meme already?
3/30 November 06, 2007

I wasn�t planning to do a meme this early in the month, but 50 Books did, so I guess that ball�s in play.
Doppelg�nger doesn�t tag, per se, but she throws it out there. I�m trying to kick-start my reading, so let�s explore my book habits:

Total number of books I own
Having recently gone through the shelves and cleaned things up a bit, one would think I�d have at least a ballpark figure here. Is �too goddam many� a ballpark figure? And if I have four grocery sacks full and ready to donate, but they are actually still in my basement, do I have to count them? And are we talking books or volumes? (Do omnibuses count as one or multiple?)

I honestly don�t know, but it has to be well over a thousand.

Last book I read
Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott. A little preachy, but I�ve always loved it. As a girl who was always outnumbered by boys in my immediate family, extended family, and neighborhood, the story of Rose and her seven rambunctious boy cousins has always appealed. And I also relate to the doting aunts and uncles; my childhood was full of them as well.

Last book I bought
Honestly�I can�t remember. Unless the latest copies of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine count. (They should. Each issue is simply a short story anthology.)

I remember buying the last book, but it is one of the ones I�ve abandoned. I�m ashamed to admit it, but I can�t recall the title or the author.
UPDATE: It was "What Came Before He Shot Her", by Elizabeth George.

Five meaningful books
Ouch. This one�s hard. I may have to take advice from my favorite co-reader, Nephew.

1. �Things Fall Apart�, by Chinua Achebe. Nephew read this for his AP Lit course, and pronounced it �important�. Auntie whyme has to agree.
2. Can I cite a play? Ibsen�s �A Doll�s House� had a profound effect on me when I read it in my senior year of high school. It awakened me to critical consideration of my father, to what a woman in any relationship owes to herself, and to the possibility that the hard decisions in life were, while indeed difficult, not impossible.
3. If a play, why not poetry? �The Ballad of Reading Gaol� and Other Poems, by Oscar Wilde. And not just the title piece, although I still find it to be a moving and haunting poem. �Wasted Days� and �In the Forest� are also favorites, but I pretty much love the entire volume.
4. The Diary of Anne Frank. I think it speaks for itself.
5. A three-way tie between two Carson McCullers books��The Member of the Wedding� and �The Heart is a Lonely Hunter��and �To Kill a Mockingbird�, by Harper Lee. The world can never have enough great coming-of-age books with a female central character.