(no subject)

[felis_ultharus]

As promised, em_fish's book meme ^_^


1 )Total number of books owned?

Maybe 300 -- possibly 400 or higher. I've long since lost track.

2) The last book I bought?

Including Graphic Novels, I picked up Batman: A Death in the Family for a class project today, along with Yami no Matsuei/Descendants of Darkness for purely non-scholastic reading.

Of pure-text novels (conventional novels?), probably the wonderful The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, and the truly sickening Krazy Kat: A Novel, by Jay Cantor. The former is highly recommended. The second makes me wish I believed in hell -- in the deepest part, below Caina, Circle of Traitors, there would be a place for writers so awful that their work inflicts pain upon the reader.

Cantor would be undergoing tortures so extreme, the human mind would explode to contemplate them. Right beside him would be Canadian poets James McIntyre (the cheese poet) and David McGimpsey (whose Vogonic ode to Gilligan's Island is enough to earn him a place).

3) The last book I read?

Of the graphic novel variety, probably Descendants of Darkness 4. That's a great series if you're of Gothy and queer sensibilities. Sort of like the X-Files, if Scully and Mulder were both male, queer, Japanese, and supernatural beings themselves. The artwork is gorgeous and detailed -- the stories range between the clichéd and the original, often gory, but are always entertaining.

Of the non-graphic novel variety, that would be Krazy Kat: A Novel, for which Jay Cantor should be lowered into a pit of cloned Jesse Helms, each bio-engineered with claws and sharp teeth and voracious appetites.

Current read: I'm re-reading Batman: A Death in the Family for class. I owned it when I was a kid. Frankly, it's even more disturbing than I remember.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me:
This is very tough, but I'll give it a go. Just to make it easier on myself in narrowing down the list, I'll assume graphic novels don't count:

• I'm going to cheat and put two Margaret Atwood books on a single entry: Surfacing and The Edible Woman. Both are insightful, and powerful and beautiful. The Edible Woman accomplishes this with tragedy, while Surfacing appeals to my pagan sensibilities. I fell in love with the character of Duncan.
  
  
• I'm going to cheat again and put two John Ralston Saul books on the list: Voltaire's Bastards and Reflections of a Siamese Twin. The first completely altered my understanding of the world, human nature, human potential, history, the arts, etc. Almost every sentence was a revelation that rewrote the way I saw the world, and at 500 pages, that's a lot of sentences. I still use Saul's framework for understanding things. The he brought out Reflections and made me finally understand my country.
  
  
• Plato's Symposium is my favourite classic. Aristophanes' "origin of love" is probably the most beautiful creation myth I know of. There are all sorts of wonderful gleanings from that story.
  
  
• I'm not sure why, but William Gibson's Virtual Light makes this list, narrowly edging out an even better sci-fi writer, Ursula LeGuin, for her Left Hand of Darkness. But since this is a list of books that mean a lot to me, and not a list of good books, Gibson is here because his portrayal of the "the bridge people" has haunted my memory ever since. He captures a new society a moment of its birth, and that subplot is far more interesting than the main plot (although the main plot does have a nice criticism of gentrification).
  
  
• And a guilty pleasure on the list as well -- Drawing Blood by Poppy Z. Brite. Brite manages the same mix of pulpy queer erotica and Gothy beauty that draws me to Descendants of Darkness. Not to everyone's taste, but the romance of Trevor and Zach is probably the best gay romance written in the English language, beating out the pallid and lifeless entries of the great works of modern queer lit.

5) Tag 5 people and have them put this in their journal:

Forgive me if anyone on the list has done it. I haven't been around much lately.

So I'm passing it to those who I'm pretty sure haven't done it.
jc2004
snowdaemon
seal7
jenjoou
siencyn

Comments

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

You are aware that you're making me want to read some of these books, right?

... and that I'll especially want to read your Batman books?

Oh, good. :)

[felis-ultharus.livejournal.com]

You'll have to wait at least a week -- and maybe a month. In the meantime, I think I have a series you'd like. I was originally going to loan it to montrealais, but he seesm otherwise preoccupied. I think you'd like it, although it's a little gory...

[foi-nefaste.livejournal.com]

Well, as long as I can read them EVENTUALLY, I'll be very very happy.

And, yay, books! I'm actually getting through the pile I've been wanting to read for ages and ages. Very satisfying. :)