zustifer | May. 26th, 2005

Man, you people and your filling things out. Okay! I like books, Mr. McIrvin (also Mr. MadeOfMeat).

-- Total number of books owned: I just estimated about 400. Most are mine, as I am a book-hoarder.

-- Last book bought: The last book that has made its way to my actual hands is Mutants, which I heard about from a doctor's blog which I read. I think (I like it when bloggers recommend me books. I bought a bunch of the books recommended by the tensor here when he made this post. And was well pleased!). So far I've only read a few pages, and honestly I haven't finished Endless Forms yet, so I will tell you how it is later. That same order, however, I also bought Axiomatic and Distress by Greg Egan on the advice of diaryarena.

-- Last book read: I guess the last book I finished was the Tipping Point, lent to me. It was pretty interesting, although a little repetitive. The format of couching social-science subjects in relatively intuitive ways is fairly clever, since if there's something that we can easily understand viscerally, it's social behavior. It's a smart topic to do the science-flavored hot-book thing with. One of the more fun ideas in it was the concept of one's environment being as potentially influential as one's personality in any given situation. Not too deep, but interesting things to think about.

-- Five books that mean a lot to me: Hoo boy.
- Dr. Bloodmoney, by Philip K Dick. This was the first of PKD's works I'd ever read, and it was just the thing. Dr. Bloodmoney is not exactly regarded as one of his better books, and if I were to pick an overall favorite there it would probably be Ubik, but when I picked up Dr. Bloodmoney I believe I was just getting fed up with Heinlein (early high school?). It was a good transition into some better writing and more interesting ideas, really. See also So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, which I picked up off the bookcart in junior high and which provided a much-needed gateway into the glamorous world of scifi.
- Why Big Fierce Animals are Rare, by Paul A Colinvaux. This is a book essentially on ecology and biology from 1978, and it shows, honestly. But it's such a nice collection of basic concepts on the subject that it doesn't matter that it's got a few dated points. It's like an ecology 101 kind of book, and it really piqued my interest in all sorts of related subjects. Gateway book! (I also enjoyed the Gateway series, but not enough to give them a slot. I liked the Heechee before we knew they were humanoid. The end).
- Dune, by Mr. Frank Herbert. I claim the whole series of books (sans-a-prequel) as this slot, because I love them all dearly. Each is interesting in a different way from the book that precedes it, and each brings up a new set of neat things to think about. Dune is probably the subject that JP and I have racked up the most time talking about, funnily enough. I should reread the books.
- Expedition, by Wayne Barlowe. Expedition is exactly the kind of sciencey art that I love the best. The drawings and paintings are beautiful, beautiful, and plausible as all get out.
- A Diet of Holes, by David Gale. This book is my Infinite Jest; sort of a miniature, more amusing Gravity's Rainbow, after a fashion. In short, scattered, highly wacky plot, many awesome concepts. I got this book in college at a buck-a-book, on the strength of its strange cover.

Aagh, only five?? I would like to include some other junk: A Wrinkle in Time, Motherless Brooklyn, Stations of the Tide, the 1950s MAD compilation, Zodiac, the New Mutants, and the Otherland series, are what I can think of right now.

I am pleased to note the presence of who-gets-this-next at the bottom of this meme; it proves that it really is a meme after all, and that it's grown a chance to better reproduce. Godspeed, little life form! Take it,