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I occasionally give in to these things--especially if I can use them as an excuse to look over my hoard. This one's off of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
papersky.
Total number of books owned:
4 ceiling-tall bookshelves (5 shelves each), 2 old metal bookshelves (3 longer shelves each), 4 mini-bookshelves (1-2 shelves worth each), and about a shelf's worth unshelved. Plus 2 shelves at the office. I think my estimate comes in at about a thousand. After triaging heavily for the move, I also own about 3000 comic books.
Last book bought:
I think it was Mary Doria Russell's new book, Thread of Grace. Like her last two, it is really good. Unlike the last two, it is a Holocaust novel, and therefore much more painful to read. The end result is that once I pick it up I have trouble putting it down, and once I manage to put it down I have trouble picking it up.
Last book read:
Depending on your definition of "book" and "read," either The Know-It-All: One Man's Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs (hardcover book, finished a couple nights ago), Shadows Over Baker Street, edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan (started immediately afterwards, but not yet finished), or the last several issues of Y: The Last Man (comic book series, read earlier tonight).
Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me:
Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy. Believable utopias are rare. Livable, believable utopias are even more rare. I've been arguing with and about this one for over a decade.
Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold. The middle of one of my favorite series, and the point where we see that this is not Star Trek. In Bujold's universe it is possible to grow and change, and even possible to give up your starship and your captaincy, without losing your identity. This book is the Tower from the Tarot deck, mixed in with Death, and I've probably read it about ten times for reassurance that it's possible to survive change, or just for comfort against lesser trials. Also, as a side benefit, she gets my field right--the cognitive neuroscience actually makes sense.
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. This is the best first contact story I have ever read, and understands that at least half the point of trying to understand the alien is understanding the human. Russell is the only writer I have ever seen create both believable religious people (of several faiths) and believable atheists--and her characters talk like real people. They laugh like real people. This book is amazing on so many levels, beyond my ability to describe. During my first read-through, I swear to you I did not sleep.
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, translated by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. Oddly, when I'm looking for comfort from an actual religious book, nine times out of ten I go to the translation of Inanna bringing the Me (the principles of civilization, roughly) to Uruk. It's the continuity, I think, and the reassurance that civilization has survived humans being human for a long, long time.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum. I'm cheating here, as I'm suddenly talking about a real, physical book that means a lot to me, rather than a story that happens to have a convenient form on my bookshelf. However, this copy belonged to my grandmother when she was a child. My mother colored in the pictures with crayon when she was a kid, and read it aloud to me 30 years later. The spine is dying, so it needs to be rebound before my kids get it...
Five People to Tag for This Meme:
If you want it, go ahead. I'm curious.
papersky.Total number of books owned:
4 ceiling-tall bookshelves (5 shelves each), 2 old metal bookshelves (3 longer shelves each), 4 mini-bookshelves (1-2 shelves worth each), and about a shelf's worth unshelved. Plus 2 shelves at the office. I think my estimate comes in at about a thousand. After triaging heavily for the move, I also own about 3000 comic books.
Last book bought:
I think it was Mary Doria Russell's new book, Thread of Grace. Like her last two, it is really good. Unlike the last two, it is a Holocaust novel, and therefore much more painful to read. The end result is that once I pick it up I have trouble putting it down, and once I manage to put it down I have trouble picking it up.
Last book read:
Depending on your definition of "book" and "read," either The Know-It-All: One Man's Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World, by A.J. Jacobs (hardcover book, finished a couple nights ago), Shadows Over Baker Street, edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan (started immediately afterwards, but not yet finished), or the last several issues of Y: The Last Man (comic book series, read earlier tonight).
Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me:
Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy. Believable utopias are rare. Livable, believable utopias are even more rare. I've been arguing with and about this one for over a decade.
Memory, by Lois McMaster Bujold. The middle of one of my favorite series, and the point where we see that this is not Star Trek. In Bujold's universe it is possible to grow and change, and even possible to give up your starship and your captaincy, without losing your identity. This book is the Tower from the Tarot deck, mixed in with Death, and I've probably read it about ten times for reassurance that it's possible to survive change, or just for comfort against lesser trials. Also, as a side benefit, she gets my field right--the cognitive neuroscience actually makes sense.
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell. This is the best first contact story I have ever read, and understands that at least half the point of trying to understand the alien is understanding the human. Russell is the only writer I have ever seen create both believable religious people (of several faiths) and believable atheists--and her characters talk like real people. They laugh like real people. This book is amazing on so many levels, beyond my ability to describe. During my first read-through, I swear to you I did not sleep.
Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, translated by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer. Oddly, when I'm looking for comfort from an actual religious book, nine times out of ten I go to the translation of Inanna bringing the Me (the principles of civilization, roughly) to Uruk. It's the continuity, I think, and the reassurance that civilization has survived humans being human for a long, long time.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum. I'm cheating here, as I'm suddenly talking about a real, physical book that means a lot to me, rather than a story that happens to have a convenient form on my bookshelf. However, this copy belonged to my grandmother when she was a child. My mother colored in the pictures with crayon when she was a kid, and read it aloud to me 30 years later. The spine is dying, so it needs to be rebound before my kids get it...
Five People to Tag for This Meme:
If you want it, go ahead. I'm curious.
