Book Notes

I've been tagged by Michelle, my South African soul sister at Seeking Serenity (hm, try saying that ten times fast!). The subject this time: books.

Total number of books owned:
Oh my head. It would take quite a while to count. Between Mr. F and I we have a bit of a library going. We have three walls in one room lined with books (at least one wall is floor-to-ceiling). There are at least seven bookcases in the house, ranging from a moderate two-self case to a giant, double-wide seven footer. Then there are books stacked up on our nightstands and on random tables and desks. Between the two of us, we've got a pretty well rounded collection of:

• cookbooks
  
• classics (Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, etc.)
  
• science, space, math, physics (Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Carl Sagan)
  
• poetry (Pope, Dickinson, Gluck, Bradstreet, Bishop, Barrett-Browning, etc.)
  
• playscripts and theatre production books(the Greeks, Ibsen, Hellman, O'Neill, Miller, etc. and so on)
  
• sci-fi and fantasy (Tolkein, Stephenson, Orwell, Bradbury, etc.)
  
• gardening (perennials, kitchen gardens, roses)
  
• sports and sports figures (Moneyball, Patriot Reign, Seabiscuit, Win it For),
  
• computers, programming languages, operating systems, etc. (many O'Reilly books, Java, C, HTML, CSS - the list goes on)
  
• Bibles (KJV, NKJV, Phillips, NIV, Amplified) & apologetics (C.S Lewis, Yancey, Keller, Wilkinson, Nee, Hession, too many to mention)
  
• History & nonfiction(McCullough, Ambrose, Tuchman & others)
  
• Pregnancy & childbirth (name it, I've got it)
  
• Children's (Chronicles of Narnia, Velveteen Rabbit, etc. )
  

If I had to guess, it would be in the many several hundreds (?) and we're heading off to yet another local library book sale this weekend!

Last book(s) I/we bought:
We made a special emergency trip to Borders to go buy David McCullough's latest, 1776 when it came out a couple weeks ago. Both Mr. F and I were in the middle of other books at the time (he: Fabric of the Cosmos me: Reading Lolita in Tehran) we decided to "race" each other - whoever finished their current book first would get the first crack at 1776. (I won, I won! It's riveting, I'm halfway through. LOVE IT.) We also picked up Three Nights in August (Mr. F was hedging his bets that I'd finish my book first and he'd have to wait for 1776. I'll attempt to suffer through Tony LaRussa's attitude and read Three Nights next.)

Last book I read:
Reading Lolita in Tehran. Fascinating stuff. Highly recommend. Other recent reads include The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. My reading severely dropped off during the first trimester, since I was so indescribably tired. I'm trying to catch up and do as much reading as I can now, since I surely won't be doing it in a few months...

Five books that mean a lot to me:
Just five? Egad! Hm, this is tough, and it probably changes season to season. In no particular order:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Hosea, KJV
Cyrano de Bergerac - Edmond Rostand (the Anthony Burgess translation is the best! If you've only ever read the Hooker version, do yourself a favor and pick this one up. You'll fall in love.)
Wit - Margaret Edson (ok, it's a stage play, not a book, but priceless)
Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan. I really should reread this every year. Some unique gem of truth always shines forth whenever I do.

Runners up:
John Adams - David McCullough makes history personal. You can't read his books and not be changed in some way.
MacBeth - William Shakespeare. I read and re-read this constantly all through high school in the midst of my "dark" phase.
Operating Instructions - Anne Lamott. It gives me hope that I might survive my son's first year.

Five people to pass the baton to:
(but no pressure folks!)
Messy Christian, who probably has more books than we do.
Joe Missionary, because I figure he'll do this.
Cindy at Quotidian Light, though I think she's already been tagged with this before, I'd love to know what she's been reading lately.
Mel at Actual Unretouched Photo, because she writes so well, I simply must know who she reads!
Sami at Redneck's Wife, because she too is on this crazy first-time pregnancy ride.