(no subject)

[dwenius]

Thanks to omarius, a

1) Total # of books. Interesting question. We sold 8 medium sized boxes of books to bookstores/recyclers before the move, then packed up the rest of them. We can estimate the current total, including canetoad's and the kids' books into account, as follows:

• 4 full sized bookshelves with 7 shelves @ 48" = 112 shelf feet


• 1 music studio bookshelf with 4 shelves @ 48" = 16 shelf feet


• 11 Ikea monstrosity cubical shelves = 11 shelf feet


• Hm, 3 shelf feet of cookbooks, and 3 shelf feet of anatomy/massage/health books = 6 shelf feet


• So that is 145 shelf feet total, of which:

  12 shelf feet are comics, both single issues and things like Cerebus phone books, so let's guess 40 comics per shelf foot on average or 480 comics total. That sounds feasible.

  
  

  11 shelf feet are children's books, ranging from collected treasuries to tiny little Mr. Putter and Tabby or Henry and Mudge books, call it 30 per foot on average or 330 total.

  
  

  5 shelf feet are plays or little poetry volumes, call it 20 per shelf foot or 75 total.

  
  

  That leaves 122 shelf feet of "normal" books, let's say 10 per shelf foot on average or 1,220 total.

  
  

So that looks like 2,105 books total, after the purge. Or, put another way, I can now claim with almost absolute certainty that we own more music CD's than books. I guess that's apt.

2) Last book I bought? The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.
3) Last book I read? Toothprints on a Corn Dog, one of Mark Leyner's lesser compilations, but containing the hysterical "Young Bergdorf Goodman Brown".
4) 5 books that mean a lot to me. I also hate this kind of question, and five is too few, but let's go with:

1. The First Folio of Shakespeare, Norton facsimile edition - Should require no comment, except to say that by Shakespeare, I most definitely mean the glover's son from Stratford, not any high-born imposter.


2. William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - A huge influence. HUGE.


3. Aldous Huxley The Perennial Philosophy - The more I learn, the closer this becomes to my default spiritual text.


4. Italo Calvino If on a Winter's Night a Traveler - Structurally, without peer.


5. Richard Feynman The Character of Physical Law - Should be required reading. In, like, grade school.

5) 5 other people who must drop everything and exercise this meme:tritone, brokensymmetry, eac, waider, and anavolena.