Tagged by Saro to do the book meme!

[wordinista]

1. Total number of books owned?

Oh sweet monkey jeebus on a pogo stick. I have no idea, but now I want to know.

...

240, not counting anything I still have in boxes back in our utility room. Let's say an even 300, just to be safe, though possibly more scattered throughout the house.

2. The last book I bought?

Uh, heh. Um... hmm. *blushes* Tales of the Slayer, Volume Four, which is basically an anthology of short stories placed all throughout history, using the Buffy the Vampire Slayer universe.

3. The last book I read?

I'm rereading Bitten, by Kelley Armstrong.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me?

These are in no particular order:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This is probably one of my all-time favorite novels. Actually, these five books are favorites, so that's not saying much. I love this book for Lizzie, because she's a heroine who is lovable despite her faults. She's not perfect, not by any means, and it's neat, because though she realizes she's not perfect, the imperfections the reader sees are not the same ones she'd acknowledge.

I also love Darcy, because he's such a magnificent jackass at times, and he totally makes me want to name any son I might have, "Fitzwilliam." I think I loved him more after seeing Colin Firth play him -- I've never read Darcy's proposal scene the same way since.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

This novel sticks out in my mind because I don't think I've ever cried so many times while reading ONE book. I'm not much of a crier to begin with, but this book had me sobbing. Seriously. It's one of those I want to read again, but at the same time I don't want to, because it put me through the emotional wringer the first time.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

"[...] You loved me -- then what right had you to leave me? What right -- answer me -- for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart -- you have broken it -- and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you -- oh God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?"

Dude, seriously. How can you not love a dark, brooding, Byronic hero like Heathcliff? The above passage is one of my all-time favorites. So much so that the book will fall open to that page or thereabouts. My next favorite passage is closer to the beginning of the book:

"[...] I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire."

*sigh* And it's tough, because, as an academic, I have to look at those passages and explain why it's bad the way Heathcliff and Catherine claim to share a soul, thus eradicating any sense of "self," projecting Self onto Other. When all I really want to do is let out a long sigh.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

This is such a difficult novel to talk sum up. On the whole, I don't think it's a great horror novel. And it doesn't even really have everything I like in a vampire novel -- but it does have moments of sheer brilliance. Stokers female vampires are so much more menacing than Dracula himself that I have to wonder why he didn't follow LeFanu's lead and just make Dracula a countess.

However, what really got me to lurve this novel was the seminar paper I wrote during my first year of grad school, deconstructing Dracula as an anti-Catholic novel, which I completely didn't expect to work, but it SO did. (Despite the fact that my prof had very little regard for the gothic novel, and pretty much sneered at anything I wrote. *sigh*)

Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin

OMG. I frelling adore this novel. And I know a lot of people who just don't have the patience for it, because Maturin has this totally crackified storytelling frame -- at one point in the novel, you have something like a story, within a story, within another story, read by a character who's finding all of this in a diary. But I LOVE the descriptions. Love. Them. Maturin's got such a way with words, and Melmoth is SUCH a BASTARD. GAWD, he's just... a bastard! And then he tries to do... the right thing, I guess, except it doesn't really look like the right thing on the surface, and... wow. Yeah.

...Another anti-Catholic novel written by an Irish Protestant.

And, no, Othello isn't on this list. I have that in an anthology. *sheepish*

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_midoriko_sama_/]

I thought I was the only one who loved Maturin! >vadore this part:

"[..]you love Edgar, and Edgar loves you. All seems smooth and easy: where is the obstacle?"

"Here! and here!" replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast, "in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong!"

[..]

"This is nothing," she cried, "I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with Weeping to come back to earth [..] I have no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now, so he shall never know I love him; And that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moon beam from lighting, or frost from fire."

[..]

"[..]My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rock beneath: a source of little visable pleasure, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!"

*Le sigh*. It gives all the right and wrong kind of shudders.

[tatertott.livejournal.com]

Ahh..I read Bitten and Stolen by Kelley Armstrong - both great books that I had to order in to my library.
What is The Lovely Bones about?

[everstar3.livejournal.com]

The Lovely Bones is about a girl who is murdered and then watches, from heaven, I think, the effect of her murder on her family, friends, and killer. I haven't read it, but I remember that there was quite a clamor about the literary device of her narrating it post-mortem.

[somnambulicious.livejournal.com]

Ooh, Dracula geekery! Tee hee hee! I've long been enthralled by the sort of antichrist-ish archetype of the vampire (and I'm talking antichrist as in "opposite of Christ," not in the Evangelical sense of the word.) I also seem to remember a lot of Eucharistic subtext in the book, but alas I cannot recall the specifics.

Your paper sounds very interesting.

[thatnanda.livejournal.com]

I hear you. "The Lovely Bones" had me in tears pretty much throughout. Along those same lines, I highly recommend "The five people you meet in heaven." Not as angsty throughout, but when you get to right near the end... heh heh heh... WHAMMO! Totally blind-sided. In a huge, painful, omg-I-think-I'm-going-to-cough-up-my-own-spleen way.