Book Meme of the Day

Caterina passed the baton on the latest meme du jour about books. So here goes:

Total number of books I’ve owned:

I currently own about 600 books but have owned many more over the years.

Last book I bought:

The last book I bought, which was yesterday, was Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith Ferrazzi. Thanks to T+T for the Barnes & Noble gift card. Never Eat Alone is a business book on networking. It looks to be very interesting, and I look forward to reading it.

Last book I read:

Given the following category, I’ll take this one to mean: what are you currently reading? Right now I’m doing a little remedial reading in a book published by Apple Computer called The Objective-C Programming Language in preparation to read Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X (2nd ed.) by Aaron Hillegass.

Last book I finished:

Mervat returned from Egypt a few days ago, and she was kind enough to bring me a couple of books to read. One that I read immediately was The Call of the Curlew by Taha Hussein (biography here).

Five books that mean a lot to me:

Like Caterina I find this to be a difficult one. I feel that way whenever someone asks me what music I like. I want to reply: do you have a few hours for me to answer this question?

At any rate, I’ll try and cobble down a list here:

1. The Stranger by Albert Camus. This made a huge impact on me when I first read it in high school. It’s a short book, but it totally floored me. I think it helped that I was reading the Matthew Ward translation, which was a lot more visceral than the traditional Stuart Gilbert translation.
2. Walk When the Moon Is Full by Frances Hamerstrom. I had this book when I was growing up and few books meant so much to me as this one. My father had met the author out on the marshes one day as a young man, and maybe it was the personal connection that my parents had to the author that made it so important to me. A great book for children.
3. Neuromancer by William Gibson. I read this book in 1992 when I was in college, and it was another book that totally knocked me over. Gibson is one of my favorite writers, and I’ve read all of his books. Visually, think Blade Runner or The Matrix.
4. The Plays of Oscar Wilde. There’s nothing better than witty conversation, and there’s nobody better at writing it than Oscar Wilde. These plays reveal both his clever mind and his big heart. The 5 plays contained in this Vintage edition are his best works in my opinion.
5. The Love Space Demands: A Continuing Saga by Ntozake Shange. This list wouldn’t be whole without a book of poetry. Here’s a book by an African American woman poet that really sings. I remember letters to the editor being written when I read one of Shange’s poems live on KWLC, but she’s an awesome writer—very artistic and very poetic.

So that’s it. What books have you been into lately? What books mean a lot to you?