the_wanlorn | Book Meme

Okay, so. Lando tagged me for this way back in the beginning of May. I got it allllll written out (nice and long and detailed) and Xanga fucking ate it. Needless to say, I was pissed (still am, cuz I hold grudges like that) and refused to write it all out again. So, here you go. Cross-posted to a bunch of my journals.

1) Total Number of Books in Your House: Back when Jacki did this, I went and counted out of curiosity. There are 665 that aren't in boxes. A number that I remember cuz, ya know, it's one off from being REALLY REALLY FREAKY OMG. However, I have boxes and bags of unread books in my room that I didn't count; boxes of old books in the basement, packed underneath everything from the kitchen, that didn't get counted; and boxes of random books up in the attic-closets. I'd estimate that the actual number is somewhere up in the high thousands.

2) The Last Book You Bought Was: Oh boy. Last time that I went shopping and bought books was at the beginning of fourth term. So here's that beautiful list.

Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
It's a classic which, I regret and am embarrassed to say, I've never actually finished. I get to around the point where the creature finishes his back story and get distracted by something else. Or just get bored and start a new book. Sure, I've flipped through the ending each time, but I've never actually sat down and finished it. I hope to change that sometime this summer. Maybe.

Galileo, by Bertolt Brecht
Yay for plays! I was fairly neutral about this one. It's not bad, a nice little play, and is pretty good if you're looking for a story with a 'consequences' theme.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
I love Dick. (*snicker*) I never managed to see the movie version of this story. I'm fairly certain that it could in no way match up to everything in the book.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Read it before and loved it. Read it again and loved it. I have a thing for utopia/dystopia stories.

The Physicists, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Now this was a cool play. Everything kept going topsy-turvy and changing and just getting all fucked up. It was awesome, one of the few plays I actually love to pieces.

The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon
Damn. This was a hard read. It was thick, had tons of stuff going on, and lots of little jokes that took research to understand throughout. I've read it once; I need to read it a couple more times before I can digest everything in it. But, damn, it's a good book. It has conspiracies and secret societies and dead people. Awesome.

Introduction to Computing Systems, by lotsa people
Dudes. It's a computer book. Only a geek like me could actually appreciate it. Even so, it was kinda... not good. Lots of really really low-level stuff I learned months or years earlier. 'Nuff said.

3)What Did You Last Read Before Getting Tagged: The last book I completed was The Crying of Lot 49. All my thoughts about that one are above. The one I'm currently reading is The Descent. And I guess I'll talk about that one below. Depending on whether or not mangas count, I'm reading a downloaded version of Hellsing right now. I'm liking it, but I'm not actually all that far in. So I guess I don't have much to say about it, other than it's good so far. Scratch all that. I just finished The Descent and haven't decided what to read next.

4) Write Down 5 (or 6) Books You Often Read, or That Mean a Lot to You: Hmmm. This one's tough. I know I had seven books last time, but I'll be damned if I can remember all seven. I guess it shows how important they actually were to me. :-\ I have a new list and I know that the first three were on the original list. Honestly, I have so many books that I reread and ones that mean a lot to me that both lists were accurate. They're just too short. Again, here's seven because I REFUSE TO STICK TO LIMITS. DAMN STRAIGHT.

Let's start with The Descent, by Jeff Long. A bunch of people go to hell. In the bowels of the earth. They discover a branch of humanity that no one ever knew existed before. (<-- awkward sentence to rule all awkward sentences) It follows the devolution of people cut off from their culture. Or some such rot. I love it; I read it every so often; it makes me happy.

Of course, we have The Dark Tower series, by Stephen King. My versions have lots of pretty pictures, so NYAH. ;-) How could I not put King's magnum opus on this list? But, really, I'm just a sucker for Final Battle books and series. I mean, really, check out the rest of my list. Even The Descent sort of fits into that category. Anyway, I've always loved the idea of one man on a Quest. Especially if it's one man that's alone, even with all the other people around him. ~~No, I don't identify with people like that at all. Why are you looking at me like that?! Stop it!!~~

In keeping with the theme, there's The Dark is Rising Sequence, by Susan Cooper. Good versus Evil, man. It pulls me in every time. The title book is also a typical coming-of-age story. The whole mysticality and folklore aura that dripped from the book (look Ma, I can mix metaphors!) fit with a lot of my views of the world at the time that I read it. And plus, it was just damned cool. ;-) Regardless of its status as YA series, I still read it. A couple months ago, I went out and bought the entire sequence so I didn't have to keep borrowing them from the ~~Book Nazis~~ library.

Then there's Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I'm a Tolkein geek. At one point, I could speak Quenyan about as well as I can speak French now. Then I learned more Spanish and forgot all the Quenyan. The trilogy is always fun to analyze and fill with a lot of pretentious bullshit as a deeper meaning. Plus, I've reread it every year (at least once, but usually more than once cuz I'm JUST THAT PATHETIC, OKAY?!) since I was seven. Sometimes I wonder if all the crazy stuff I was reading in elementary school had some sort of detrimental effect on me… Nah!

And, of course, I have to include here the first non-LotR fantasy series I ever read. The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. If I was actually doing this by order of importance to me, as opposed to order in which I think of them, this would be at the very top. I can't express my love for this series. I read it and read it and read it and never get tired of all the characters. I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never been able to find The Castle of Llyr, so my knowledge of the events that led up to the final book has a huge gaping hole there. I had the hugest literary crush on… well, all of the male characters in the books. Perhaps I'll buy the boxed set with some of my graduation money. Considering having duplicates of those books is nowhere near as bad as having six copies of Koontz's The Face…

Lastly, I want to throw in one more Stephen King book: The Stand. Not much to say about this one. It's hella long, it's the first King book that actually scared the pants off of me, I've read it a couple times. I can see something similar - if not as devastating and without the supernatural aspects - happening in real life. So, it gets a place on the list.

So, yeah. There's my list, complete with a theme and everything. And now I want to find and reread all of those books.

5) Who are You Going to Pass The Stick on to and Why? I guess I'll tag Gwen on Xanga. She's one of the few people who I know read my Xanga but hasn't done this yet. On LJ I'll tag pjrampolla. I think she's doing the

50bookchallenge, so I know she reads and has been reading a lot recently, so she'll have interesting answers. I don't know anyone on the other journals I use, so there's no tagging there.