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Scott tagged me with this book meme that’s going around, and now I have to tag others.

1. Estimate the total number of books you’ve owned in your life.
I *think* I have about 3,000 books in my current library. Probably double that for what I’ve owned over my lifetime. I took a picture of my wall-to-wall bookcase in my living room so you could see my current library.

2. What’s the last book you bought?

Most of my recent acquisitions have been for the two book clubs I’m in or for work-related stuff. I haven’t bought many books solely for myself because I’m trying to read through what I have on my shelf first.

• Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry
• 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs – The Election that Changed the Country by James Chace
• Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni
• PHP and MySQL Web Development by Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
• The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web by Dave Shea

3. What’s the last book you read?

I’ve been keeping track of everything I read since 1997, so if you want the complete list, go here.

• A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness by V. S. Ramachandran
• Immaculate Deception by Iain Pears
• Wonder Woman: The Ultimate Guide to the Amazon Princess by Scott Beatty, Doring Kindersley Books
• Stardust by Kurt A. Meyer (since updated with the title Noblesville)
• The Toll Gate by Georgette Heyer
• Hokkaido Popsicle by Isaac Adamson
• Sister of My Heart by Chitra Divakaruni

5. List 5 books that mean a lot to you.

This is incredibly hard; I love so many books It’s hard to choose.

• Curious Myths of the Middle Ages by Sabine Baring-Gould
  When I was in high school, I was a librarian’s assistant in the Noblesville Public Library, and I checked this book out so many times that when I graduated and went to college, they remaindered the book and gave it to me. It’s now out of copyright, so I’m slowly scanning the book into electronic format.
• The Complete William Shakespeare
  I know that sounds pretentious; sorry. But I love the comedies and the sonnets, which I’ve read all of, and I enjoy on a different level the tragedies. I think the histories are dead boring, though. Maybe I need to see them performed and I’d feel differently.
• Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen
  A book everyone should be required to read, just because it explodes myths about our US history and society, and gives us an eye-opening view of who Americans really are — something that can only make us better as people and as a nation. I also loved Loewen’s Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. What’s really cool: in searching for this on Amazon, I discovered he’s got a new book coming out.
• Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaardner
  “A young girl, Sophie, becomes embroiled in a discussion of philosophy with a faceless correspondent. At the same time, she must unravel a mystery involving another young girl, Hilde, by using everything she’s learning. The truth is far more complicated than she could ever have imagined.”
• The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
  I LOVED this series as a kid and had a whole set of fantasies about going to Narnia myself.

5. Tag 5 people!
Jen, Mike, Brent and Jim from IndyScribe, Rachel, and MJ. I’d tag more, but I don’t want to use them all up before these guys can tag someone.