psyche than I would want people to know. I still have both of them, too.

[oyceter]

Oh neat! I loved all those myth books -- I think there was a series of them at one point, all on different cultures and the like, and I used to borrow them from the library over and over and over.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

I also had the Andrew Lang Fairy Books -- the Red, the Blue, the Green, the Purple....I wonder when people stopped giving little girls those.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of books in progress! ;)

I also should have listed Greek myths as a formative books, as well as all the fairy-tales I read.

[oyceter]

Hee I know! I'm sort of embarrassed about it, because it means I keep starting books and then getting distracted by shinier, newer ones.