I've been tagged

I've been tagged by Duncan (who designed this lovely site thank you very much) with my first meme and it seems awfully appropriate that it's a book tag. So here it is:

Number of books I own

Ouch! Now this one's a sore one - we just had a 'family' discussion about the piles that are developing. Although I have five bookcases, there are still books piled on top of them (precariously), on the floor in select places, and in boxes in the attic. So I would guess that I shouldn't be counting hundreds, but have probably topped a thousand. *sigh* I love books - which is why I'm in this gig - but it sure is gonna be a pain in the ass to move all of them when we do so again. Thanks for remining me Duncan!

Last Book I Bought

Last time I bought books, I bought a few at one time, but since they were online, I can list them in the order they came, last to arrive listed first:

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Book club book that I need to read by the end of the month.

Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
The subtitle for this book is 'Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism'. It isn't political, but rather a study on the reasons why people identify themselves in the context of a nation and how these imagined communities sprung up out of the effects of religion, geography, ethnicity and imperialism.

Rule of Darkness by Patrick Brantlinger
The book looks at the way imperialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (the height of the British empire) affected its literature.

Last books I read

I just finished Gendered Interventions: Narrative Discourse in the Victorian Novel - by Robyn Warhol which was a bit repetitive and could have been argued in one or two well placed journal articles.

Before that, I read The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells and was delighted with the adventure story (though I kept seeing Marlon Brando as Moreau, which spoiled the effect somewhat).

I also recently finished Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, which was well written, nicely constructed, and got me thinking about all kinds of connections to other things.

5 books that mean a lot to me

(this one's real hard, in part because I'm not sure how to interpret what 'means' a lot to me - I'm going to interpret it as books that I think about alot, have enjoyed, and have reread at least once)

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkein
Not Wanted on the Voyage - Timothy Findley
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
1984 - George Orwell

I tag Beckler, Jim, and Jen.