Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Literary Tagging
Sarah C has tagged me with this one, so I'll have a go...
1) Total number of books I've owned: I don't tend to buy books; they're lovely things, but I never get around to reading them, and I'm not one for dipping in, so it's a waste to own many. I'd guess I've maybe 100, give or take 300, but I'm not sure at all. All I read nowadays is the paper and then academic stuff, and for the latter I use libraries to the exclusion of buying: the facilities here are phenomenal, so why not?
2) The last book I bought: The Magic Finger- Roald Dahl; it came free with some Shreddies, but I wanted the book more, so I was paying for that. Even at a whopping 56-pages, it's sat with a receipt bookmarking it half-way through...
3) The last book I read: erm, that's hard, I've read most of the Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals just recently, but I think there are around 17 pages left... If I were free, I'd taken half-finished books to cafés, not fresh ones of which to read pitiably small portions. Thinking about it, I read through one or two Asterix books last time I was properly ill, so probably those.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): Anna Karenin (my version is called that, not Karenina, in fact I think I have two versions like that) is my favourite book: to my mind Tolstoy understands psychology and love from the inside better than anyone I've read. Brave New World blew me away when I read it. That's not particularly cool of me, but I really like dystopian novels, and I liked how much was good about Bernard's painful world. 1984 replaced BNW as my favourite book a few years ago, before AK came along. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the most exciting and potentially convincing philosophy I've yet read. It seems like what he's constructing might actually be real; most seem like they're fiddling, deluded. Of course all of what I've read of him is relevant to trying to understand any of him, but on this list I have to pick one. L'Etranger, by Albert Camus, remains so far as I know the only book I have completed in French. I read it on and off for a couple of years, and I think I may owe the book to my old school, but it's nice to have. Meursault's blamelessness is rather beautiful, I find. That's 5, but the Bible actually has a bunch of cool shit in it, and is only excluded by virtue of itself and Shakespeare being traditionally not eligible for such lists.
5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs: I'll go better than Chris, and tag two: Willow, and Risa, but I'm not doing 5...
1) Total number of books I've owned: I don't tend to buy books; they're lovely things, but I never get around to reading them, and I'm not one for dipping in, so it's a waste to own many. I'd guess I've maybe 100, give or take 300, but I'm not sure at all. All I read nowadays is the paper and then academic stuff, and for the latter I use libraries to the exclusion of buying: the facilities here are phenomenal, so why not?
2) The last book I bought: The Magic Finger- Roald Dahl; it came free with some Shreddies, but I wanted the book more, so I was paying for that. Even at a whopping 56-pages, it's sat with a receipt bookmarking it half-way through...
3) The last book I read: erm, that's hard, I've read most of the Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals just recently, but I think there are around 17 pages left... If I were free, I'd taken half-finished books to cafés, not fresh ones of which to read pitiably small portions. Thinking about it, I read through one or two Asterix books last time I was properly ill, so probably those.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order): Anna Karenin (my version is called that, not Karenina, in fact I think I have two versions like that) is my favourite book: to my mind Tolstoy understands psychology and love from the inside better than anyone I've read. Brave New World blew me away when I read it. That's not particularly cool of me, but I really like dystopian novels, and I liked how much was good about Bernard's painful world. 1984 replaced BNW as my favourite book a few years ago, before AK came along. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is the most exciting and potentially convincing philosophy I've yet read. It seems like what he's constructing might actually be real; most seem like they're fiddling, deluded. Of course all of what I've read of him is relevant to trying to understand any of him, but on this list I have to pick one. L'Etranger, by Albert Camus, remains so far as I know the only book I have completed in French. I read it on and off for a couple of years, and I think I may owe the book to my old school, but it's nice to have. Meursault's blamelessness is rather beautiful, I find. That's 5, but the Bible actually has a bunch of cool shit in it, and is only excluded by virtue of itself and Shakespeare being traditionally not eligible for such lists.
5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs: I'll go better than Chris, and tag two: Willow, and Risa, but I'm not doing 5...
