Read Memememe!

Ok, usually when people do that meme thing where they say "I'm not going to tag anyone, just do it if you want to," I go away and pout because I didn't get tagged, so obviously no one loves me. And I get all huffy and say, "Fine! If you don't love me enough to tag me, I'm not going to do it. So there!" But this particular "I'm not tagging anyone" meme from Mom-NOS did look like fun. And since Mom-NOS doesn't know me to tag me anyway (so, I couldn't really pout about it), and since I sometimes feel I don't show enough of my lit chick side here, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

Total number of books?

Our home is small and I only have room for a few bookcases, so I have actually culled quite a few bookcases worth of books in recent years. I currently have two bookcases, 7 shelves each, averaging about 35 books a shelf. I don't know. You do the math.

Of course, that's not including the kids' books (they have their own bookcase), or whatever is lying around in my bedroom (I'm guessing about 20 books just strewn around up there), or another bookshelf that is strictly photo albums. (Thank goodness for the advent of digital photos or I'd be run out of house and home before long!) I am actually trying to keep my book collection to just those two bookcases. The new rule is that whenever I buy a new book, an old one must go, so only my best, most beloved books remain. I'm almost at the point where those decisions will get agonizingly difficult, and I may have to reevaluate my rules when I get there.

Last book read?

I have been working my way through the recommendations my wonderful readers gave me way back before my trip to my high school reunion this summer. I promised someone a bookmark for the best book, and I will announce a winner at some point; I've made may way through a fair number, but not all of them yet. I just don't have enough time to read!

The last book I started was The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve, which was recommended to me by Married to an Addict. I didn't finish the book because (ok, I do this sometimes) when I realized it was doing this reverse chronology thing, I skipped to the end, and I was disappointed in the ending, so decided I wasn't going to read the rest of the book to get there.

The last book I both started and finished was Marley & Me by John Grogan, which was recommended to my by Scout, who is currently leading the race for that bookmark by, well, a lot. There is no real competition yet. I loved that book and it was perfect plane reading. Thanks, Scout!

Last book bought?

The last book I bought was actually two books, I bought them at the same time, and both were (again) recommended by readers. On the recommendation of Shawn from Letters to My Daughters, I purchased Writer Mama by Christina Katz (who also blogs as Writer Mama). And on the recommendation of Vowels, I purchased The Marvelous Bones of Time, a book of poetry by Brenda Coultas, a friend and colleague of hers.

But I have yet to read any of those. And while we're on the subject of blog books I haven't read yet, a while back, I won a copy of Karen Maezen Miller's Momma Zen, which I also haven't read yet. (Karen blogs at Cheerio Road.) Sigh! So many books, so few hours in the day alloted to reading!

Five meaningful books?

The Lord of the Rings trilogy by JRR Tolkien. Ok, that's not one book, obviously, it's three, but it shaped me so much that I have to put it on the list. I read the books for the first time in junior high school and for years they consumed my imagination. I read them over and over and over again. I loved having a world into which I could escape: a landscape, a cast of characters, a history, a mythology, a spirituality, a language that was separate and rich and colorful. I don't know how I would have gotten through my teen years without them.

Peter Pan by JM Barrie. I own an American first edition of this book, one of a handful of rare books I own. Peter Pan is every man I have ever loved, child-like, injured, thoughtless, beautiful. Peter Pan is a metaphor for an addict. The forever-child who is abandoned and forsaken while still in a pram, who spends his lost childhood parentless and alone, who never grows up. Why do you think Michael Jackson (sex addict) is so obsessed with that story? He sees himself, his loneliness, his separateness, his broken childhood, in Peter. Someday I'll write a whole post about Peter Pan, but not today.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. I read this for the first time in high school and had just never read anything like it before. It blew me away to get into the heads of so many different people, to see the different ways in which they perceived the same world, to see Caddy and yet never see Caddy through them. It made me sad and awestruck and crazy, and I've read it more times than I can count.

The Complete Works of Shakespeare by William Shakespeare. Yes, because I own the complete works, his entire, collected life works (poetry and plays!) actually do constitute just one book. Ha! So there! It would be hard for me to pick a single work. I'm a sucker for all the tragedies, except (oddly) Othello, that one just doesn't do it for me. Hamlet is the one I've read most (over and over and over) and know best. Lear is probably the one I find most beautiful and sad. Macbeth was the first I ever fell in love with (I had read, but hated, Shakespeare before that). Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and The Tempest (see, not all tragedies) have these wonderful quotable lines and lovely characters that just linger with me all my life long. And the Sonnets! Sigh! Hm, if I had to call each of those a book, I'd be at more than five right there.

The Complete Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot by T.S. Eliot. Again, since I own his collected works (even the plays, though I'm not really into them), I can count everything from Prufrock to the Four Quartets as just one book. Over the years, I've found that Eliot has articulated the painful truths of my life so beautifully that sometimes I feel he's said everything there is to say about my life better than I could and I should just give up on writing myself and just copy his poetry out over and over.

Of course, this completely leaves out:

• ee cummings (whose poetry was read at our wedding)
• Dickens (whose books are worn to pieces)
• Austen (who was both so witty and romantic, I think she would have been a fun person to know -- like a 19th century Junky's Wife)
• The Brontes (oh, it was just heartbreaking to have to leave Wuthering Heights off the list, but there it is)

Or my modern day favs:

• Anne Lamott (destined to become my mentor and BFF -- call me Anne!)
• David Sedaris (whose "Six to Eight Black Men," from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, is now a Christmas tradition in our house)
• Malcolm Gladwell (destined to become my next husband) or
  
• The late Jean Shepherd (whose live performance I attended in 1991 and his words then, the flawless way in which he wove his story, have inspired and shaped me as a writer ever since).
  

Sigh!

Ok, I actually am going to tag some folks. These are the ten (I picked that number because I like it, and man it was hard to hold it to just ten!) folks who, for one reason or another, have made me most curious about their libraries:

• The Junky's Wife
• Long Vowels
• Mantramine
• Scout
• Question Air
  
• Shawn at Letters to My Daughters
• Danielle at The BiPolar Diaries
• Jay at Two Women Blogging
• Ingrid at Boricua in Texas
• Moonmaid at the tides and seasons of my secret life
  

Sunny, I thought about tagging you too, but I feel like you already answered most of this in a recent post. And of course, anyone else who wants to! ;) I never get tired of hearing about good books!

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