Book Meme

So I've been hanging around for a while here . . . I gave myself a little publicity on my myspace, but I doubt many people read this . . . I just pretend I have an audience . . . makes me feel important. But what makes me feel more important is discovering a meme (can't really say I was tagged . . . I was kind of standing in the middle of the field during a game of tag & didn't move when IT came a'runnin'.) BOOKS!!! I'm not a big reader, but I have my favoured authors. Childish though they may be . . . Piers Anthony is a favourite of mine, but most of his critics call his books childish & dumbed down. He had a learning disability as a child & I admire that he's managed to write as much as he has. Childish or not. I recommend "A Spell For Chameleon" if you're looking for a fast read. His plots are fascinating & they are filled with amusing little puns - because his books (in the Xanth series) are placed in a land of magic. And so they haven't developed much - because they've had no need to. Or rather, they've developed in different ways. No technology . . .

Anyway, here's the skeleton of the meme with my answers . . .

Total number of books I own:

Many, many, many. We have a library upstairs that when I moved in with my mother displayed old roses & pictures & things I'd made her as a child. I thought I'd only take up one shelf, but with her books & mine put together, there's no more room for displaying things. It's a real library now.

Last book I read:

Largo Desolato. I'd read it a while ago, but we wound up having to read it for Script Analysis class. I rarely get to read for recreation anymore. We had an interesting class the other day where we analyzed the action of the individual scenes & designed a roller coaster with turns & loops & corkscrews & drops based on the motion of the plot. My group went second & we started the precedent of acting out the roller coaster . . . after that, things got incredibly amusing.

Last book I bought:

I guess that would have to be Centaur Aisle . . . the next in the Xanth series. I'm moving oh so slowly & not so steadily through that series because I don't have time . . . but when I hit the end of one of the books, I jump on the next one pretty quickly.

5 Meaningful Books

1. Illusions By Richard Bach. Read it. In the first few chapters I felt very comfortable with the characters & felt that I was very much where they were. They accepted each other without knowing each other & it actually reflected what I feel I do when I go into a book. And the subject matter is fascinating & it's a very fast read. It is not considered to be of literary merit, but I think it is a wonderful piece of literature. I tried to insist my mother read it & there was a tag line on the cover that was something along the lines of 'the adventures of a wandering messiah' & my mother was put off because of the religious focus, but I didn't think of it as religious at all when I read it . . . & I may have been put off as well . . . A chliched metaphorical statement is brought back to its literal roots. Don't judge a book by its cover.

2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. Get out & read the book NOW!! I just went to a cattle call audition a while ago . . . they have started shooting the movie already!!! Peter Jackson is directing. It's going to be good! But not as good as the book, so hurry up & go read that. It's pretty emotionally jarring, but if you can push your way past the first chapter you should be fine.

3. Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. It takes on new meaning every time you read it & that's the kind of book/play that really survives the test of time. You can think you have it all figured out & read it a year later & you'll have a new idea about everything. It's worth buying, reading, putting down for a long while, & then reading again.

4. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen. An old favourite. I was just watching the movie the other day - you know the 6 hour long monstrosity - & looking up from my knitting with irritation every now & then because I can still remember when they skip a line that was in the book.

5. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. Gotta love Oscar Wilde. And that book is one of few that makes me laugh out loud. I did a scene from it for an exam a few years ago. Another favourite that I go back to & skim from time to time. Not lately though . . . I've gotta get back to reading before I forget how!

I know you said only five, but I have to tack on Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" I was thinking of it the other day in regard to the stage hand strike. The point of the story is that we are blinded by tradition. We do things simply because we have always done them & we do not stop to question their morality because they are part of our lives. And it came up in my little head the other day because the producers were trying to remove rules that had lost practicality over time. And the beef is over the pay cut that their removal would cause. Also, it was a favourite performance of mine. I was in it about 4 years ago as Tessie Hutchinson. It was the first time someone called my performance phenomenal.

Okay . . . the rules as I understand them are to tag five bloggers. I don't really get any comments & don't know anyone who has a blogspot (apart from those of us who wrote our novels on here - but even I forgot about that until I signed up here & it said, "Hey, you can start a new blog if you want, but a Glimpse of Insanity is still floating around out there" & I doubt anyone uses theirs anymore) so anyone who reads this, pick it up . . . because I feel so alone!!!! Let me know if you read me. :)