What's in Your Reading Corner?

I was tagged by Along to complete the following questions: (thanks Along!)


1) Total number of books I've owned:

Couldn’t count - thousands…up here in the office I just counted 48 books sitting on top of one bookcase! I have numerous full collections: Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Henry James, Rita Mae Brown, Thomas Wolfe, Iris Murdoch, James Joyce, Edith Wharton, John Fowles, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Hesse, E.L. Doctorow, Aldous Huxley…etc. etc.


2) The last book I bought:

I just bought Girls Lean Back Everywhere : The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius by EDWARD DE GRAZIA.


3) The last book I read:

The Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy.


4) 5 books that mean a lot to me:

a) The Real Mother Goose – because I never tire of the rhymes and rhythms of the poems I read (and were read to me) as a child. The watercolor and pen illustrations are magnificent. The simple verses seem to hold all the truths of the world. Ex: Don’t let other people affect your mood or infect your happiness with the germs of discontent --as in the following poem.

DAME TROT AND HER CAT

Dame Trot and her cat
Led a peaceable life,
When they were not troubled
With other folks' strife.

When Dame had her dinner
Pussy would wait,
And was sure to receive
A nice piece from her plate.

b) The Random House Dictionary of the English Language because it is so beat up from use that it has become more special to me through the years. The cover is torn, some pages are almost ripped through and then taped. I love this huge old tome of knowledge and interesting words with its fingerprints and smudges and broken spine. It's precious to me, and one of the things I'd try to recover if a fire broke out in my home.

c) The Portable Dorothy Parker because it’s a small but solid book that sits nicely in a woman's hand. It's filled with the unsophisticated but oh so funny poems and stories of a most interesting woman with a slightly twisted take on life:

Superfluous Advice
by D. Parker

Should they whisper false of you
Never trouble to deny.

Should the words they say be true
Weep and storm and swear they lie.

d) Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss because I would love to believe that the people we love will not disappear forever from our lives, but instead their souls will return to us in the form of new people to love. I don’t really believe this, but I would like to believe it – so every once in a while I pick this book up and read a chapter or two, it’s comforting.

e) White Palace, a novel by Glenn Savan only because the main female character and love interest is much older than her young suitor, she’s from a different class, he’s a lawyer and she’s a waitress at a hamburger joint…and mostly because the author describes her butt in great detail – lauding, not laughing at the size of her huge behind. Never in my life have I read so many words about one ass.

5) Tag 5 people and have them fill this out on their blogs:

Summer
Laurenbove
Weetzie
Echrai
Doc Nos (even though he never accepts the challenge I will continue to name him until he does!)

Anyone else who wants to share their favorite books would be most appreciated. You can't judge a book by its cover but sometimes you can understand a person better by knowing what books they own.