Book Meme - 'Cos I'm Bored

The Fatman tagged me for this thing (before he knew I had a blog, and after I'd been blogging for about two months), and I've been putting it off, but since today's on off day, and since we all need a little bring down from the week's excitement to this point, I figured I'd give it a shot. Prepare to be extremely unimpressed.

1) Total Number of Books I Own: Who the fuck knows? I'm certainly not going to go count them. 50? 100? Something in between sounds about right. I do know that I have books from college that still have the plastic wrap on them.

2) The Last Book I Bought: Here comes the boring part. The last two (bought at the same time) are So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless, both by Douglas Adams, and the last two books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Never got around to reading them, and wanted to read them before I saw the movie, which I still have yet to see. But hey, if this whole girl thing works out, I might start seeing more movies.

3) Last Book I Read: Currently reading both Mostly Harmless (about 30 pages left), and the Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy (put on hold while I finish the Adams books). I'll probably move on to All the Pretty Horses before finishing the Border Trilogy with Cities of the Plain.

4) Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me: I don't like the way this one sounds, so I guess I'll do my five favorite books, or those I'm most likely to re-read.

• You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting - Seminal book on Japanese baseball, and an interesting look at the cultural differences between Japan and the U.S. through the prism of baseball. A lot of great stories, including one by one of the Lee brothers, in which he relays the tale of a manager who called a squeeze with the bases loaded and a 3-2 count so as to avoid a double play. The sign was stolen, so the opposing manager called for pitchout, which would of course walk in a run. The batter, afraid of failing to get the bunt for it, lunged, missed, struck out, and the runner from third was a dead duck, resulting, of course, in a double play. This one was a secret Santa gift when I was a freshman in the dorms from a very creative guy that lived across from us (he hid the gifts and gave clues on where to find them). I don't think he was gay, he was just kind of cool. He was big Echo fan, too.
  
• Into the Wild, by John Krakauer - I like Krakauer's writing style, and this was a fascinating story, set in many parts of the country which I've visited. I've read this book at least five time.
• Bankruptcy Anthology, by Charles J. Tabb - You're probably thinking "what the fuck?" I have an acknowledgement from having done a fair amount of work on this one. Any book with my name in it automatically makes the list.
  
• Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, by Mike Nelson - I've never, ever, laughed so hard at a book before. So it's just a collection of bad movie reviews. Who cares? It's fucking hilarious.
• Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser - I read this book four years ago, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've eaten at McDonalds since. But not only did this get me off mega-chain fast food, it praised In-N-Out to the hilt.
  

5) Tag Five People and Make Them Do This on Their Blogs: No. Seriously, no. The only other people I'd even consider sending this to are probably the other Angels guys, and they do pretty much primarily Angels stuff. If anyone wants to have at it, though, be my guest.