There's now a book tag going around, like the Musical Baton. Cup Of Java tagged me, which is nice, but I'm now starting to worry the whole thing's getting a bit spammy so I'm not going to pass it on.
Anyway, it's a good opportunity for me to demonstrate what a Philistine I am...
Total number of books owned:
Couple of thousand? Most of them products of living in Portland for five years - Portland's the place where second hand books go to die.
The Last Book I Bought:
Not The End Of The World
by Christopher Brookmyre. Not really started this yet, but at the moment I'm reading a new Brookmyre every three or four days. You can race through them, they're funny and clever and full of explosions and shootings.
Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Imaginative, funny scifi. And the best scifi writers are like the best planners - they draw all kinds of random threads together, they imagine possible futures and they tell compelling stories.
The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte. I get the sense that Tutfte isn't that nice a bloke. And his stance on PowerPoint is ridiculous and over-simplistic (which is ironic given his stance on the presentation of information) but he makes the most gorgeous books ever. And they're full of wisdom and provocation.
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. As with the Stephenson, except when you're dead bored, stuck at Schiphol, you can sometimes pretend you're a character in this.
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers. Brilliant book. I've read this dozens of times. About a murder at a British advertising agency in the 20s or 30s. Blustery account guys. Dilettante copywriters. Irritating clients. Drugs. They're all in here. Nothing changes.
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