Heather's Book List

Heather tagged me for this, and I have absolutely nothing more pressing to do tonight (which is lovely!), so here we go:

How Many Books Do You Own?* There are about 200 on my bookshelf here; there are about 40 more wandering this suite. At my parents' house, I'd guess there are another 150 on my childhood bookshelf, with another 30-40 on the floor near it; about 30 on the shelves by my desk in that room, with another 10-20 on the floor near them; about 10 more near or under my bed in that room; and several boxes in the attic, including about 50 Baby-Sitters' Club books, which probably adds another 100-150. So we total out here at... somewhere in the neighboorhood of 570-640 books. Oops, plus another box or two in the basement from college, which probably adds another 50 books... bringing us to 620-690 books, after just one year of seminary. Don't tell my mother.

What is the Last Book You Bought? Ummm... was probably Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. I don't think I bought any non-school books this quarter.

What is the Last Book You Read? I just finished rereading Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen. I'm also almost done with A Song to Sing, A Life to Live by Don and Emily Saliers.

Name five books that mean a lot to you.
I'm going to assume that the Bible and Book of Common Prayer don't count for an Episcopal seminarian.

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
A Swiftly Tilting Planet - Madeleine L'Engle
Certain Women - Madeleine L'Engle
Iconostasis - Fr. Pavel Florensky
A Woman's Book of Life - Joan Borysenko


Now "tag" five individuals to provide their own lists. Umm... let's tag Debra, Ryan, Ryan, Mike, and Marisa.

*Extended footnote: Tripp has a list of books scholars thinks college students should read on his blog.** Trevor points out that this list is automatically flawed, in that it has no women authors listed on it. I looked at my shelf and realized that I couldn't see any books I felt were college student must-reads by women either, which made me sad. (The closest I come is A Wrinkle in Time, which I think all college students should already have read long before college actually comes around.) Then in counting, I realized that of my primary collection - the 200ish books on my shelf - 32 are by women. And that's counting six by Madeleine L'Engle and four or five others that are specifically about women. And Hope and I agreed that that's probably more than most seminarians have.
**Footnote to the extended footnote: I have read two of the top ten (the Bible and the Divine Comedy). I have read five of the twenty runners-up (Mere Christianity, the Iliad, Aeneid, Oedipus, Animal Farm).