Total number of books owned?
at least 750-1000.

The last book I bought:
Two books–
Lay Back the Darkness, poems by Edward Hirsch
Strike Sparks, selected poems of Sharon Olds

The last book I read?
the Edward Hirsch listed above.

5 books that mean a lot to me?
wow.

News of The Universe, an anthology of poems edited by Robert Bly. Unique collection of poems that attempts to highlight the broad range of mythopoetic exploration of the larger intelligence of the world (this book is impossible to describe — just go get it).

Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco. The book the DaVinci Code was stolen from. If it wasn’t so patently obvious what a shitty job Dan Brown did, I think Eco would have a case for a plagiarism suit — that, and the fact that Eco’s novel/meditation/essay on the creation of meaning and the insane power of belief is so much more than a simple conspiracy theory book.

1 Spark, by Tony Brown. Don’t laugh — I mean it. I think this chapbook from 2000 was the best single coherent piece of work I’ve created to date. I chose poems that I thought best represented a theme, and i think that even though the poems were from several years’ worth of writing, they really connected together well. That chap’s been my benchmark for what constitutes a well-done collection of work ever since. I will exceed it someday, but that will always remain the place i did it first.

Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. Oh, the faces of a city. I have no idea of how to best explain this small book of short prose pieces — interchanges between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan in which Polo describes cities he has seen on his travels. That tells you everything and nothing.

Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly. This is the most important book for me on this list. A discussion and ruthless dissection/damning of the destructive legacy of patriarchy — and the single greatest work on the power of language to carry meaning that I have ever read. You’ll never read the same way again after reading this book. I mean that. (As a corollary? Let me also add Daly’s Wickedary for further reading on the topic. Matter of fact, let’s toss Beyond God The Father in too…but Gyn/Ecology hit me at a critical moment in my life, and I was never the same after that.)

Quaker Meeting tag — respond if you are moved to do so.