Bookin'

This was not passed to me, but I'm going to do it anyway as an act of defiance. I'm not sure what it is I'm defying, but it should consider itself defied, dammit.

Total number of books owned:
Roughly 250. Does not include comics, copies of National Geographic, or video game manuals. I have one of the largest and most diverse collection of mint condition game manuals ever assembled. Atari, Nintendo, PC, Saturn, Dreamcast. I got it all, baby. Who want to see the secret notebook of Willy Beamish? Come on in. To be fair, maybe I shouldn't count the books I will likely never get around to reading, like the film theory books from college or the 6 Robert Jordan books I'd just as soon line the birdcage with, but in this case I'll pull a Gatsby and pad the library a little.

Last book bought:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel by Susanna Clarke. This is an 800 page book heavy enough to stun a burglar. It is about the lost art of English magic in, well, let's call it Victorian London, since I'm too lazy to go confirm or refute that. It is very dry and very British and quite good.

Last book read:
On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt. A wonderful pamphlet from a Princeton professor, recently re-released (the pamphlet, not the professor), on the nature of bullshit. It's above-par academic wanking, in that you're actually left with useful information at the end, rather than pointless phrases like "hypermodernism." The central argument is that bullshit is more than just lying, it is a casual disregard for the truth, an amoral dismissal of moral imperatives. There are some profound points about politics and public discourse throughout, so it's definitely worth the short read.

Five books that mean a lot to you:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. I recently re-read this and was surprised to find I had forgotten how much I loved it. Often mis-quoted to describe a world of totalitarian government censorship, it's actually about the voluntary self-censorship of an intellectually stunted society. A harsh lesson about political correctness and willful apathy. Bradbury has several short stories that deal with these themes, but of course this is the classic.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I think I got more academic mileage out of this novel than anything else I've ever read. It is a dense, wonderfully complex story told in a bizarre, absurdist format, and it's hilarious and horrifying at the same time.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Talk about absurdist. I read one of the Hitchhiker's books at least once a year. Still haven't seen the movie yet.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. This is simply a great sci-fi adventure, simultaneously celebrating and defying the tropes of the cyberpunk genre all over the map. In a lot of ways Snow Crash seems like the logical predecessor to the current singularity fiction from Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge. Stephenson has an inventive approach to everything he has written, but unfortunately Cryptonomicon was so nerd niche that I couldn't get past the third chapter.

Snow Crash inches out Peter Watts' Starfish by the slimmest of margins.

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. Virtually every Geek of a Certain Age has read and loved this book. Card has said as much in the foreword to his Ender's Shadow series - stories about children often untimately appeal to children. This was a great read to an awkward middle school kid, and it's just as fun to the awkward, geeky adult.

Tag five people to continue this meme:
Unlikely respondents, but what the hey.
Dave
Jill
Katie
Marc
Rob