Books, Books, Books

Wonderful Absolute Vanilla... (& Attylah) has tagged me for this meme and although I’m usually reluctant to speak – even worse, write - about me, I’m writing this gladly, books being a topic I would eagerly discuss anyplace, anytime.


Total number of books owned

Many, yet never enough. I have several walls covered in bookcases now, in my library, and I grew up in a house that has several rooms with many more of these book-covered walls. I am used to books, I live with books, I couldn’t live without books. I dive in their well of knowledge, and experiences, let myself permeated by strong feelings, and come out transformed most of the times, my soul enriched with a piece of somebody else’s soul. The ones that touch me the deepest also make me cry when I close their covers, as if I were saying good-bye to a dear friend. I have books of science fiction, history (ancient, mostly), just fiction, astronomy, art, children’s books, mathematics, Earth’s enigmas, dictionaries, cooking books, poetry, etc., etc., etc. I have many interests, more than I could list here… I’m still dreaming of the mysterious library at the abbey in Melk (from Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”)…





Last book bought

I’ve just bought a few from Amazon Canada:
“Holes” by Louis Sachar and “Tunnels” by Rodercik Gordon And Brian Williams, both of these because of Jon (in the best of ways, it’s meant as a compliment, Jon, if you read this), “The Gate of Worlds” by Robert Silverberg, dare I say the greatest?, certainly one of my favourite authors of science fiction and fantasy, and “Roget’s International Thesaurus.”

Last book read

I always read several books at the same time, so that I can switch between them according to my mood, the time of the day, or the place. “The Ants” by Bernard Werber is the one I’ve just finished. More than science fiction, by this very good French author, it is a satire and an invitation for us to consider more carefully the intelligences just beneath our feet…

Five books which mean a lot to you

Ah, this is the most difficult one. Which to choose, which to choose out of so many? In no particular order, this is a list of (only) five:

“Voyage to the Centre of the Earth” by Jules Verne – this I read when I was about ten years old and reread many times since, including once this year. Everytime, it is just as fresh as the first. (Beware of most English translations, though.) This book has instilled in me a love for science, which has never left me since, and has opened for me the road of imagination not limited by the confines of our reality. Anything could happen and does happen in the world of science fiction…

“The Desert of the Tartars” by Dino Buzzati - an existential parabola, the story of Giovanni Drogo and others whose destinies are linked, by their own will or lack of, to this unnamed timeless fortress, at a vague northern border of Italy, where some leave, some die, and some are waiting their lives away. What keeps them tied to that place is the absurd hope of a “war,” of an invasion of “tartars” from beyond the mountainous desert. Although the human existence is ultimately tragic, it matters how you face your enemy, be it the “tartars” or the final one, Death…

“Gone With the Wind” by Margaret Mitchell. In my mid-adolescence years, I was Scarlett and Melanie, and fell in love with Ashley, and Rhett, and the rich cruel history of the South. I lived in this book. I still feel like Scarlett…

“The Magus” by John Fowles. I am still astonished by the elaborate, fascinating deception set up for the one of the main characters in this book, in this intense “godgame” in which the border between reality and ireality finally disappears – I often wonder, how much of our own lives are like this…

“Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umberto Eco, this amazing manipulator of semiotic material. This philosophical tale embraces everything that, over the ages, has been given the rank of mystery: gnosis, secret orders, white and black magic, astrology and alchemy, the Hebrew Golem and the philosophers’ stone… all intertwined in a text of an amazing richness. It takes a strong will and desire to go past the first pages, but once you do that, you’re irremediably caught in it…

And now it’s my turn to “challenge” somebody:

Bernita, Dewey, Jon, Pearl, Poetess, you’re “it”!