Book meme

This is a book meme that's being bandied about the blogosphere. It was fun to think about, and, I hope, fun to read:

What is the total number of books I've owned?

As in EVER? 2,000 at the very least … and at least 600 of those have moved back and forth across the country with me three times.

What was the last book I bought?

Now that I'm a "real" librarian I've been very good about borrowing books instead of buying them. I don't think I've bought a book in six months … wow, that can't be true, but it's the last book I remember buying: Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, a book group choice in December.

What was the last book I read?

The last one I finished was Philip Pullman's The Tiger in the Well, the third in his SallyLockhart trilogy. I'm nearly finished with: Penelope Lively's The Photograph (for one book group); Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (my current book on tape); and Madeline L'Engle's The Moon by Night (I re-read young adult paperbacks in the bathtub … it's one of my very favorite things to do.) On deck are: Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide…(the Matt book swap book); Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (for the other book group); and Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow (on a librarian friend's recommendation.)

Five books that mean a lot to me:

• Douglas Coupland's Microserfs

If I was making a list of my favorite books, this would still place inthe top ten, but in terms of "meaning a lot to me" it's number one. From the plot, you might not peg it for my life changing reading experience -- it's about a group of housemates who are all Microsoft employees in the mid-90s; they collectively jump ship to form a software startup and end up also starting to have real lives. When I read it for the first time, in 1998, I was a college sophomore English major actress debutante. By the next time I read it, one year later, I'd become a graphic designer software junkie Linguistics minor. This is the book that grabbed my inner geek with forceps and dragged her gasping into life. She hasn't shut up since.

• Judy Blume's Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

Meaningful for many reasons, this holds the distinction of being my all-time most re-read book. I've read it (usually in the bathtub) at least once a year since I was fifteen, i.e. more than a dozen times. I know it by heart and often recite the first chapter to myself when I can't fall asleep. I love this book so much I can't explain why I love it. This book is one of my favorite people, and you can never say *why* you love someone. You just always have, and still do. Sally J… is also meaningful on another level, since it's responsible for one of my two surviving female friendships from high school, with Lauren, whose copy is just as water-logged and dog-eared and scotch-taped back together as mine is.

• Nick Hornby's High Fidelity

My all-time favorite book, and another yearly re-read. If you want toknow how I define good fiction, look here. It's got realistic characters speaking realistic funny/sad dialogue that always rings true, and there's a deeper meaning if you want to look for one, but really it's just a good story about ordinary people doing the things people do to get through to each other and to get through modern life.This novel defines for me my favorite sub-genre of contemporary fiction: the "nothing happens, but everything changes" story, where you're plopped down in the middle of an average life, and, with very little dramatic action, the characters evolve so much that everything's changed by the end.

• Zenna Henderson's Ingathering: the Complete People Stories

Microserfs awakened my inner geek, but my inner sci-fi fan was still in hibernation until I read this one. It was an early entry in the monthly book swap that Matt & I instituted when we realized we were peas in a pod in terms of ravenous reading but our peas were of decidedly different species -- I was a seasoned skeptic of literature involving "elves and fairies" in any way shape or form; he read to escape so did not find novels where no one does anything except talk to each other entertaining in the slightest. So every month we make each other read outside our comfort zones. I'm still on the fence about fairies, but, thanks to Zenna Henderson and her People, I'm now all for aliens. Especially when the aliens talk and love and think and worry like the characters in LM Montgomery books, but, as a bonus, can fly and lift rockets with their minds.

• LM Montgomery's Emily of New Moon

Sometimes I think of reading like I think of food. There's sustenance reading to feed your mind; there's reading that's like relaxing with a cocktail or a cup of coffee; and then there's comfort food reading. The curled up in a ball with a blanket book. This is that. I love the Anne of Green Gables books (all eight of them) but Emily is my favorite. Maybe because Emily's a writer. Maybe because Anne, when she grows up, loses all her scrappiness and becomes almost a martyr, but Emily stays spunky and makes messes of her life. Whatever the reason, I like Emily better than Anne, and the Emily books (there are three) are my reading equivalent of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich on a rainy day. Best enjoyed with a glass of wine in the bathtub. With bubbles.