1. How many books do I own? A couple thousand or so, we have estimated (based on how many boxes of books I had to pack before I moved here). I have 5 bookcases of them here in my living room/computer room, and 6 bookcases of them in my library (which, after W. Cleon Skousen, I often call my "Freedom Library"(, plus books lying all around me here in this computer room and in my mastur-bedroom. Piles of magazines lying around here, too, mostly Astronomy (which I buy at the Crossroads Mall every month).

2. Last book I bought? Colour Perception: A Practical Approach to Colour Theory by Tim Armstrong. That's the kind of book I have dreams about at night. Colors, colors, colors, colors.... Or: Colours, colours, colours, colours....

3. Last book read and book I'm reading now? Just finished G. K. Chesterton's The End of the Armistice (in which, just before his death in 1936, he predicted the coming of the Second World War beginning with an attack on Poland by Bolshevist Russia and Nazi Germany). I'm now reading his essays from the Illustrated London News from 1914-1916.

4. 6 (7? 8?) books that mean a lot to me?

Stories From Old Egypt (the book that made me, before that was L. Frank Baum's Oz series). Also, very shortly after, Hawaiian Myths of Earth, Sea, and Sky

Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West

Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead

Optical Color & Simultaneity by Ellen Marx

Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology by Murray S. Davis

Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions by Jean A. Laponce

Stories From Old Egypt (the book that made me, before that my religion was L. Frank Baum's Oz series).

I'd better also throw in Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, and other works. Both Oswald Spengler and Ayn Rand were inspired by Nietzsche.

The list never seems to end....

Oh man. Gotta think about this one....

My favorite book of L. Frank Baum's Oz series is The Lost Princess of Oz.

5. Some books I need to get and read in the future include:

G. K. Chesterton's A Short History of England

Alain de Benoist's What is a Pagan?

Leonard Peikoff's forthcoming The DIM Hypotheisis ("DIM" = "Disintegtation, Integration, Misintegration")

Jame's Valliant's forthcoming The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics

Done. :-)

You are asking somebody who's professionally disorganized to write about books you do realize. :)

It's a good thing you passed on me. I haven't got a clue as to the total number, and couldn't list my most recent purchases if I tried.

On Saturday my girlfriend and I bought a combined 100 books. We were impressed with that nice big round number.

But in the interests of promoting great prose, I've just begun George Grote's 'A History of Greece,' which is unparalleled. It's an eminently readable specimen of Victorian prose written with great perspicacity by a scholar ahead of his time. He was criticized in the 20th century for an ideological bias towards liberal democracy, as if that were a bad thing, but his treatment of the materials is honest and transparent, and in the Everyman's Library edition at least the abundant footnotes on nearly every page allow you to read the relevant passage of Greek and Latin originals or easily find his sources.

A complete set is is difficult to come by and expensive nowadays (usually 10-12 volumes and ranging from about $150-$2000, depending on the edition), but individual volumes can be gotten affordably and there are abridgement's (if you can stomach them).

I'm also reading 'Love in the Time of Cholera,' which is immensely entertaining, though Grote keeps me far more interested.

The girl and I are reading Livy together as well as Euripides' Medea, will be reading all of Horace this summer with a small group of friends, and, if I have anything to say about it, Isocrates as well.