Book Survey

[queerbychoice]

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.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

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

Happy Birthday!

[nouveau-prole.livejournal.com]

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.