Better'n Chocolate

Kimberley, author of Music and Cats has invited me to a short literary meme. Books are certainly my weakness, and a major decoration in several rooms of our house. Two built-in bookcases, one lawyer's bookcase, two boxes in the closet, my bedside table, and all underneath my side of the bed are filled to overflow with tomes. Some are unread (probably to remain, poor choices at a library sale in a mad dash to stuff a bag before closing time), some are so dog-eared they fall naturally to my favorite passages.

1. Total Number of Books You Have Owned: Gazillion? Hell if I know, but it's a lot (probably more like a thousand).

2. Last Book I Bought (but still waiting to be shipped): Just ordered Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

3. Last Book I Read: As I usually read several simultaneously, I will list some of the titles I have finished in the last few weeks:

Texas Wild and Beautiful - Willard Clay (a "coffee table" book of Texas wildflowers)
In Search of Stones - M. Scott Peck
Texas Rhapsody - Bill Porterfield
High Tide in Tucson - Barbara Kingsolver
Raven's Exile - Ellen Meloy.
Goodbye To a River by John Graves.

4. Five Books That Mean a Lot To Me:

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott: First book that made me cry, and I was so surprised that a book could move me to tears.

Secret Life of Walter Mitty - James Thurber: Hooked me on Thurber forever.

Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell: Read more times than I have fingers, the characters are personal friends of mine now.

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. I picked the title without knowing anything about the book for a junior english class semester assignment. After a few pages, I realized it WAS NOT a horror/Poe-ish book, tried to exchange it for a different one and was refused by my teacher. I learned a lot from Conrad, and actually enjoyed my reading. Huh, go figure. An English teacher knowing what's good for me.

Dr. Zhivago - Boris Pasternak: First book my Dad and I read together and discussed in detail. He encouraged me to tackle some of Pasternak's poetry as well, and I will never pick up this book without the remembrance of our long, late night dissertations.

5. Four (not five, okay?) people to lob the meme to:

Hokule'a
Harriet
Mary Lee
DarkoV


In closing this post, I just have to quote some from a book that is truly best read WITH chocolate although Meloy's passages are so rich you can smell, taste, and feel all the specialness of her beloved Desolation Canyon in Raven's Exile:

In the late evening, lemon light softened to pale rose, Mark rallies me to river's edge, where the full moon rises above a low scallop of cliff, throwing bits of silver across the river mirror. We swim in the watery silver, the moon's twin. The moon disappears behind the cliff then rises fifteen minutes later above a higher point. We swim again. Summer night, double moonrise, twice in moonwater.