OK, I'll take the bait, Mr. Chess. A book meme for book nuts.

Total number of books I've owned:

Well, if you've been reading this weblog for any length of time, you should have some idea. "Shitload" is probably a fairly accurate estimate. I think the problem began because I was such a nerdy girl I went to the library every day after school and hung out with the librarians there. We became chums. And they asked me to sort the books for the annual book sale, and said I could take home any books I wanted. Which probably halved the supply of books in the sale.

I'm going to guess around 3,000? My parents still have about 1,000 of mine which they keep threatening to sell off.

Last book I bought:

Does that mean "ordered" or "acquired"? I just ordered No Country for Old Men, the latest book by Cormac McCarthy, which isn't out yet, slated to appear in the July. And the latest book I acquired was swiped from Stewart, who was sent a review copy of The Art of Project Management by the author or O'Reilly or somebody. But the last book I actually paid cash money for in a real book store was a biography of Marcel Proust by Celeste Albaret, his maid, Monsieur Proust, which I got the day we left Canada at the world famous Little Sisters, which, in addition to carrying such titles as Jock Straps and Underwear also has a fine selection of literature, provided the author you're looking for is gay. It's also conveniently located next to Melriches, and so if you get disgusted with the abysmal writing in The Globe and Mail, as I do every time I pick it up, you can go get something else to read.

Last book I read:

A couple hours ago I finished the last book of the Marie Redonnet triptych, Rose Mellie Rose. The first two books were Hotel Splendid and Forever Valley. I heard about Marie Redonnet one day when I was wandering about the internet as I am wont to do. I came across a guy's page of books he'd recently enjoyed, and he'd read her entire oeuvre. When someone likes a writer enough to oeuvrify, I figure they're worth checking out. Redonnet's language is startling: barely any description, subject-verb-object sentences, stripped of all affect. Fantastic. Read the three books in the order they were written. I did, but not by design. It all makes sense in the essay at the end of Rose Mellie Rose.

Last book I finished:

See previous answer.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

This is hard. This is like asking your mother which one of her children is her favorite.

• The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens Means so much to me I memorized all of my favorite Stevens poems. The short ones anyway.
• Ballerina Bess. The first book I ever read all by myself. Holy smokes! It's back in print again, and with the same illustrations! (abandons blog post to go order a copy)
• The mind boggles. The problem with writing this kind of blog post is that it sounds kind of braggy and pretentious. Especially since I like famously braggy and pretentious books. And/or the predictable ones. So, I don't know, take your pick: Invisible Cities, Finnegans Wake, Gravitys Rainbow, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics (joking!)... then there's a countervailing pressure to list obscure gems nobody's heard of -- I AM SO GLAD I finished reading that Marie Redonnet book just now!

So now I hand this off to my pals in the Lowlands, Paul, Jouke, and Rogerio, readers all, and on hiatus declared or otherwise! But here's hoping.

LINK | 2:30 AM | TB

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