![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The short book meme. Blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ann1962
1) How many books do you have? That turns out to be something of a touchy question. Following Ann's lead, I started to measure my books in feet, last night. I quit when I realized people might think either I was exagerating, bragging or both. The fact is that most people who've been through grad school have a lot of books. I've got a lot more than some and fewer than others. When I was in college and grad school I didn't own a car nor have to pay insurance on one, so comparatively speaking I had a fair amount of money to spend on books. I did so both discrimately and indiscriminately. I bought many books that were valuable to me at the moment and some I was fairly sure would be valuable in the future. These were mostly reference works, or books I could use for reference even if that wasn't the purpose they were written for. I still have almost all of those. I also bought large amounts of general contemporary fiction and pop culture books on a wide variety of topics on the excuse I was broadening my horizons. Over the years I've given, donated, or thrown most of that away, probably half of it unread beyond a cursory glance.
At any rate I have more books than would be practical to keep in an apartment or small town house. I have a room I call my library, but it only has about half my books in it. One of the things I dread about growing older is eventually having to give up the books I treasure. Understand I don't collect books. I don't have any of much value beyond the knowledge they contain.
I have significant accumulations of books on Slavic languages and literatures (mostly Russian), grammars and dictionaries of other foreign languages, ships, railroads, medieval European history, astronomy, and natural history. In short at least one book on just about everything I've ever had an interest in. Since moving to Arizona the biggest new addditon has been, ahem, about a dozen books on cacti. And yes, I had one before I moved out here.
2) and 3) What is the last book you bought? What is the last book you read? Since I just answered that in a meme this week, I'll talk about the ones just before that one. The book I bought more recently was To Rule the Waves: How the Bristish Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman. The author has written more of these sweeping semi pop histories including How the Scots Invented the Modern World. This one is entertaining and thought provoking although the idea of boiling down the flow of history to the influence of a single culture or institution is more likely to impress someone just beginning their interest in history. The book I read more recently was A Mighty Fortress a short history of Germany by Steven Ozment. This book has some interesting things to say as well, particulary for the section before the 20th century., But the author's socialist politics have pretty much muddled his view of the 20th century. He spends a great deal of time warning the reader about the importance looking at the problems and guilt German historians have over the Nazi regime. But, Ozment, despite the importance he says it has, largely glosses over the Nazis and World War II, giving a fair amount of the space devoted to those over to mentioning the Nazis' concern about socialists and communists. The Cold War gets dismissed with a couple lines implying the whole thing was over a minor currency reform dispute. In all the book starts well, but ends abysmally.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me. Whew, I think this question is easier for someone young who hasn't read so much on their interests. Things that jump out as new and daring, when you are young and just beginning to explore, just seem comfortable when you've explored more. That's particularly true for fiction. The settings change, but the thoughts behind those books you enjoy most don't change that much once you're more set in your ways. So the fiction books I choose here are more about how they affected me once upon a time than the way I see them now.
a) Freedom or Death (The title in Greek is literally 'Captain Michalis') by Nikos Kazantzakis. His book Zorba the Greek is fairly pale compared to this one. Kazantzakis wrote a number of books about dscrimination and oppression in his part of the world, not simply vilifying the oppressors, but actually bringing up some of the ugliness that grows among the oppressed under those conditions. This book is the one I found the most powerful.
b) War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy. Admittedly the double ending of an extremely long book may be more than many modern readers will put up with, but it is never ceases to amaze me how well crafted this book is. I've read it many times both in Russian and in English concentrating on what Tolstoy says about a different character almost everytime and only rarely does he let any character even minor ones slide without developing in the book and having something separate to contribute to the sweep of the story and its themes.
c) The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics published by CRC. If a world-wide catastrophe occurred, this is the book that must be preserved at all costs. Literally centuries of hard effort and wisdom in one place.
d) Don Quixote by Cervantes. The first really long book I ever read.
e) Midnight and Noon by me. Not all that great of a book, but I wrote it and it's been important to me.
5) Tag five others to do this meme. Sorry if I pick someone who has already done it or been picked and didn't want to do it.wisewoman,hankat,tyreseus,mamculuna andmasqthephlsphr
ann19621) How many books do you have? That turns out to be something of a touchy question. Following Ann's lead, I started to measure my books in feet, last night. I quit when I realized people might think either I was exagerating, bragging or both. The fact is that most people who've been through grad school have a lot of books. I've got a lot more than some and fewer than others. When I was in college and grad school I didn't own a car nor have to pay insurance on one, so comparatively speaking I had a fair amount of money to spend on books. I did so both discrimately and indiscriminately. I bought many books that were valuable to me at the moment and some I was fairly sure would be valuable in the future. These were mostly reference works, or books I could use for reference even if that wasn't the purpose they were written for. I still have almost all of those. I also bought large amounts of general contemporary fiction and pop culture books on a wide variety of topics on the excuse I was broadening my horizons. Over the years I've given, donated, or thrown most of that away, probably half of it unread beyond a cursory glance.
At any rate I have more books than would be practical to keep in an apartment or small town house. I have a room I call my library, but it only has about half my books in it. One of the things I dread about growing older is eventually having to give up the books I treasure. Understand I don't collect books. I don't have any of much value beyond the knowledge they contain.
I have significant accumulations of books on Slavic languages and literatures (mostly Russian), grammars and dictionaries of other foreign languages, ships, railroads, medieval European history, astronomy, and natural history. In short at least one book on just about everything I've ever had an interest in. Since moving to Arizona the biggest new addditon has been, ahem, about a dozen books on cacti. And yes, I had one before I moved out here.
2) and 3) What is the last book you bought? What is the last book you read? Since I just answered that in a meme this week, I'll talk about the ones just before that one. The book I bought more recently was To Rule the Waves: How the Bristish Navy Shaped the Modern World by Arthur Herman. The author has written more of these sweeping semi pop histories including How the Scots Invented the Modern World. This one is entertaining and thought provoking although the idea of boiling down the flow of history to the influence of a single culture or institution is more likely to impress someone just beginning their interest in history. The book I read more recently was A Mighty Fortress a short history of Germany by Steven Ozment. This book has some interesting things to say as well, particulary for the section before the 20th century., But the author's socialist politics have pretty much muddled his view of the 20th century. He spends a great deal of time warning the reader about the importance looking at the problems and guilt German historians have over the Nazi regime. But, Ozment, despite the importance he says it has, largely glosses over the Nazis and World War II, giving a fair amount of the space devoted to those over to mentioning the Nazis' concern about socialists and communists. The Cold War gets dismissed with a couple lines implying the whole thing was over a minor currency reform dispute. In all the book starts well, but ends abysmally.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me. Whew, I think this question is easier for someone young who hasn't read so much on their interests. Things that jump out as new and daring, when you are young and just beginning to explore, just seem comfortable when you've explored more. That's particularly true for fiction. The settings change, but the thoughts behind those books you enjoy most don't change that much once you're more set in your ways. So the fiction books I choose here are more about how they affected me once upon a time than the way I see them now.
a) Freedom or Death (The title in Greek is literally 'Captain Michalis') by Nikos Kazantzakis. His book Zorba the Greek is fairly pale compared to this one. Kazantzakis wrote a number of books about dscrimination and oppression in his part of the world, not simply vilifying the oppressors, but actually bringing up some of the ugliness that grows among the oppressed under those conditions. This book is the one I found the most powerful.
b) War and Peace by Lev Tolstoy. Admittedly the double ending of an extremely long book may be more than many modern readers will put up with, but it is never ceases to amaze me how well crafted this book is. I've read it many times both in Russian and in English concentrating on what Tolstoy says about a different character almost everytime and only rarely does he let any character even minor ones slide without developing in the book and having something separate to contribute to the sweep of the story and its themes.
c) The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics published by CRC. If a world-wide catastrophe occurred, this is the book that must be preserved at all costs. Literally centuries of hard effort and wisdom in one place.
d) Don Quixote by Cervantes. The first really long book I ever read.
e) Midnight and Noon by me. Not all that great of a book, but I wrote it and it's been important to me.
5) Tag five others to do this meme. Sorry if I pick someone who has already done it or been picked and didn't want to do it.
wisewoman,hankat,tyreseus,mamculuna andmasqthephlsphr![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
And Midnight and Noon is that great of a book!
;o)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
Don Quixote was a wonderful,enchanting book. It, along with War and Peace, was my first step into the world of literature written by authors whose mother tongue was not English. I took Don Quixote with me when I went travelling on my own for the first time, and it helped me pass some lonely evenings.
Like you, I have collected books for years and years, and I understand your worry about not being able to hang on to them. Must find my measuring tape :)