Book meme

This book meme is doing the blogosphere rounds. OK, I've seen it four or five places.

Number of books I own
I've no idea - a couple of hundred. Maybe. Here. Elsewhere, I've bought more -- but in my life travels they were left where they were when I was gone. So it goes. If I buy anything these days, it's usually online. It's easier and more convenient for me, these days. Exception! If I make a trip to England, I always somehow manage to hit a bookstore and come out with some books.

Last book I bought
Two books by Ian Rankin. At Ally's shop for HK$8 a pop. I just finished Resurrection Men. On to the other Rankin.
Except that Mike W lent me his copy of Will in the World, by Stephen Greenblatt. It's a wonderful biography of William Shakespeare. I'd forgotten how regulated was Elizabethan England. Brutal, too, with all its hanging, drawing and quartering. Many insights on Elizabethan England in general and on Stratford, its outlying villages and towns like Kenilworth. And, of course, he has much to say about how Elizabethan England, and the stages of Will's own life, find their ways into the plays. Or, as the case may be: do not. Greenblatt is highly speculative in parts, but since so little is known about Will S speculation is inevitable. Greenblatt is very knowledgeable, readable, and very entertaining. I am rationing myself. I have a feeling this is a book I shall be sad to finish.

Last book I re-read
Beckett's Dying Words, by Christopher Ricks. Beckett makes me laugh. Ricks makes me laugh. Ricks on Beckett makes me laugh even more.

Five books that mean a lot to me
Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. One of my A-level history teachers lent it to me. It explained a world that until then didn't make much sense. Life took a new trajectory.
Collected Poems (1909-62), by T S Eliot. She opened a book, turned a page, and read to me: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrok. It was like as if she had opened a door for me. I hope she went on to have a happy life. Maybe, she too, later on, discovered Eliot's Four Quartets.
Inside the Whale and Other Essays, by George Orwell. I love essays and these by Orwell are some of the finest in the English language.
Alcoholics Anonymous. I found this book much, much later. It explained a world that no longer made much sense, and how to get out of it.
Love In the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His earlier, more famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude is one of the few novels I have never managed to finish. Just couldn't get into it, kept losing my place, gave up. Much later on, someone lent me Love In The Time of Cholera.
Maybe it was the right time and the right place: a sleepy beach resort in a semi-forgotten part of southern Cebu, the Philippines. The local culture, history, society, vegetation and climate closely resembled that of the book. Not exactly, but close enough. And Marquez makes the textures, scents and sensuality of everyday walls and doors and plants and fabrics so real. His characters are complex, contradictory, pull themselves this way and that, tumbledown flawed humanity, fully drawn. Such a beautiful story. Desire. About desire.
OK, now what's on your list?