I'm currently reading the Aubrey-Maturin books for the first time. Slowly, because it's term-time, and because my library got Sethra Lavode in, so I had to embark on a reread of all the Dragaera books, but surely. I'm midway through Post-Captain, but I know I'm going to continue with the series.

They provide what I want out of good SF, too. Complete with an intelligent, well-read and fascinating fandom.

I keep looking up and reading bits out at whoever I'm sitting with... and they aren't annoyed!

That makes twice I've seen Fred tagged. This is a game that could spread.

To my shame, I have yet to read I.F. Stone, though a little bookmark reminder to do so has been in my brain since he spent a semester at Harvard, and I saw him every morning at breakfast, in his suit and tie, spectacles, and impassive face, surrounded by a coterie of adoring students.

I saw this meme on Ken Macloed's blog a couple of weeks ago, and decided to tag myself because I hadn't seen the meme appear anywhere else. Obviously I haven't been reading the right blogs....

First question is quite frightening now.

It was bad enough when I had just my own books, but I inherited my partner's collection (which included his parents') a couple of years ago, and now I've just had my parents' worldly goods passed on to me. Have three households of books, furniture, clothing, etc, now and can only live in one place - especially with Sydney real estate situation.

It's the sort of thing that conduces one towards the idea of bundling up the necessities in a backpack and heading for a bare room somewhere. At least for a month or two.

Bastard.

I know at least three quite respectable and savvy Tolkien scholars, at least one of whom has been known to post in this blog, who have made similar points about Tolkien's work having High Modernist elements/resemblances, so you're not at all alone.

Nor do I think you're lacking in sense on the point. I'd quibble about whether this is more than he has in common with the Inklings, and would futilely try to balance intangibles in a scale, but the stack is pretty high.

And I find his resemblance to most of his latter-day imitators to be quite superficial, however good their work may be on its own account. That definitely includes Peter Jackson. The post-Tolkien fantasies I've read that seem to me by far the most in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings are Watership Down and A Wizard of Earthsea, in that order, perhaps not the ones that are uppermost in the minds of most who talk about "Tolkienian fantasy."

I found that four volumes of George Orwell journalism all in one place got a little repetitive. Not his fault, obviously, as he didn't mean it to be read that way. For casual re-reading I keep around that high-school text standard, the one-volume Collection of Essays by George Orwell.

Patrick:
Pardon the personal question from a stranger, but is that "three or four thousand" books yourself, or is that the total trove at Nielsen Hayden World HQ?

Just curious.

(My wife and I have been married 21 years, and live in a house similarly infested with books - - but we find that we still tend to think in terms of "my books" and "your books".

No, that figure represents our books. I should have been clearer about that.

I've been meaning to get some of O'Brien's books ever since seeing the movie... I've gotten around to buying the movie (wow, they made good use of DTS, I thought my apartment was coming apart in the storm scenes) but none of the novels yet.

None of the Hornblower series, either. I'm falling behind. :)

I think that my favourite part of this meme is seeing *why* people favour the books they do. (Though seeing all the neat stuff I've missed is a close second.) They're far more revealing about both the books and the commentators than many other "interview" memes.

And dang, I completely forgot to mention Orwell on mine. Or Hal Clement or Dickens. Or Dune or Foundation, for that matter. Or Downbelow Station...

Gaah, gotta stop or I'll rhyme off the Library of Congress index.

I've been tagged with that meme and shall try to get to it later today. In spite of not having posted anything on my blog for, oh, 2 months I guess.

MKK

Last book read:

The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross. Book 3 of “The Merchant Princes”, due out sometime in 2006.

Work-related manuscripts don't count. Showoff.

(Now, if I were making a similar list, and the last book I'd read had been an advance reading copy someone had sent me, that would count. Yeh, that would definitely count. Ahem.)

I sent you guys the link to the record of JRRT reading LotR, but in case it got lost in the spam, and for everyone else:

http://recordbrother.typepad.com/imagesilike/vinyl_sharity/

(scroll down). There's some other interesting downloads on the site as well.

Posted the meme over in Howard Rheingold's Brainstorms. For me, the first four questions are all ambiguous....

This is the first I've heard about the third Stross book -- does this mean that the first two do not, as I'd believed, comprise a full plot arc; or is it just a separate story that happens to be a sequel?

Charlie Stross explains the series.

I'm never sure exactly what people mean by "plot arc", but speaking as a reader (and not Charlie's Tor editor), I can say that while the "Merchant Princes" series is potentially open-ended, there's a distinct and satisfying conclusion, or pause point, or what have you, at the end of book two, The Hidden Family (now in stores).

The post-Tolkien fantasies I've read that seem to me by far the most in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings are Watership Down and A Wizard of Earthsea

I definitely agree about Watership Down, but I have my doubts about Earthsea (a book whose charms eluded me, so take my opinion with a grain of salt). I'd also add Crowley's Little, Big, which to me is a sort of mirror image of LOTR, telling a similar story from the other end of the Atlantic ocean and the 20th century.

Robert L, I see your link, and raise you an Amazon. Does the Tolkien LP duplicate the content in the cd?*

I am reminded of a quote from the man himself:

"I feel that it is, while I am still alive, my property in justice unaffected by copyright laws. It seems to me a grave discourtesy, to say no more, to issue my book without even a polite note informing me of the project. . . . However that may be, this paperback edition and no other has been published with my consent and co-operation. Those who approve of courtesy (at least) to living authors will purchase it and no other."

This isn't an intentional troll, and I do realize that he is not, indeed, still alive, and, for that matter a great many versions of LOTR have appeared at the behest of his estate and therefore not with his own consent or cooperation. But still...

Othertopic:
Longstanding fen rumor has it that there is a complete (!) reading of the LOTR by Tolkien that has never been released due to the audio quality not being up to snuff. It would be odd for the estate to sit on such a gem; even a small pressing could be supported through subscriptions from fans, (espcially the linguistically inclined ones). Anyone care to comment on that one?

Othertopic:
Five books that mean a lot to you:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. No apologies for this one. Read at 11, it was my first experience of being overwhelmed by a book.
Me too, for what it's worth. It marked the watershed in my life between books written for children and popular sf/fantasy. I could go on for pages and pages** about this, but I doubt I'd say anything really new to anyone here. I am for him, unlike any other writer, still an unreserved fan.

R.

*ISBN 0-694-52570-7
**do we even have pages, anymore?

Abigail: Little, Big is quite possibly my faorite book ever. Anyone who can write that Christmases succeed each other, not the falls they follow has me for life.

But I don't think it tastes like Tolkien at all. At least not like LoTR.

(I am willing to be convinced if you have the time to elaborate. I am about due for a re-reading of that one anyway, it's been over a year now.)

When I was 12 I decided to entertain myself during a dull summer by counting all the books in the house. I quit with one room still left to go...32,000 books (big family, big house, both parents are professors and writers...). When I moved out on my own I instituted a strict set of rules for myself to keep the book collecting instinct in check. Through diligent organization, regular weeding, and marrying someone who's not a big reader, I've managed to keep the collection to about 1000 books.

I've discovered that the fewer books I keep, the more I actually read, because everything on the shelves is something I genuinely want to read, or have read and actually liked.

TomB: Thanks for the pointer.

Patrick: I'd call it a plot arc if, at the end of reading the thing, you feel like it's plausible that there will never be any more of it. There might be unfulfilled foreshadowing, unanswered questions, or issues that continue to loom, but fundamentally, the story you were reading has come to a point where never reading any more of that story wouldn't cause you to be frustrated.

I read Fortress of Solitude almost two years ago, and it just might be the best book I've read in the past two years.

What Sundre said. I love Little, Big enough to have read it three times, but I wouldn't call it particularly Tolkienish; indeed, one of its glories is that it's a post-Tolkien work of high fantasy that manages to get entirely out from under Tolkien's shadow.

Didn't we have a longwinded discussion here a few weeks ago about how evil checklists are?

The Hobbit was the first "real" book I read. I think I was seven. Maybe eight. It certainly affected the way I've read everything since.
After reading it, I realized there was no reason I couldn't start asking my mom to buy me comics. (She said I couldn't have any until I could read them all by myself.) If I could read an almost 300 page book, there was no reason why I couldn't read books an order of magnitude smaller that had pictures in them. It was a very empowering moment in my life. I still remember the first comic I bought: it had Sasquatch smacking around the Thing with uprooted pine trees for no reason in particular. Unfortunately, I don't have it anymore.

sundre, Patrick, Little, Big is indeed not particularly Tolkien-ish in its tone and topics (Patrick puts it very well when he says that it manages to get out from under Tolkien's shadow. It's only in the last few years that I've discovered all the many fine works of fantasy I've missed because the bookstores I frequent only stock the Tolkien-ish kind). The similarities I see have more to do with themes. Both books are concerned with the pastoral and its elimination. Both books are quietly but determinedly anti-progress and anti-industry. Both books are very sad at what they see as the passing away of the old, magical world.

In that sense, the books mirror each other. Tolkien, the Englishman writing at the beginning of the 20th century, writes about a world permanently losing its connection to magic. Everything truly grand and beautiful and eternal is leaving the world, and its new guardians, while noble and well-meaning, can only try to delay the long and inevitable decay.

The American Crowley, writing at the century's end, describes a society in the final stages of that decay. Modernism, industry, technology, have proved hollow replacements for magic. The uneducated masses know that something is missing, and so they elect Russell Eigenblick and flock to Auberon's soap opera. The solution is to bring magic back, turn away from technology and the fruits of progress, and revitalize legend and myth.

Whether intentionally or not, I can't help but think of the two books as a call and response.

If Wollheim hadn't discovered that LotR wasn't legally covered by US copyright, there probably wouldn't have been paperback editions while Tolkien was alive -- he didn't approve of them. And on the whole, I think that would have been a loss to society.

Patrick said: "I can say that while the "Merchant Princes" series is potentially open-ended, there's a distinct and satisfying conclusion, or pause point, or what have you, at the end of book two, The Hidden Family...."

And speaking as a reader myself, AUUUGH! I am greedy and unsatisfied, and I wanna know how many pieces the wicked grandmother is going to end up in, and whether her dismemberment will be literal or figurative. And the resolution of many another loose end. And a pony.

Technical question--is the text of a paperback identical to the hardback, or is it possible for typos and infelicities to be fixed?

"Didn't we have a longwinded discussion here a few weeks ago about how evil checklists are?"

No, actually. Perhaps you're thinking of someplace else.

"Technical question--is the text of a paperback identical to the hardback, or is it possible for typos and infelicities to be fixed?"

It's entirely possible. I generally welcome pointers of this sort regarding Tor books, and I try to pass them on to the appropriate editors or production folks. (The sharp-eyed Elisabeth Carey has been sending me emails of this sort for years.)

TexAnne: It's certainly possible for typos and infelicities to be introduced between hc and pb . . . but, hey, we all have ghosts.

PNH: check your email.

JMF: Titivullus cannot be denied, no matter how hard we try.

Abigail said: I can't help but think of the two books as a call and response.

That's unexpectedly lovely. I'll keep that in mind when I read it again - as soon as I figure out where it is in which bookcase. I don't think I lent it out, it must be behind something...

I honestly don't know how I would answer the question of how many books I personally own, since whatever I have is dwarfed by David's vast holdings.

I oughta say nuthin', but ...

The original plan for "Merchant Princes" was four Big Fat Books, 200-250,000 words each. I wrote #1, and my agent sold it to Tor while I began work on #2. The books were going to be big because they weren't padded, they dealt with big themes and lots of stuff happening. What I didn't know at the time was that the gearbox of book selling was being thrown into reverse and suddenly short books were the new long. So book #1 got chopped into books #1 and #2, and I was left holding not the first fifth, but the first two-thirds, of the next book. Aaagh.

Anyway, "The Family Trade" and "The Hidden Family" are a complete story, with closure. The next three books after that, starting with "The Clan Corporate", are (I hope -- I haven't written #4 and #5 yet) a sequel that builds on the first two and again achieves plot closure. Beyond that, who knows?

(Maybe if I'm lucky SFBC will do 'em in omnibus format. Or I'll become big enough and famous enough that Tor can reissue them as BFTs with some hope of selling them effectively. Meanwhile, I've just got to finish the novella I'm supposed to be writing for Gardner, write the second half of "The Jennifer Morgue", and then get the proposals for "The Hostile Takeover" and whatever book #5 is going to be called done. And all before worldcon!)

Total number of books owned:

Somewhere between four and six thousand, of which perhaps half are accessible on shelves, most of the rest in the garage or the archive shed. Perhaps twice as many already traded to used book stores, given as gifts, stolen, lost, and ruined by mudslides and leaks.

Last book bought:

"Noam Chomsky" by John Lyons, Viking Press, 1970, because you guys were giving me a hard time about him; and (when I couldn't get to that in my luggage so rushed to an airport bookstore) "The Best American Science Writing 2004" ed. Dava Sobel, HarperCollins, although, oddly enough, all the articles reprinted first appeared in 2003, and this was not the Best of 2004 I sought, which will appear, I suppose in 2006, edited by my classmate Alan Lightman.

Last book read:

"The Space Child's Mother Goose," verses by Frederick Winsor, illos by Marian Parry, Texas: Purple House Press, 2001, hardcover reprint, printed in China, because my 1957 Simon & Schuster first dedition has long since vanished.

Five books that mean a lot to you:

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I was almost too old and too young simultaneously when my mother read this aloud to me, as bedside story, over many Brooklyn nights, from the UK first edition, hot off the presses, a gift from Phyllis Nethercot who was just writing her thesis based on Tolkien's analysis of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight. Changed my life.

Rocketship Galileo, by Robert A. Heinlein. The first novel that I clearly remeber reading on my own. Made me the rocket scientist that I am today.

The Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Confession: my Mom paid me a quarter for each that I memorized. Once knew them all. Folks with B.A.s in English Lit, cum laude, do the allowance deal their own way. I had no choice but to be a poet, but knew enough to have a day job.

History of Mathematics, 2 volumes, David E. Smith, Bover, New York, 1958. My parents were both math-challenged, but wanted me to have a multiculural and historical perspective. This birthday present used up more cogitation time than any other book they gave me, including:

Principia Mathematica, three-volume work on the foundations of mathematics, by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, 1910-1913 (the paperback edition, itself collectable, and did I leave it in the garage, or what?). Took me deeper down the path to burning out my brain on paradoxes and how they can be paradoctored (to use Heinlein's phrase).

These 5 did determine my destiny. They led inexorably to my double B.S. in Mathematical Logic and Poetry at Caltech, and made me the rambling, incoherent wreck that I am today.

Tag five people to continue this meme:

They'll never know, because they'll think it's spam. But it's far more insidious than that, right?

About 3000, after a series of purges when I married two years ago & we had to move. Guess it was over 6000 then.

Last Bought:
Managing Geeks, by Paul Glen.

Last Read:
The Great Mysteries - Andrew Greeley

Five that mean a lot to me:

The Dispossessed - Ursula LeGuin
Heinlein's stuff, and Atlas Shrugged (no, I'm very definitely not a libertarian of any flavor).

I started the Aubrey-Maturin books last year after hearing wonderful things about them from readers of Bernard Corwell. (My parents are big fans of Sharpe.)
I did not expect to be as totally engulfed in the books as I have become. They are some of the most brilliant storytelling I've encountered yet. I have learned so much by reading them, and rereading them. Thank goodness NYPL has them all. (Next up: The Mauritius Command.)
And I have a terrible crush on Stephen. ;)

~4600, allowing for holes in the library database. Yes, I'm a bit obsessive; the occasional $7-8 really shouldn't matter but I get inordinately steamed about buying a book I already have, so I keep the list up to date and have a collection of scripts that crunch it to something I can print on a few pages to take to conventions. I really should put it all on a PDA plug-in card, but I keep not saying "no!" and feeling disinclined to try to learn things. (Yes, Merlin, I know learning is a sovereign remedy.)

Sean Stewart, Perfect Circle (by a few minutes -- Wiscon was last weekend).

Interlaced: Carol O'Connell, Shell Game (dark half-open mystery featuring stage magicians, an old interest of mine) and Howl's Moving Castle just to make sure my memory was correct that all the sloppiness and preaching in the sneak preview were Miyazaki's additions.

Just five? I'd have a hard time stopping, so I'll pick two: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet (reads badly now, but was almost the first SF I read) and More Than Human (mind-blowing effect amplified by Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing at Baxter's on the record player, but the first thing I remember suggesting that transcendence was possible here and now (rather than in some unimaginable future, as in the Stapledon I've never read)). I'm a bit ashamed to admit how little non-fiction I have read -- can't point to \anything/.

I don't think I lent it out, it must be behind something...

I have a friend who tracks her books by index cards, library-style, so she knows whom she lends them out to. though it seems like a lot of work, it does make good sense and it's a terrific way of avoiding the "did I lend it or is it stashed away somewhere on these shelves or in that crate or up in that storeroom..."

"Technical question--is the text of a paperback identical to the hardback, or is it possible for typos and infelicities to be fixed?"

It's entirely possible. I generally welcome pointers of this sort regarding Tor books, and I try to pass them on to the appropriate editors or production folks. (The sharp-eyed Elisabeth Carey has been sending me emails of this sort for years.)

This leaves it seriously tempting to innocently ask just what it is then with the words "Not" and "Now" that has persisted so long...

OK, so you got me wondering. I looked around me, in my den. It has 11 bookcases, with a total of 39 shelves. I picked a shelf that looked averagely loaded, and counted 78 books on it. Oh, and there are those eight cartons of books under a desk -- I won them at an auction but haven't coped with them yet. And three cartons under another desk from a previous auction misadventure.

I looked down the stairs at the bookcase in the basement: 6 shelves. In the kitchen, 2 long shelves of cookbooks. In the livingroom I counted six bookcases and ...

... one large raccoon trying to hide behind the sofa. Yikes.

Raccoons freak me out. They are strong and can be mean. This one was an odd shade -- very light grey, almost white, with very subdued stripes. An albino?

It didn't look happy at my intrusion. I did the only thing a sensible guy could do. I called my wife, who was doing mysterious female things in the upstairs washroom.

"The poor guy is scared, can't you see?" She seemed to be talking about the raccoon, not about me. "Let's give him as many escape routes as we can."

I watched her open the front door, which is sort of near the livingroom. Then she went into the livingroom, apparently to open the window nearest the raccoon. The raccoon saw its chance and scampered past her, around me, and out the back door. I closed the door behind it.

I've lost all interest in counting the books for some reason. Who knows what other evils lurk? I didn't venture upstairs -- there are two bookcases in the spare room (and every shelf on them has two rows of books), several shelves of books in my wife's office, bookcases in each of the (two) kids' rooms, and piles of books in the bedroom. There are probably other stashes elsewhere in the house that I'm forgetting. And I don't want to think about how many books there are in my office downtown.

Greg - that was no raccoon. It was the avatar of Bibliohoardica, the goddess of book acquisition. She obviously sensed that had you made any sort of count of your library, more of her children might get remaindered.

Abigail wrote re Lord of the Rings and Little, Big, "I can't help but think of the two books as a call and response."

That's very well put, and if any such intent was in Crowley's mind (I don't know if it was), then he was certainly influenced by Tolkien; but influence need not be towards similarity, and it seems to me the nature of Crowley's response makes his work quite unlike Tolkien's in feel, smell, whatever. But this is highly subjective and I'm certainly not going to say you're wrong.

Rhandir wrote, "Longstanding fen rumor has it that there is a complete (!) reading of the LOTR by Tolkien that has never been released due to the audio quality not being up to snuff."

Not that I've ever heard of. What exists, and has been released (on both LP and as part of a 4-CD set called The J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection), are a bunch of excerpts, mostly poetry, that Tolkien made on a friend's home tape deck in 1952. The sound quality is not always very good.

I can't find the CD set on Amazon, though I have a US imprint copy from Harper Audio right here (it has no ISBN), but this appears to be the same thing on cassette, though it has a different cover.

Tom Whitmore:

If Wollheim hadn't discovered that LotR wasn't legally covered by US copyright,

If Wollheim hadn't thought he'd discovered it. Eventual court ruling was that the copyright was valid.

there probably wouldn't have been paperback editions while Tolkien was alive -- he didn't approve of them.

Tolkien had balked at a paperback because he was afraid of what the publishers would do to the book (with good reason: he loathed the first Ballantine covers, though they didn't muck with the text the way an earlier UK pb of The Hobbit had). But he didn't disapprove of pbs on principle.

And on the whole, I think that would have been a loss to society.

This is true, and it would have been a loss to Middle-earth society if Gollum hadn't bitten off Frodo's finger. A character in LOTR says that good result may come of evil intent, and from Tolkien's phrasing ("dealings one might expect of Saruman in his decay"), there's no doubt what he thought of Wollheim's intent.

antukin: I have considered being a little more organized when it comes to my books. They used to be alphabetical, but between the last move and flagrant book-taking by two of my siblings, the shelves are woefully out of order.

I did find Little, Big, though, behind some books that I'd rescued from a yard sale. It's now in line behind the library books I currently have out, and I should get to it by the end of the month at latest.

David -- at the time of the Ace editions (and for over 50 years before), copyright law required printing of a certain number of copies in the US (see the mimeographed Dr. Mirabilis or the very small run Sidney Paget editions of William Hope Hodgson). Wollheim was right about the current interpretation of the law at the time he made it. The courts changed the interpretation (and, I expect, the fact of the law) in an ex post facto manner. Tolkien was indeed right to worry about the paperbacks, but that doesn't mean he was right to prevent them altogether. Which he was doing, until Wollheim forced his hand.

Speaking of John Crowley, doesn anyone here know if he's working on, has completed, will never complete the fourth book of the AEGYPT sequence? Partially brought to mind because I'm reading THE SYSTEM OF THE WORLD right now, and AEGYPT et seq is the only other work I can think of to properly compare it to.

Last I heard--and this is second-hand, but through highly reliable sources--Crowley has written the fourth book and Bantam intends to publish it. Further, deponent knoweth not.

JVP said:
The Sonnets of William Shakespeare. Confession: my Mom paid me a quarter for each that I memorized

Hey, my mom did that too! I only memorized a couple though, because it was a lot of work for one quarter.

You got a quarter?

We got a penny a line -- that's a nickel for a limerick, or 14c for a sonnet.

And it was 20 miles to school, uphill both ways, in the snow.

Ug. What happened to the comments' format? Minimalist, but I find I like a little bit more graphical furniture; maybe just a rule to separate each comment? Or is this a change that only appears on old browsers?

Anyhow, I already responded to this meme over on Pharyngula, but I missed the number of books. Probably because I lost around a thousand books a few years ago when I got burgled. For a while I tried to replace them with second-hand books and a few new editions, but as time went by the memory of what had gone lessened (and the pain) and I buy new books only these days.

Hmm, I guess 1000 to 1500 right now, but I'm contemplating a long trip abroad, so I may attempt to cull the herd. I daresay I won't get far. In the culling, that is.

Ah, forget about the comment format comment. It's back to normal now. Just a glitch, I guess.

That's not bad. Used to be you could buy stuff with a few pennies. Of course, it was tough having to get up so early that it was before you went to bed. I bet you were glad when they finally invented roads.

I won't try to count the books, especially all those triple-stacked pbs, but I know the moving company charged us extra when our suitable number of boxes turned out to include way too many that were loaded down with the things.

Since I'm a reviewer, all of the last five books I read are galleys (though I don't get sent any Stross, since two of the guys get dibs on him). One of the latest from Tor, Jacqueline Carey's Godslayer, continues her major deconstruction of LOTR, among other things, in the "Sundering" books. (Patrick, are more volumes coming?) Now that's got to be a direct response to Tolkien! For other comments, you'll have to wait till the August issue of Locus.

My memory is too poor for me to make a Top 5 from my youthful reading, but I know I used to have a hardcover LOTR (sold, alas, for money to buy Sixties rock LPs, but I replaced them with the Ballantine paperbacks). In my early teens I was much taken by Lawrence Durrell's "Alexandria Quartet", as well as his brother Gerry's completely different humorous nonfiction about animals, zoos and such. Later, Dune, Le Guin, and lots of Jack Vance.

A truly maddening question would be "Which famous, influential books haven't you got around to reading yet?" (Could be in the field or out of it.) I'll just say I'm far too weak on American Lit., and not well up on Golden Age SF.

I believe that for now the two "Sundering" books are all.

Total number of books owned -- about 4000-5000 (currently paying teenager 10 cents each to catalog using EndNote, and she's up to the Smiths in fiction).

Last book bought -- Just bought my husband two books for Father's Day, and since they are more or less "hamster gifts" (you buy your mom a hamster because you want one), I'll count them -- the new collection of Richard Feynman's letters, "Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Path", and "On Bullshit" by Henry Frankfurt (well, he just finished law school!).

Last book read -- "The Lives of Christopher Chant" by Diana Wynne Jones.

Five books that mean a lot to me: (this is surprisingly hard to do when I'm not IN my library!)

"The Lord of the Rings" tops the list, as it does for so many people here. I first read it at eleven at breakneck speed for the plot, but I come back over and over again for everything else.

"A Christmas Carol". An annual read to remind me to watch out for Scrooge-like tendancies in myself (and must also anually watch, at a minimum, the Muppet and George C. Scott versions).

Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series. He's just a character I like to spend a lot of time with. If "meaningful" means "what do you read over and over again," this has to count.

Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With a Hundred Faces." I don't know if I would find it as riveting if I sat down to read it through now, but when I encountered it in a college mythology course it turned my reading upside-down. Everything I read suddenly revealed the pattern of the hero-journey; LotR became even more deeply magical, and even "The Wizard of Oz" seemed less picaresque and more meaningful. In fact, everything I DID seemed imbued with meaning, even a journey to the corner grocery store, bringing back the boon of sustenance to my people.

Picking a final book is hard. For a given value of "meaningful," a cookbook that changed my eating habits and made me healthier could be meaningful! But how about "A Little Princess" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I wanted to BE Sarah Crewe (as well as Jo March, or course) and tell wonderful stories -- it didn't turn out quite that way, but that type of character did have an influence on me.

Just so I don't repeat myself, if anyone's interesting, my book meme results are here.

If I'd done this thirty years ago, or even twenty, I'd probably have listed The Lord of the Rings. If I had a top ten, I'd probably list the Patrick O'Brien books. As it is, defining a favourite five seems a bit arbitrary ....

Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With a Hundred Faces."

That's the abridged, or George Lucas, edition?

Yes, I'm sorry already.

I actually found it easy to list 5 books because it doesn't ask for a top 5 -- it just asks for 5 books that are important to me. There's no ranking here, just 5 books that right now stand out as important. That's a hell of a lot easier than trying to rank things that are incommensurable!

And mine is here. So after 2 months I've finally posted in my blog again. Wonder if I'll keep going.

MKK

Curses. I always do that. Thousand, thousand, thousand. In some other universe it's hundred (less imaginative people, or fewer of them, I suppose). Somewhere else it's bound to be a million. This is why I use EndNote when I'm writing a paper, so I don't HAVE to remember these things.

Retreats, muttering and seeking chocolate.

Tom Whitmore is exactly right. The meme isn't asking for the "top five"; it asks only for "five books that are important to you." It also doesn't ask you to rank within those five.

On a different day I might have posted a substantially different list. Certainly there should be a Garry Wills title in there, but I was stonkered by the attempt to settle on just one.

I've been wondering. Where exactly did the meme for using the word "meme" to refer to personality quizzes suitable for email/blog forwarding come from? Is it just semantic drift doing what it does best?

I think the blogging slant on "meme" still fits the original interpretation; an idea that perpetuates itself and migrates from person to person. (It's the "pass it on to (x) others" part that hooks it to the definition... though I guess that chain letters and virus hoaxes would also qualify.)

The random mutation of them through copying error and then selection by endurance could make for an intriguing study. However, they *are* indubitably the products of intelligent design (of what degree of intelligence is highly variable of course) so perhaps it'd just lead to another Scopes-like flamewar.

Or would it be the missing link between the two competing memes?

My take is here, on my LJ rather than my MT blog just because that's where I got tagged.

Charlie, Andrew answered that they have no current plans for the omnibus but would add my vote to his list. He also said that though they're marketed as fantasy, he thinks they're clearly SF.

Faren Miller:
"A truly maddening question would be 'Which famous, influential books haven't you got around to reading yet?' (Could be in the field or out of it.)"

In one of Malcolm Bradbury's novels (I'd look it up, except they're packed away...), that very game is played by a college English department. It quickly degenerates into a perverse round of "Can you top this?" Someone breaks the ice by admitting to never having read Moby Dick; eventually, the games ends in mutual embarassment all around when one of the professors admits to never having read Hamlet.

Well, it's funnier when Bradbury tells it.

Bob O: Maybe Malcolm Bradbury used the game too, but the round of "Humiliation" won by a prof who can't bear to lose anything and cries out "Hamlet!" thereby failing his tenure review, is in David Lodge's Changing Places.

Tom W: There was no established precedent for what Wollheim did, which was capitalizing on a technical violation by issuing an entire unauthorized edition of your own. That was what was eventually ruled invalid by the courts; it had nothing to do with retroactively changing the copyright law.

"Prevent them altogether" sounds like Tolkien was opposed to pbs on principle. He was not. He was dragging his feet, not that ten years without a pb was a weird thing for an only semi-popular novel in those days.

But the secrecy in which the Ace edition was prepared - which is what really incensed Tolkien about it ("without even a polite note informing me of the project") - was done to forestall any preventative authorized edition. Had Wollheim really just wanted to perform the public service project of goading Tolkien into authorizing somebody to issue a softcover LOTR, he could have announced a forthcoming Ace edition and not even gone to the trouble of publishing it. Instead, he made an unprecedented exploitation of a loophole. Good result, yes; but not an admirable way of going about it.

Can someone explain to me just what makes The Merchant Princes fantasy rather than SF? Its parallel worlds are explicitly alternate history rather than separate realms; there is no magic -- really no fantastic element at all except for one necessary psi-power; and the concerns are not heroism and chivalry but economics and technology. Take out most of the sex and you could publish it in Astounding.

DBratman:
You're right, of course: Lodge, not Bradbury. It was late when I read Faren Miller's post.

And thank you for saving me from looking it up - that would have taken me a long time.

Speaking of memes, I went back and read Kuttner's "Nothing But Gingerbread Left" last night... and dammit that little ditty is just left, left, left [SLAP!] in my brain again. Right before bed-time, too.

Now *that*'s a meme... 60+ years and still going on strong in starving condition with nothing but [SLAP!] I'll be fine. Really.

Antonym: And then there's:

Tenser, said the tensor
Tenser, said the tensor
Tension, apprehension, and dissention have begun!

and also:

Punch, conductor, punch with care!
Punch in the presence of the passenjare!"...

...Tolkien was opposed to pbs on principle...

He'd fit right in in America today, with the CPB under fire again, and...

Oh, you meant...never mind. :-)

People say "meme" because they don't want to call it what it is, which is a virus. A "textually transmitted disease," as I can't remember who said.

David, I do agree that it was not done in an honorable fashion. But I disagree with your characterizing it as "a semi-popular" novel. Semi-popular novels didn't remain in print in hardback, through multiple printings, for 10 years, even back then before Thor Power Tool. While they didn't have the popularity they would after the paperbacks came out, they had both strong critical acclaim and continual sales. Their success in hardback (not in total sales numbers, perhaps, but in steadiness of sales) was what tempted Wollheim, not their "semi" popularity.

Most recently purchased: The Light Ages by Ian R. MacLeod (along with 3 other books for myself, 2 for my son and one for my husband, on my last book shopping trip). Most recently completed reading, also The Light Ages.

In the middle of now: rereading both The Gilded Chain by Dave Duncan, and Hannah's House by Shelby Hearon. I need to go back to the bookstore before I finish both of these :)

Five books that are important to me...

Lost in the Cosmos: the Last Self-Help Book by Walter Tevis. This book really helped me pin down intuitions I'd always had about what BS some common ideas are. And it was fun to read.

This is the Way the World Ends by James Morrow. A story that strongly affected me on both emotional and intellectual levels. This and the following book were probably by a very small margin the SF books with the greatest influence on me that extended beyond reading and enjoying more SF.

A World Between by Norman Spinrad. Probably embarrassing, but one of the first "adult" novels I ever read and it helped me make sense of some of that confusing stuff. An attempt to bring rational logic to the war of the sexes was just what I suppose I needed to read at that age (11ish) though I was completely shocked too :)

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) by Gerald Sussman and Hal Abelson. My textbook from my first college computer science course changed my life. I went from thinking computers were fun gadgets and programming was an entertaining trivial pastime to understanding what programming languages really were and could be.

The Timeless Way of Building and Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. These brought comprehension into my professional life of what I was doing and why, comparable to and more recently than SICP.

oops... by Walker Percy, not Walter Tevis. I don't know why I sometimes get them mixed up.

JVP: I recognise the first (Demolished Man, right?) but not the second. Do, please, cite the origin. I'm kinda interested in the (fictional, of course, mweheheh....) use of mental constructs to influence behaviour after re-reading A Fire Upon the Deep.

Which reminds me of poor Twirlip. So misunderstood, even with his absolutely dead-on key insight.

The second verse is from Mark Twain's "Punch, Brothers, Punch" (and the first line is actually "Conductor, when you receive a fare"),

One of Robert McCloskey's "Homer Price" stories has a variant, that incorporates Twain's verse as as a vermifuge for another earworm.

Ah. Thank you. Will look that up in the local library, which is conveniently air-conditioned. (As my apartment would be, if I was just a bit more on-the-ball with routine cleaning. *sigh*)

"Can someone explain to me just what makes The Merchant Princes fantasy rather than SF?"

This will be explained in Heaven.

"Can someone explain to me just what makes The Merchant Princes fantasy rather than SF?"

SF is from Mars, fantasy is from Venus? (ducks very fast.)

SF is from Barsoom, fantasy is from Amtor, CHip.

Tom: Sorry, I wasn't using "semi-popular" as a technical term. I just meant by it something a lot more than "barely hanging on to being in print" but rather less than "the fad favorite that LOTR became later."

While there'd definitely be a market for a mass-market pb of such a hardcover, and surely today any ten-year-old novel of that level of popularity would have one, my impression is that in 1965 it was not unusual for such a book not to have come out in paperback (though it also might have done so). What's your take on that?

I'd be very interested if you could name another hardcover that had been continuously in print both in England and the US in that period in hardcover, going through over 10 hardcover printings in the UK (don't have info on the US to hand), that hadn't had a paperback.

The only even slightly comparable titles I can point to are Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, which has had a British but not a US mass paperback, and Dan Brown's (ptui) The Da Vinci Code, which is much newer. Peake's Gormenghast books went out of print, as did much of what Carter reprinted in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. All this is before I was an active bookseller, so I'm going by the listing of impressions (except for the number of UK printings of LotR before 1965, which I just checked in a friends copies: 14 on Fellowship, 11 on the other two, with fairly short periods between each -- not more than two years for any of them, and probably less than one since the Unwin copies don't always list months).

But this is publishing neepery, and probably beyond the scope of this particular thread.

Tom, suddenly and at an uncertain hour I want to go write The Da Vinci Code of the Woosters,* but a)I have done way too much of that 'round here lately, b)I would rather not be struck by the largest and heaviest object to hand the next time Beth sees me, and c)the call of pastiching Wodehouse is an subtil vyce, like trying to do Dunsany voices (though not quite as bad as trying to do Cabell, in which the fact that one is Serious About Wanting to Do It disqualifies one from the task).

Hm. The King of Elfland's Porker, or, Beyond the Blandings We Know.

Uh-uh. Not tonight.

*"Well, there's the painting, Jeeves. A castle; two rocks, one with silver service; two women, one wearing a large goose and the other nothing at all, and a dyspeptic Freemason with a disturbing resemblance to yours truly. What do you make of it?"
"That the painter's experiences of women, geese, and north light were all circumscribed, sir."

No.

JMF: No.

JS: Yes! (Esp. the dyspeptic freemason)

John M. Ford:

"In creating Jeeves, Wodehouse has done something which may respectfully be compared to the work of the Almighty in Michelangelo's painting. He has formed a man filled with the breath of life ... If, in say 50 years, Jeeves shall have faded, then what we have so long called England will no longer be." -Hilaire Belloc

Yes, but let's take a more nuanced look at that painting, shall we?

"Dash it all, Jeeves, you had me going for a while with that bit about turning water into wine, which would go down rather well at the Drones Club, what with its beautifully furnished clubrooms, and my staunchest companions jumping on sofas, playing catch with cricket balls, and demonstrating Newton's fluxions by experimentally heaving dinner rolls in noggin-bound trajectories. But you lost me when you tried to explain exactly who was getting married at Cana in the first place."

"One might essay a chronological theory, Bertie, as to why you were not invited to that nuptual bash, where one might as well presume that the man with strongest motive would be the father of the groom, who might otherwise have a hefty catering bill."

"Might one? The overarching menace that lurks in the background would seem to be the predatory Honoria Glosssop, whether or not those of the rabbinical persuasion were expected to be married, and would be remarked upon otherwise, and might thus be tempted to cut a few zymurgic corners at their own bachelor party. And just how do the Frenchies get into the act, as if coronated froggies swigging Chateau de Mouton Rothschild should have a say in whether the Godhead is transcendant or imminent, whilst prtending they've never tasted the forbidden fruit, and are still in Eden, which I fail to see had better topiary than the Gardens of Blandings Castle?"

"Quite."

JVP - for shame, sir! Jeeves would never call Mr. Wooster "Bertie."

*Applies back of hand to forehead and wilts gracefully onto the setee*

Jill Smith:

Confound it, what on earth was I thinking? I might as well have confused Biffy with Chuffy, Catsmeat with Stinker, Barmy Fotheringay Phipps with Freddie Chalk-Marshall, Oofy Prosser with Oswald Glossop, or Bingo Little with Boko Fittleworth. I shall sip some sherry, silently, while Bertie (whom Jeeves would only call "Sir" in the appropriate part of my mock-dialogue, to be sure) repairs to a little party thrown by Aunt Agatha. I may be an Adjunct Professor now and again, but am never to be taken for Prof. Cluj.

I should leave the Theology to Rev. Beefy Bingham.

"Sir, may I suggest the suit of armor for Mrs. Gregson's soiree this evening?"

"Indeed, Jeeves. Only the best St. George stuff for the Terror of the Woosters!"

(Mrs. Smith will now retire from the lists, as she has inadvertantly created or helped to create a diversion from the original topic.)

Faren Miller: "A truly maddening question would be 'Which famous, influential books haven't you got around to reading yet?' (Could be in the field or out of it.)"

In one of Malcolm Bradbury's novels (I'd look it up, except they're packed away...), that very game is played by a college English department.

This is a game known to English department vict . . . inmat . . . ummm . . . people everywhere. It's called Humiliation, and it's been popularized, if not invented, by David Lodge's Changing Places.