queerbychoice | Book Survey

It's 96 degrees Fahrenheit outside (that's approximately 36 degrees Celsius, for all you non-Americans), and the air conditioner at work was broken all day long. It was not pleasant.

Now I'm home, and

wordspore says I need to do this survey.

1. Total number of books I've owned:
Back in this entry, I estimated that I currently owned 600. If I'm supposed to add the ones I had as a kid and have gotten rid of since, I suppose I might have owned around 800 books over the course of my life.

2. The last book I bought:
I can't buy just one book at a time. The last time I went book shopping, I came home with the following:

Margaret Atwood: Surfacing
Pat Barker: Union Street
Willa Cather: The Song of the Lark
Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie
George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss
Gustave Flaubert: Madame Bovary
Tim O'Brien: The Things They Carried
Christina Schwarz: Drowning Ruth
Dalton Trumbo: Johnny Got His Gun
Gore Vidal: The Judgment of Paris
Margaret Walker: Jubilee

It was a used bookstore; otherwise I'd have spent a ridiculous amount of money. Actually, I spent a fairly ridiculous amount of money anyway. So far, I've only read the Tim O'Brien and the Dalton Trumbo. But they were both fantastic.

3. The last book I read:
Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson, today. I didn't like it.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me:
I already answered this question in that other recent book survey I just mentioned. I don't feel like repeating myself here, so instead I will list five books I've read within the past three months (the time that's passed since I did that other book survey) that I loved most.

Tim O'Brien: The Things They Carried
Mary Renault: The Charioteer
Dalton Trumbo: Johnny Got His Gun
Gore Vidal: Kalki
Elie Wiesel: Night

5. Tag 4 people here and have them fill this out in their LJs:
I always tend to tag the same people for book surveys, but this one is so similar to the last one that I'll make sure not to tag anyone that I tagged for that one. And I'll try to tag people who gave me a lot of recommendations on my last Author Recommendation Poll. I tag:

dine,

fflo,

gamesiplay, and

rekraft.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your recently-purchased list impresses me--or what I know of it, anyway. There are a lot of good books on there. And I'm thrilled to hear you liked Trumbo and O'Brien.

I did that same survey you did back in April... but I suppose I can do it again, since I have obviously bought and read new books since.

Oh, you were the one who commanded me to do that one. Well, do the new one if you like, or not if you don't like.

I forget to be so considerate of my foreign readers myself.

1. Total number of books I've owned.

That's hard to say. I've now become a borrower of books, both in the sense of using the library and in the sense of thinking of "owning" them as having them in my life for a while, or renting them with the purchase price. I've moved too many times, and I've cleaned out my dead mother's house, and owning volumes is no longer important to me.

I know I've gotten rid of easily 75 boxes of books. Maybe more. The answer is in the thousands somewhere.

2. The last book I bought.

Uncharacteristically enough, I've just bought a few. A discount memoir by Dorothy Allison, and several super-discounts, including a book on indulgent baths, a cookbook from the Tribeca Grill, a Djuna Barnes bio, and a book on feminism in Russia c. 1880--1910. (A remainders bookstore here is going OOB & everything's 2 bucks.)

3. The last book I read.

Buddhism Without Beliefs. Good. As those things go.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me.

Last time I answered this I stuck to poetry, so off-the-top-of-me-head prose here:

i. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
ii. An Athropologist on Mars
iii. Geek Love
iv. The Nine Tailors
v. A Confederacy of Dunces

I'm quite fond of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek myself. Haven't read the others, but will go look them up now.

Tis my birthday today, I'm all of 61.
The Lovely Sandra and family bought me:
"The Time Traveller's Wife" Audrey Niffenegger
"Cloud Atlas" David Mitchell
"The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke" Mark Chadbourn

I already have a dozen of so books that I've not yet opened; so I have made birthday resolution to spend less time on Internet and get down to some serious reading.

I've been thinking of reading The Time Traveller's Wife. Perhaps you can tell me if you like it?

Happy Birthday!

Thank you Gayle.
Worrying day here with the bombs going off in London. But have just heard from my e-friend Ness, who is safe and well and is in internet cafe reporting on what she has seen in London this morning on her way to work:
nessreader
Terrible atrocities, but the death toll is in single figures at the moment, and thank heaven, no children are reported injured.

I will make a point of reading "The Time Traveller's Wife" first, and get back to you with my thoughts on it - it is a rather thick book, so I may be gone some time.

I knew you'd like The Things They Carried!

In the Lake of the Woods is even better, in my opinion. Less strictly about the war.

1. I've no idea. I can't even estimate or give you a ballpark figure because my books and shelves are of wildly different sizes and I haven't even the time to catch up on sleep or reply to you properly, let alone count books that are quite happy left alone.

2. Massive Change, by Bruce Mau. I had been coveting it for about half a year, so it was about high time. When the bookshop had it in stock once again, I pounced - and got a 20% discount on it.

3. The Friendly Young Ladies, by Mary Renault. And yeah, I liked it.

4. It's far more difficult to sift through memories of all the Greatest Books I've Read In The Course Of My Not-Very-Long Life at short notice, to be sure I haven't inadvertently left out anything. So here are the first five good 'uns that caught my eye, from a cursory glance at my shelves. Which, you will notice, includes my two most recent acquisitions:

The Friendly Young Ladies, by Mary Renault.
The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L. Sayers.
The Shadow Of The Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski.
To The Friend Who Did Not Save My Life, by Herve Guibert.
Massive Change, by Bruce Mau.

The Shadow of the Sun is already on my reading list, though I haven't bought it yet.

Did you notice that

fflo named The Nine Tailors as one of her all-time favorites to me in the comments to this same post? I looked it up when she named it, but I didn't add it to my reading list. Maybe if enough people keep recommending it to me, I eventually will.

The Persian Boy is next on my Mary Renault reading list, so I was going to postpone adding more Mary Renault books until after I read that one. But between this comment and your desire for a threesome with the characters, I think I'm going to have to just add The Friendly Young Ladies to my list right now.

I just looked up Herve Guibert and Bruce Mau, and added Herve Guibert to my list.

I did think you might be interested in Herve Guibert. Bruce Mau's more for my benefit than yours. I'm a sucker for his kind of content.

Did you notice that fflo named The Nine Tailors as one of her all-time favorites to me in the comments to this same post?

Yeah, I did. And so I thought I'd put in another vote for it. ;-) The Nine Tailors was what got me reading Sayers and had me hopelessly interested in bell-ringing (tell me just where in this infernal city state could I hope to find a ring of bells?).

What made you choose The Persian Boy next, by the way?

"What made you choose The Persian Boy next, by the way?"

Nothing very specific that I can recall. The title's implication that the book wouldn't be all Anglo-Saxons probably helped. Other than that, it's been sitting at the top of my list for so long that I no longer remember exactly why I put it there.

Book Survey

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

<3!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject