1. Total number of books I’ve owned: I buy at least 25 books a year and I'm 61, but 1500 seems low, so lots
2. The last book I bought: The Closers by Michael Connelly. We are going to the beach with Bev's family over Memorial Day Weekend. Connelly is most excellent as a beach read.
3. The last book I read: The Shadow of the Wind
From Publishers Weekly Ruiz Zafón's novel, a bestseller in his native Spain, takes the satanic touches from Angel Heart and stirs them into a bookish intrigue à la Foucault's Pendulum. The time is the 1950s; the place, Barcelona. Daniel Sempere, the son of a widowed bookstore owner, is 10 when he discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. The novel is rare, the author obscure, and rumors tell of a horribly disfigured man who has been burning every copy he can find of Carax's novels. The man calls himself Laín Coubert-the name of the devil in one of Carax's novels. As he grows up, Daniel's fascination with the mysterious Carax links him to a blind femme fatale with a "porcelain gaze," Clara Barceló; another fan, a leftist jack-of-all-trades, Fermín Romero de Torres; his best friend's sister, the delectable Beatriz Aguilar; and, as he begins investigating the life and death of Carax, a cast of characters with secrets to hide. Officially, Carax's dead body was dumped in an alley in 1936. But discrepancies in this story surface. Meanwhile, Daniel and Fermín are being harried by a sadistic policeman, Carax's childhood friend. As Daniel's quest continues, frightening parallels between his own life and Carax's begin to emerge. Ruiz Zafón strives for a literary tone, and no scene goes by without its complement of florid, cute and inexact similes and metaphors (snow is "God's dandruff"; servants obey orders with "the efficiency and submissiveness of a body of well-trained insects"). Yet the colorful cast of characters, the gothic turns and the straining for effect only give the book the feel of para-literature or the Hollywood version of a great 19th-century novel.
After reading this book, I want to go to Spain and Barcelona.
4. Five books that mean a lot to me: The first book that comes to mind is Atlas Shrugged. I have read the book a number of times and each time learn more. Each time I feel that we are just a little bit closer to the producers opting out of the system. Who is John Galt, indeed!
The second is East of Eden. Some books I hate to see end, and when they do, I just want to hug the book to my chest. This is a wonderful book and so well written.
The third, is a set of books written by Nelson DeMille. There's The Gold Coast, read The Great Gatsby, then read The Gold Coast, ahh a great book.
Then there's Up Country. A Vietnam Vet goes back to his battle sites while searching for a murderer. His books are smart and witty. However, most are pretty sexually graphic.
Fourth, I really enjoyed Eye of the Pyramid by Terry Krohn
and I wrote about the book here and here and here and here and here. Finally, and I'm running on empty and reserve the right to always have a better #5, I like A Geography of Poets, an anthology of the new poetry. Almost every page introduces you to a good poet that may be fresh to your mind.
