So, naturally, I've decided to write something for my blog. The faithful Ludwig has even been so kind as to suggest a topic for said effluvium. I believe it's called a tag.
Total number of books I own
Roughly 1300 here in Princeton, plus another 1000 odd in Trivandrum. The former number includes the RE's collection of works in Bangla, which are (ahem) as a closed book to me. The latter number includes my Dad's collection of art books (large) and books in Malayalam (larger). Strip all those extras out, and you're left with approximately 2000, all told.
Last book(s) I bought
1. Spin -- Robert Charles Wilson
2. The Youngest Miss Ward -- Joan Aiken
3. Blue Highways -- William Least Heat-Moon
4. Trawler -- Redmond O'Hanlon
5. The Book of Arthur -- ed. John Matthews
6. New Sherlock Holmes Adventures -- ed. Mike Ashley
Last book(s) I read
Hmm, this is proving a surprisingly difficult question to answer. I think it's because the three books I'm currently reading (see below) are all fairly hefty tomes (500-odd pages each), and I'm on track to finish all three of them roughly simultaneously, so that adds up to nearly 1500 pages of prose since my "last" book completion. Which is long enough for me to have forgotten just what it was that I last read. But it's probably one of these:
1. Samarkand -- Amin Malouf
2. The Dream of Scipio -- Iain Pears
3. The Perfect Storm -- Sebastian Junger
4. Going Postal -- Terry Pratchett
Books I am currently reading
1. Tell Me No Lies - John Pilger
2. Collapse -- Jared Diamond
3. Lempriere's Dictionary -- Lawrence Norfolk
Books I really enjoyed / that really influenced me
I'm going to
Fiction
1. The Hobbit / TLOTR / The Silmarillion -- J. R. R. Tolkien
2. Catch-22 -- Joseph Heller
3. 1984 -- George Orwell
4. To Kill a Mockingbird -- Harper Lee
5. The Complete Sherlock Holmes -- Arthur Conan Doyle
6. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series -- Douglas Adams
7. The Wind in the Willows -- Kenneth Grahame
8. Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner -- A. A. Milne
9. The Asterix series -- Goscinny and Uderzo
10. Pretty much anything by Wodehouse, Twain, Asimov, Clarke.
Non-fiction
1. History of the World -- Plantagenet Somerset Fry (Hamlyn ed.)
2. Cosmos / The Dragons of Eden / Broca's Brain -- Carl Sagan
3. 1066 and All That -- Sellar and Yeatman
4. The Joy of Lex -- Gyles Brandreth
5. Pretty much anything by Gardner, Asimov (again).
Playwrights and Poets
1. The Wasteland -- T. S. Eliot
2. Almost anything by William Butler Yeats
3. Almost anything by Dylan Thomas
4. Macbeth -- Bill Shakespeare
5. Poetry 1900 to 1965 -- ed. George Macbeth
Books I plan to buy next
1. The Codebreakers -- David Kahn
2. The Illustrator and the Book, 1790 to 1914 -- Gordon Ray
3. Thud! -- Terry Pratchett
4. The Golden Fleece / The White Goddess -- Robert Graves
5. The Avram Davidson Treasury -- Avram Davidson
Books I own but have not read
Gosh, far too many to list in a single post. But here are some recent acquisitions which I plan to read Real Soon Now:
1. The Marsh Arabs -- Wilfred Thesiger
2. Maximum City -- Suketu Mehta
3. Sowing the Wind -- John Keay (as soon as the RE finishes it)
4. The Historian -- Elizabeth Kostova
5. Fevre Dream -- George R. R. Martin
Finally, an added bonus category:
Books I have never read and likely never will
1. Anything by Ayn Rand
2. Gone With The Wind
3. A Suitable Boy
4. Any book that has to do with cheese-moving, men & women and their respective planetary origins, chicken soup, rich and poor dads, astrology, or Terry Goodkind. (I tell a lie. I did, in fact, read one book by Terry Goodkind. It was quite enough.)
And, to make the tag game complete,
People I am passing this on to
This one's easy: AC, Zem, Jaggida, Fyshface and The Rube.
Posts
5 comments:
Phew! Finally!! After checking the coffee shack for n days... 2000 books? Egads.
RE has picked a winner in "Sowing the Wind", I must tell you (if you don't know already). This fellow Keay is most interesting, I have since bought two more Keays and nearly done with one ("India Rediscovered").
Wilkommen back.
P.S.: Must confess to a very brief twinge of misgiving when reading "Sowing the Wind". At one point, Keay mentions something to the effect that "...Rommel was arriving in Tripoli with elements of the 7th Panzer division..." As everyone knows, it was the 5th Light Division (later 21st Panzer) that arrived in Tripoli along with him. Heart stopping moment, but we forgave the boy (Keay) and read on.
Yes, the boy done good (Keay, that is). India: A History was the first one I read (borrowed it off the Rube, bought my own copy subsequently), and The Company followed not too long after.
The Resident Economist has not yet relinquished her grip on Sowing the Wind, but we live in hope. Also unread on my shelf is India Rediscovered, a happy find from a recent book-hunting expedition. Finaly, there's The Spice Route, which I don't think is out in paperback yet. So lots of lovely Keayosity to look forward to.
Incidentally, you might like The Great Game, by Peter Hopkirk. That is, if you haven't read it already. Reviews of that and many other books to appear on the Coffee Shack any day now. No, really, I mean it.
"The Spice Route" is out in paperback, I have a copy. Unless...its pirated or something. But who would go to the trouble of pirating John Keay?
Haven't read "The Great Game". Thanks for tip. Will keep in mental list.
Well, the audience is waiting (mit bated breath), fur the reviews on the Coffee Shack :)
Hi Thomas,
my first and only link with you...you gave me the best team name award in the 2006 asha quiz at rutgers!
Well, I seem to have read most of the books that you have never read and never will! and not many of the other category. Curses on me!
Don't know if you have read this one. Its my fav. non-fiction.
{ Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies / Jared Diamond. }
After 13 years..... I discovered you.. :) was in class 8 when I read about your perfect 800 score in GMAT. The world is indeed getting smaller :)
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