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radegund1) Total number of books owned?
A conservative estimation of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
niallm's and my collective holdings (done on the "count up a few shelves, average, multiply" principle) comes out at 2,800. Given the number of unshelved books floating around, it's probably closer to 3,000.
2) The last book I bought?
A batch about parenting and education, comprising What Mothers Do - Especially When it Looks Like Nothing by Naomi Stadlen (I read a review of this and had to have it - loving it so far), Our Babies Ourselves by Meredith F. Small (attracted by the title), Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt (wanted something to counterbalance the very training/routine-based stuff I've read), How Children Learn by John Holt (my theoretical interest in alternative education theories is becoming more concrete) and Deschooling Society by Ivan Ilich (a classic I've been meaning to read for years).
3) The last book I read?
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. History of science. I found it well written and unexpectedly fascinating.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me:
Just five? Wah! OK, I'll try.
The Bone People by Keri Hulme. This was the book that really fired me up about New Zealand literature (I mean, I was already fired up, but this crystallised a whole set of responses and led to my nearly doing a PhD in the area). It's audacious and uncompromising and fierce, and the language is gorgeous. I reread it every few years and love it, viscerally, every time.
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. The diametric opposite of TBP. It's an incredibly subtle, taut story about unhappy Edwardians, with a deliciously twisted narrator and a beautifully uncluttered style. Ford wrote it late in life, and if I recall aright he waited for years to attempt it until he was confident of doing it justice. I read when I was eighteen, and it blew my mind.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. I've loved everything I've read by her, but this is the one I've read most recently. Eliot's characterisation is just so sharp, and she writes so engagingly about unlikeable people, exposing their motivations carefully and with such relish - I'm in awe every time I read one of her books.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Hackneyed but true. This is one of my very favourite texts, for all sorts of reasons to do with its profound and multifarious coolness. But it has a special place in my heart because I did it for the Leaving Cert, and we put on a production (on desks pushed together with gym mats on top, because that's how underequipped my school was), and I got to play the title role. (Nobody else wanted it because there were so many lines to learn...) Yes, you may now picture Butch Radzer, aged sixteen, dressed in a black cloak and knee-breeches, duelling precariously on a school desk in an imperfectly darkened assembly hall. Actually ... I'm pretty sure that our single, glorious performance was exactly fourteen years ago TONIGHT. Woo!
How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ. Title kind of says it all, really. If you haven't read this book, find a copy right now and read it.
5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their journals.
Anyone who feels like it.
A conservative estimation of
niallm's and my collective holdings (done on the "count up a few shelves, average, multiply" principle) comes out at 2,800. Given the number of unshelved books floating around, it's probably closer to 3,000.2) The last book I bought?
A batch about parenting and education, comprising What Mothers Do - Especially When it Looks Like Nothing by Naomi Stadlen (I read a review of this and had to have it - loving it so far), Our Babies Ourselves by Meredith F. Small (attracted by the title), Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt (wanted something to counterbalance the very training/routine-based stuff I've read), How Children Learn by John Holt (my theoretical interest in alternative education theories is becoming more concrete) and Deschooling Society by Ivan Ilich (a classic I've been meaning to read for years).
3) The last book I read?
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. History of science. I found it well written and unexpectedly fascinating.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me:
Just five? Wah! OK, I'll try.
The Bone People by Keri Hulme. This was the book that really fired me up about New Zealand literature (I mean, I was already fired up, but this crystallised a whole set of responses and led to my nearly doing a PhD in the area). It's audacious and uncompromising and fierce, and the language is gorgeous. I reread it every few years and love it, viscerally, every time.
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. The diametric opposite of TBP. It's an incredibly subtle, taut story about unhappy Edwardians, with a deliciously twisted narrator and a beautifully uncluttered style. Ford wrote it late in life, and if I recall aright he waited for years to attempt it until he was confident of doing it justice. I read when I was eighteen, and it blew my mind.
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot. I've loved everything I've read by her, but this is the one I've read most recently. Eliot's characterisation is just so sharp, and she writes so engagingly about unlikeable people, exposing their motivations carefully and with such relish - I'm in awe every time I read one of her books.
Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Hackneyed but true. This is one of my very favourite texts, for all sorts of reasons to do with its profound and multifarious coolness. But it has a special place in my heart because I did it for the Leaving Cert, and we put on a production (on desks pushed together with gym mats on top, because that's how underequipped my school was), and I got to play the title role. (Nobody else wanted it because there were so many lines to learn...) Yes, you may now picture Butch Radzer, aged sixteen, dressed in a black cloak and knee-breeches, duelling precariously on a school desk in an imperfectly darkened assembly hall. Actually ... I'm pretty sure that our single, glorious performance was exactly fourteen years ago TONIGHT. Woo!
How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ. Title kind of says it all, really. If you haven't read this book, find a copy right now and read it.
5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their journals.
Anyone who feels like it.
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Date: 2005-05-17 07:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-18 03:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-05-18 03:16 pm (UTC)On the alternative-education stuff, you probably know of lots of other titles I should be looking at. I'll ask you when I run out of what I have. Also, come and refrain-from-teaching in my radical school, if or when I ever get around to setting it up!