book tag

I’ve been tagged by Falling Dog for the book one! 

1) Total number of books owned:  Oh, god, I have NO idea. A lot. A WHOLE lot. Hundreds. Thousands. (To quote Betty, the dim actress in David Lynch’s hilarious and obscure series On The Air, "Thousands! Maybe even hundreds!") 

I’ve just polled Baker B and he is certain that we have at least 2000 books between us. He’s probably right.  Most of them are in his study because he has bookcases and a dehumidifier down there. I keep wanting to put mine in my own "study" which is more like the junk room, but that would require way too much work. I want to paint that room so I have to do that before I get more bookcases for it, and painting means hauling all the junk out, along with figuring out how to paint old wallpaper (or do I just have to get it off the wall??)  and it’s just overwhelming. So I do nothing. Other than pile all the books I’ve bought since we moved here in the floor. 

Okay, to try and answer the next question, I’ve just gone and looked in my "study", and while I was there I counted. I’m finding SIXTY EIGHT books just piled on a shelf and in the floor. There’s probably twenty more hanging out here in the living room. I think Baker B is probably right. He may be underestimating, actually.

2) The last book I bought:  I think it was The Fourth Hand, John Irving’s… I started to say latest, but I don’t think that’s right. It’s recent. I think I got it from one of those bookclubs I keep joining to get all the tons of books they offer for really cheap. Then they make me buy one. Anyhow, that’s the last one I can remember. I liked it pretty well – interesting story. Although the main character was way too one-dimensional, which is kind of odd for John Irving. I’m hoping that was intentional. 

I’m a long-time John Irving fan, although I don’t always like everything he writes (A Widow For One Year, for example). And I’ve just found out he’s going to be speaking at Queens College in Charlotte in October – I’d LOVE to see him, but I’m afraid he’ll sell out immediately. Joyce Carol Oates was there a couple of years ago and all the tickets got snapped up in about ten seconds. I think most go to people affiliated with the college.   

3) The last book I read: I’ll count what I’m reading right now – Mickelsson’s Ghosts, by John Gardner. Another long-time love. Not the science fiction John Gardner, the "literary" John Gardner. This is such a great book, although long and kind of dense with philosophical discussions. The main character is a philosophy professor who is going through something of a breakdown, as his wife has left him and his kids won’t have anything to do with him and he’s having a financial crisis – then almost on an impulse and against all reason buys an old house in the Pennsylvania mountains. That turns out to be full of ghosts. It’s not horror at all, but is both scary and fascinating. I’ve read it a bunch of times, but it’s been years since I read it last, so I’m enjoying it a lot.   

4) 5 books that mean a lot to me: I’ll echo Falling Dog – just five??? Well, I’ll try.

As I Lay Dying, because it was the first Faulkner I ever read, and it made me a Faulker addict.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant because it’s what made me an Anne Tyler addict. I’d actually read Searching For Caleb and really liked it, but didn’t even realize Dinner At The Homesick Restaurant was by the same person when I bought it while searching for a good beach book. And picked it up because I loved the title. That said, I’ve been really disappointed in Anne Tyler’s last few books. Her older ones are fantastic, but she’s gotten so…normal.

Raise High The Roofbeam, Carpenters because it got me hooked on JD Salinger. I actually think I read that before I read Catcher In The Rye, which is kind of weird. I may be wrong about that, but Raise High The Roofbeam is what really made me love him, and the entire Glass family. Leading me to Franny and Zoey and Nine Stories.

A Short History of a Small Place, by TR Pearson. Because it made me a TR Pearson addict. I’ve probably read it ten times, most recently a couple of months ago. I LOVE it. And my own writing has been very influenced by him and Faulkner and Anne Tyler and JD Salinger. So that’s important.

I have to include The Outsiders by SE Hinton, because it was my favorite favorite favorite book for I do not know how many years. The main character, Ponyboy, was 13 in the book and he was older than I was the first time I read it. And I carried it to college with me. I must have read that book ten thousand times. And I’m pleased to note that out of all the zillions of books I gave my oldest niece, hoping she’d turn into a reader (it didn’t work), that was the only one she ever liked. Liked enough to mention, at least. 

And I’m lumping ALL the Wizard of Oz books into one here. (The L Frank Baum ones, the real ones). I read them all over and over and over as a child. I was dying to go to Oz. And you know what? I’m also including Alice in Wonderland/Through The Lookinglass too – more books that I read over and over and over.  

This is way more than five. Oh, well. I have very poor math skills.

5) Five people whose answers I’d like to see: Noko, Marg, Spinster, Tae, Ken Fitlike and Redcat. And anybody else who wants to tackle it.

{*edited to note that upon rereading this, I see I’ve tagged six people, not five. I wasn’t kidding about the poor math skills.}

{**edited again to note that Redcat’s name is Redcat, not Recat.}

6) Best gift book: WELL, there was this great supposedly kid’s book that I gave to several people years ago. It would be really helpful if I could remember the name of the book, or anything at all about it other than it was very colorful and odd and was about new starts in life. It was one of those deep books disguised as  a kids book. It had a red cover; does that help??? I gave it to my cousin the practical, money-minded, sensible accountant when we graduated from college, and she never really said much about it, so I thought it was probably an awful choice and I’d just affirmed her view of me as a complete loon. Later on her sister told me she’d really loved it. I probably have it somewhere – I think I gave Baker B a copy once too. I should go hunt it. No, I shouldn’t. I’ll never finish this.

Other than THAT, I’m not usually so good at giving books. I tend to give books that I liked a lot, and apparently I have weird taste in books. I gave Mark’s niece, who is a big reader of literary sorts of things, The Shipping News when I had her for Christmas one year. She didn’t like it at all – but her mom loved it. I’ve given Kim all sorts of books that I thought were wonderful – like early Anne Tyler – and she’d end up being distressed by them. Although I gave her All The Pretty Horses one year just completely on a whim – I hadn’t even read it – and she LOVED it. SO, who knows??