saavedra77 | The Book Virus

Taking up a gauntlet recently thrown down by greyaenigma:

1. Total number of books owned: 1,049. (I need to fill a wheelbarrow with 100 or so of these and take them to Twice Sold Tales, one of these Saturdays: I need the money and shelf space ...!)

2. Last books I bought: The Coming of The Third Reich, by Richard Evans; Zorro, by Isabel Allende

3. The last book I finished (besides the above): Guns, Germs, & Steel, by Jared Diamond.

4. The books I'm currently reading: The Moor's Last Sigh, by Salman Rushdie.

5. Next book to read: First Democracy, by Paul Woodruff.

6. Most interesting reads during the past year (The meme actually asked for "5 books that mean a lot to me", but it was just too hard to narrow it down to 5! So I'm substituting this question, instead. I can never follow a meme without changing it, at least a little ...): The Ornament of the World, by Maria Rosa Menocal; Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi; The Closing of the Western Mind, by Charles Freeman; Under the Banner of Heaven, by John Krakauer. (I've been meaning to write something about each of these in this journal for ages, but I've never gotten around to it, so at least I'll mention them all, here ...)

I know that sarrabellum and sleepwhenimdead are out-of-control bibliophiles and have an impressive library. On the other hand, I also know that it's all in boxes, so they probably won't want to count it. Still, I'd love to know the answers to any of the above questions they fancy answering--and that goes for anyone else who feels like it taking the book meme challenge, too: Love to hear about the books you love most and/or what you've been reading ...