I've been memed!

I do believe this is the first time ever that I've been tagged with one--and it's a book one. Ken from Milwaukee's Heraldblog hit me yesterday.

Number of books in my collection: Probably 500, maybe closer to 700.

Last book bought: Impossible Things, by Connie Willis, and The Butlerian Jihad, by Brian Herbet and Kevin J. Anderson. I'm off to Mexico in two weeks, and I need some good beach-reading SciFi.

Last book read: Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markandaya. I don't know if it counts or not, since I read it before teaching it these last couple of weeks. Before that, I think it was an Ann Tyler.

Five books that mean a lot to me: This is tough, since there are so many that have left a significant impact on me at one point or another in my life. But I'll try to provide some from different phases of my life:

1. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving. This may be as close to the great American novel as I have read.
   
2. Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy. Lyrical, enthralling, exhilerating--it's Victorian soap opera and it remains one of my favorite books ever. I'm convinced it landed me my first teaching job: In the interview, they asked me what I liked to read, and I said Hardy; they asked if I was crazy.
   
3. Watchmen, by Alan Moore. Yes, I was a comics nerd when I was smaller. This is the series that opened up an entire world of comic-book possibilities to me. The story was utterly original--The Incredibles ripped it off, though much more upbeat--and every character had more pathos than all the New Teen Titans combined.
   
4. Beloved, Toni Morrison. The first time you read this book, it's like discovering that everything you ever knew about writing was wrong. Morrison turned everything inside-out and made me a better writer--and reader--in the process.
   
5. An American Childhood, Annie Dillard. I have a great love for literary non-fiction, for memoir in particular. Dillard does it as well or better than anybody, and in this text, I love the way the many short, diverse threads get teased into a whole cloth by the end.
   

And now it is my solemn responsibility to meme others. So I pass this on to some other Cheeseheads: Scott, Stacie, Ben, Tom, and FJ. I would give it to Paul, but he's on vacation.