language is a virus from outer space
I already posted this in the comments at Geegaw, but as I lack any content of my own and have a responsibility to pass the meme on, I suppose I had better put it here too.
Total number of books I've owned: By my crude estimate, there are about a thousand books in the house right now. If you add the ones I've gotten rid of over the years, maybe 1500.
Last book I bought: After last week's binge of sci-fi books and German books I can't read, I picked up a twofer: Tolstoy's What Is Art? and Gardner's On Moral Fiction. "Beach reading?" asked the woman at the counter.
Last book I read: Galaxies Like Grains of Sand by Brian Aldiss. I quite liked one of his anthologized stories once upon a time, but these turned out to be silly, though the one entirely starring robots was silly in an endearing way. (Update: this is now Samuel R. Delany's Trouble on Triton, which rocks.)
Last book I finished: That darn Aldiss.
Five books that mean a lot to me: These were hard to narrow down, actually.
1) My well-beloved Modern Library hardcover Ulysses, which I bought at age 17 and which forever ruined me for useful work.
2) The 37-year-old hardcover of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations that Pica gave me this fall, obviously battered and beloved by many hands before mine.
3) Cien Años de Soledad, García Márquez. This was the first foreign-language book I ever bought, thus a monumental act of book-buying hubris. I finished it two or three years later.
4) The Egyptian Book of the Dead, translated and edited by E.A. Wallis Budge. When I was eleven I pretty much carried this around everywhere I went, including Egypt. Also battered beyond belief.
5) H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds. I’ve had this one even longer. It lost its spine long ago. Great drawing of tripods on the front.
Five people I want to see do this: Pica Pica, Lauren/Kidchamp, Hannah/Ravenousplankton, Julia K., anyone over at Iowablog.
