So waaaaaay back (before you was born, dude, when life was great) blogs used to be social media, like Twitter only less angry, and we had MEMES.
And yes I participated.
That post above is one in which you had to answer:
How many books do you own?
What is the last book you bought?
What is the last book you read?
What are 5 books that mean a lot to you?
I’m a joiner! I’ll answer book questions any day!
How many books do you own?
- Physical books: one bookcase + two boxes of overflow comics – mostly art books, comics, and reference – I used the single bookcase as my limit for years, aggressively donating books to make room for new, but started buying a lot more books during the pandemic and really need to get a second bookcase…
- Ebooks: I’ve tagged 267 books as “owned” on my Kindle
What is the last book you bought?
- Fiction: Illuminations by T. Kingfisher (in e-book), who is an auto-buy for me
- Non-fiction: pre-ordered Chris Bailey’s How to Calm Your Mind – I liked his first two books a lot
- Art book: There and Back by Jimmy Chin – he takes great photos and I’ve also been enjoying the interesting adventure stories interspersed through the book
What is the last book you read?
- Fiction: re-read His at Night by Sherry Thomas
- Non-fiction: re-read the writing book 2k to 10k by
- Art book: Justina Blakeney’s Jungalow
What are 5 books that mean a lot to you?
- How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell – this book inspired me to start a year long art project/ business
- Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach – I would never reread this and expect I would have problems with it today, but seventeen year old me was quite taken by the idea of creating a new world that valued ecology – I’m still into bioregional thinking, with my blog even called Cascadia Inspired
- Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare – this is the first romance novel I tried reading, which made me realize I’d been blindered by prejudice about the romance genre and opened up an entire new world of stories centered on emotional growth and connection — and now I write romance!
Meaningful is not quite the right word for some other books that have had an impact on me, so I’m pivoting to another variation on this question:
What books have been especially influential to your thinking?
- Your Money or Your Life by Vicki Robin – this influenced my perspective on money and work and was my entre into the world of FIRE (along with Mr. Money Mustache)
- Story Genius by Lisa Cron – this helped me understand storytelling much better than any writing book I’d read before, and brought my storytelling to another level
- Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong – I read this in my freshman year of college and still come back to this concept of oral and written culture constantly, nearly twenty years later
