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petroniaIn all honesty I think this is the first time I've seen a meme start on my flist and go through more than one iteration. XD
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yasminm
1) Total number of books owned?
Counting manga, two bookcases full with some shelves double-lined. That is to say, those are the books in my room, about 10% of the house collection - the concept of ownership is nebulous in my immediate family, there's not much in the way of "my clothes" or "my books" or "my CDs". Whatever gets brought into the house belongs to everybody; it's not as if we ever get rid of books anyway. XD A lot of my older books are now in my sister's room. Historically I've been a big library borrower and bookstore browser, much less of a buyer.
The last book I bought?
The most recent books to show up at the door were GetBackers 29 and Peace Maker Kurogane 5, which were of course bought and paid for weeks previous. The last book I paid for and walked out of the store with... XXXHolic vol.2? Or was it that gloss on the Egyptian Book of the Dead?
The last book I read?
(Finally a conclusive answer) Trinity Blood R.O.M. 1, The Star of Sorrow, by Yoshida Sunao. Currently halfway through Trinity Blood R.A.M. 1, From the Empire.
5 books that mean a lot to me?
I feel like I've done a lot of book memes over the years. XD Am going to arbitrarily pick a few I haven't talked about.
The Changeling Sea, Patricia McKillip
Very short early work, my favorite McKillip novel. Occupies the position in my personal literary canon that I suspect many other people reserve for The Last Unicorn (I came to Peter Beagle relatively late). It's not so much that the oceanic/littoral imagery that permeates my writing comes from this book, as this book happens to contain every important archetype underlying my creative wellspring. It's no use if I write it, because McKillip already has, a fact I've been living with since my early teens. (Got this one out of my high school library; recently I discovered it's come back into print, should see about securing myself a copy.)
The Dark Side of the Sun, Terry Pratchett
Very short early work, my favorite Pratchett novel. (The pattern holds, but I won't get into further examples. XD) I read this when I was twelve, in a paperback given to me by an English boy (it would be years before I saw Pratchett in NA bookstores), alongside Ursula K. Leguin - but Prachett was the author that stuck. The Changeling Sea is the book I wish in my heart I'd written; The Dark Side of the Sun is the book I wish in my head I'd written. It precedes cyberpunk principles of speed and density, information packed tighter than William Gibson ever managed even in his short stories. The plot skims over a chaotically complex universe like a water beetle skating on surface tension. It's also deathly funny and managed to ruin a great deal of classic SF for me with admittedly goodhearted m0xx0ring.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Baroness Orczy
Tempted to proclaim this the best novel ever written (despite the Baroness's tendency to use exclamation marks in duplicate and even triplicate - "Oh no!!! she thought, Whatever shall I do!!?" - which only goes to show). Speaking seriously, though, I think The Scarlet Pimpernel is one of those books that have no real effect if you read them after a certain age, but is liable to warp the young and impressionable soul entirely. In any case the romance novel and shoujo manga landscape would likely be very different without it.
Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope
Sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda. The thrice-becursed book that broke my faith in authors. Insofar as I remember, before Rupert of Hentzau authors were golden beings of benevolent omnipotence who existed to tell ripping good yarns and bring them to poetically just and emotionally satisfactory conclusions; it would no more have occurred to me to question their judgment than that of my science textbook writers when they told me water boiled at 100 degrees Celsius and the Earth orbited around the Sun. They knew better than me, and that was the end of it. But then! At the end of Rupert of Hentzau the main character found himself caught in an intolerable ethical dilemma that had been set up throughout the course of the book (not unlike the honour vs. duty bit in the Vorkosigan series) and - not to get into tiresome plot details or spoiler or anything, but it ended really cheaply. I remember dropping the book on the carpet and pacing feverishly around my room, gesticulating. Anthony Hope had written himself into a corner! The concept was entirely new, but there it was. He set it all up but had no idea how to get out of it, so he went the cheap route. Mind you I'd be lying if I said it was the cheapness that bothered me; what bothered me was that I would not personally have writhed in ethical dilemma at all, as I have basically no sense of honour - id est, I emotionally disagreed with the author over how the story should've gone. Well, once the first blush of innocence is off the rose it never returns. =_=
It was only much later - and I mean much, as in not until I was in my twenties - that it occurred to me Hope may not have written himself into a corner at all, and in fact probably intended his ending from the beginning. By which you see how foreign a concept it is to me, that an author may not have the best interests of his own presumably beloved characters at heart. That was another blow, but not as hard; being that I'm older and more cynical.
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Weirdly enough, I didn't read The Catcher in the Rye until my sister made me about two years ago, but when I was in CEGEP (grade 12 equivalent) I read all of Salinger's Glass family stories. I remember at the end of CEGEP I made my boyfriend at the time read Franny and Zooey, and he hated it, couldn't stand the characters. He didn't say they were smug superior bastards but it was something to that effect. If I read it again now I'd probably hate it too. (BF-at-the-time was - needless to say - also something of a smug superior bastard, but he wasn't written by an author who thought he was the bee's knees. If that makes sense.) But when I read it at the age of seventeen it really really helped; it was the first book I'd encountered in which the characters were intelligent young people who were beyond dumb parents-and-peers angst or teenage rebellion, who talked about the sort of things I had no one to talk to about and were screwed up by their intelligence in ways I recognised from myself - seventeen was my age of existentialist crisis, which sounds as if I should make a joke of it from my current twenty-four-year-old perspective but I can't and won't, it was a very real hurdle I had to overcome. Salinger's stories are also one of the few examples I can think of even now of fiction that captures what it is to be born in a family where everyone is expected to be a genius, which is, yanno, my life. Buddy and Seymour traumatizing their youngest siblings by consciously planning their introduction to various great world thinkers? Ahahahaha. Ha.
...Huh, I think the theme here was "pubescent/adolescent trauma". XD Other more usual suspects would include The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice, Claudine à l'école, Neuromancer, The Three Musketeers, Peter Pan, Invisible Cities, and many more.
5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their LJs:
Trying to tag people who haven't done it yet, although may be double-tagging for all I know. Also, trying to spread it to other social circles. XD
canis_m
methexis
moderntime
nyahnyah
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worldserpent
Actually I think the Official Rules of the Caesar's Bath meme is pretty awesome, but I haven't been tagged for it and it seems to have touched my flist only peripherally. XD
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yasminm1) Total number of books owned?
Counting manga, two bookcases full with some shelves double-lined. That is to say, those are the books in my room, about 10% of the house collection - the concept of ownership is nebulous in my immediate family, there's not much in the way of "my clothes" or "my books" or "my CDs". Whatever gets brought into the house belongs to everybody; it's not as if we ever get rid of books anyway. XD A lot of my older books are now in my sister's room. Historically I've been a big library borrower and bookstore browser, much less of a buyer.
The last book I bought?
The most recent books to show up at the door were GetBackers 29 and Peace Maker Kurogane 5, which were of course bought and paid for weeks previous. The last book I paid for and walked out of the store with... XXXHolic vol.2? Or was it that gloss on the Egyptian Book of the Dead?
The last book I read?
(Finally a conclusive answer) Trinity Blood R.O.M. 1, The Star of Sorrow, by Yoshida Sunao. Currently halfway through Trinity Blood R.A.M. 1, From the Empire.
5 books that mean a lot to me?
I feel like I've done a lot of book memes over the years. XD Am going to arbitrarily pick a few I haven't talked about.
The Changeling Sea, Patricia McKillip
Very short early work, my favorite McKillip novel. Occupies the position in my personal literary canon that I suspect many other people reserve for The Last Unicorn (I came to Peter Beagle relatively late). It's not so much that the oceanic/littoral imagery that permeates my writing comes from this book, as this book happens to contain every important archetype underlying my creative wellspring. It's no use if I write it, because McKillip already has, a fact I've been living with since my early teens. (Got this one out of my high school library; recently I discovered it's come back into print, should see about securing myself a copy.)
The Dark Side of the Sun, Terry Pratchett
Very short early work, my favorite Pratchett novel. (The pattern holds, but I won't get into further examples. XD) I read this when I was twelve, in a paperback given to me by an English boy (it would be years before I saw Pratchett in NA bookstores), alongside Ursula K. Leguin - but Prachett was the author that stuck. The Changeling Sea is the book I wish in my heart I'd written; The Dark Side of the Sun is the book I wish in my head I'd written. It precedes cyberpunk principles of speed and density, information packed tighter than William Gibson ever managed even in his short stories. The plot skims over a chaotically complex universe like a water beetle skating on surface tension. It's also deathly funny and managed to ruin a great deal of classic SF for me with admittedly goodhearted m0xx0ring.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Baroness Orczy
Tempted to proclaim this the best novel ever written (despite the Baroness's tendency to use exclamation marks in duplicate and even triplicate - "Oh no!!! she thought, Whatever shall I do!!?" - which only goes to show). Speaking seriously, though, I think The Scarlet Pimpernel is one of those books that have no real effect if you read them after a certain age, but is liable to warp the young and impressionable soul entirely. In any case the romance novel and shoujo manga landscape would likely be very different without it.
Rupert of Hentzau, Anthony Hope
Sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda. The thrice-becursed book that broke my faith in authors. Insofar as I remember, before Rupert of Hentzau authors were golden beings of benevolent omnipotence who existed to tell ripping good yarns and bring them to poetically just and emotionally satisfactory conclusions; it would no more have occurred to me to question their judgment than that of my science textbook writers when they told me water boiled at 100 degrees Celsius and the Earth orbited around the Sun. They knew better than me, and that was the end of it. But then! At the end of Rupert of Hentzau the main character found himself caught in an intolerable ethical dilemma that had been set up throughout the course of the book (not unlike the honour vs. duty bit in the Vorkosigan series) and - not to get into tiresome plot details or spoiler or anything, but it ended really cheaply. I remember dropping the book on the carpet and pacing feverishly around my room, gesticulating. Anthony Hope had written himself into a corner! The concept was entirely new, but there it was. He set it all up but had no idea how to get out of it, so he went the cheap route. Mind you I'd be lying if I said it was the cheapness that bothered me; what bothered me was that I would not personally have writhed in ethical dilemma at all, as I have basically no sense of honour - id est, I emotionally disagreed with the author over how the story should've gone. Well, once the first blush of innocence is off the rose it never returns. =_=
It was only much later - and I mean much, as in not until I was in my twenties - that it occurred to me Hope may not have written himself into a corner at all, and in fact probably intended his ending from the beginning. By which you see how foreign a concept it is to me, that an author may not have the best interests of his own presumably beloved characters at heart. That was another blow, but not as hard; being that I'm older and more cynical.
Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
Weirdly enough, I didn't read The Catcher in the Rye until my sister made me about two years ago, but when I was in CEGEP (grade 12 equivalent) I read all of Salinger's Glass family stories. I remember at the end of CEGEP I made my boyfriend at the time read Franny and Zooey, and he hated it, couldn't stand the characters. He didn't say they were smug superior bastards but it was something to that effect. If I read it again now I'd probably hate it too. (BF-at-the-time was - needless to say - also something of a smug superior bastard, but he wasn't written by an author who thought he was the bee's knees. If that makes sense.) But when I read it at the age of seventeen it really really helped; it was the first book I'd encountered in which the characters were intelligent young people who were beyond dumb parents-and-peers angst or teenage rebellion, who talked about the sort of things I had no one to talk to about and were screwed up by their intelligence in ways I recognised from myself - seventeen was my age of existentialist crisis, which sounds as if I should make a joke of it from my current twenty-four-year-old perspective but I can't and won't, it was a very real hurdle I had to overcome. Salinger's stories are also one of the few examples I can think of even now of fiction that captures what it is to be born in a family where everyone is expected to be a genius, which is, yanno, my life. Buddy and Seymour traumatizing their youngest siblings by consciously planning their introduction to various great world thinkers? Ahahahaha. Ha.
...Huh, I think the theme here was "pubescent/adolescent trauma". XD Other more usual suspects would include The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice, Claudine à l'école, Neuromancer, The Three Musketeers, Peter Pan, Invisible Cities, and many more.
5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their LJs:
Trying to tag people who haven't done it yet, although may be double-tagging for all I know. Also, trying to spread it to other social circles. XD
canis_mmethexismoderntimenyahnyahworldserpentActually I think the Official Rules of the Caesar's Bath meme is pretty awesome, but I haven't been tagged for it and it seems to have touched my flist only peripherally. XD
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