The book meme!

Late to the game, true, but here it is.



Total Number of Books Owned:



Is this a trick question? MANY. Too many. And this is after we’ve given away heaps at each of our last few moves.


Last book bought:



A Dover design book. Last readable book, The Worst Hard Time, about the great depression, though I haven’t yet read it. To be honest, it sounds stressful, and I’m trying to avoid that at present!




Last Book Read:



Bel Canto, again.




Five Books That Mean a Lot to You:



In no particular order:


  1. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.

    Because, wow. I love this book. I’m a rereader, and I’ve read this dozens of times. The prevailing buoyancy of human spirit, the wild weather, the tangled lives… just excellent.


  2. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

    I’ve read this one a bunch, too. What I love about it is how unexpected it was, and how it reminds me of a play almost in its isolation. The prose is lovely, clear and precise, and the characters are as true as can be. The ending wasn’t my favorite, but the rest of the book was so good I don’t really care.


  3. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

    Phenomenally interesting. One of the very few page-turner science books out there, and full of awe and reverence of the fact that somehow, against all odds, we exist. Guaranteed to freak you out and amaze you.


  4. Poetry. Pablo Neruda, Wislawa Szymborska, Sharon Olds, e.e.cummings, Yeats, Li-Young Lee, etc.
    That catch in my breath, written down by someone else who feels it too.

  5. The Little House on the Prairie books, Laura Ingalls Wilder

    I read these until their covers fell off as kid, and still read them now and then when I’m bored. They are so much more than kids books. For example, in The Long Winter, when a whole town starves and nearly dies due to a series of near misses with a train being snowed in, it’s a pretty graphic record of frontier life.

Ack! Wait! Is that all I get to pick?

Best Five Books You Read in the Last Year:

Being a rereader, many of these were not read for the first time this year, but they were read this year :slight_smile:


  1. Nine Against the Unknown

    Again. The nonfiction accounts of nine explorers, written in the 1930s. Really, really good.


  2. My Sister’s Keeper

    I don’t know why, but I didn’t like this one. It’s the only Jodi Picoult I’ve ever read, and I finished it feeling somehow let down. Maybe it just wasn’t the right time for me to be reading it.


  3. A Confederacy of Dunces

    Again. 'Cause it’s funny.


  4. Truth and Beauty

    Again. A truly lovely biography of a friendship by Ann Patchett. I can’t recommend this enough. Seriously.


  5. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

    Very fun, good ending to an entertaining series.



    So what have you read???

Woops, i just went with LAST 5 books, not best…

Confederacy of Dunces was given to me by a co-worker who used to live in New Orleans. I would read it on the bus to work and literally double over with laughter. Ignatius and the pant factory…way too funny. I keep thinking who should play the characters if it were to become a movie, but, it probably wouldn’t translate well into a screenplay.
I too grew up with the Little House boos. I remember sobbing when Jack, the dog, died…

bel canto…great book. ann patchett has a new one coming out and i can’t wait!