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I thoroughly hate internet “memes”. In fact, I even hate the cheap bastardization of an interesting, yet mostly unrelated, word in order to give some sort of legitimacy to what is, in fact, nothing more than a 21st century take on the braindead chain letter thing, mixed in with a bit of “glad you asked, let me tell you all about myself” blogger hubris.

However, Bunny asked. Soon to be joined in the peer-pressure effort by our favorite bible-reading cosplay freak. And I can’t decently turn a cold shoulder on them without justifiably being labeled a stuck-up killjoy. Plus I do need a diversion from coding and who can resist a bit of self-serving writing every once in a while (all right: not like this whole blog is anything else in the first place).

So here goes… Expect a rather freestyle approach to the whole meme-answering thing, though.

Since this one was asked in French and it’s been a while: I doubled the effort and made a bilingual post.

How many books a year do you read?

A shitload.

I guess it won’t really come as a surprise to anybody that I have always been the bookworm type (I got rid of the coke-bottle glasses ever since, thank you very much). Learnt to read around 5, and immediately proceeded to methodically go through my dad’s library in its entirety. How was I to know that this kind of vanity library, where the opus of every single noticeable classic author spreads over shelves of finely binded gold-engraved volumes, is only meant as a way to decorate your study, not as a reading list for impressionable young minds. My parents didn’t either, otherwise they’d probably have seen that I didn’t start my reading years with the complete works of Marcel Proust, Geoffrey Chaucer and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Sadly, living in a country where I have the reading level of a 5-year old has put a serious cap on my reading habits. To be fully honest: work, miscellaneous hobbies, the sudden emergence of a social life around age 16, and above all, the damn internet, have all contributed toward dramatically lowering the 100 books-a-year rate of yore, down to a fluctuating few dozens; more when my trips abroad allow me to pack on reading material. Moving to a beach house in Madagascar with a few trunkful of books and enough supply for a year of gin tonic is still part of my projects for a very near future.

What’s the last book you bought?

It’s pretty hard to tell, seeing how these days, I buy my books by bunch of twenty, whenever I make it to a friendly western shore. I think it might be Lie Zi’s Cannon of the Perfect Void (title translation is mine: I am not even sure this book’s ever been translated into English: I bought the French translation last year in Paris. French title was: Le vrai classique du vide parfait by Lie Tseu), minor part of the early taoist canons, and slightly disappointing in fact.

What’s the last book you read?

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein?

Ok. Just kidding. But if anybody asks, that’s what.

I always have at least two or three ongoing books at the same time. Last ones would be Antonin Artaud’s highly deranged Umbilical Limbo and the much lighter Sputnik Sweetheart (「スプツニク恋人」) by Murakami Haruki, both good reads.

List 5 books that matter a lot to you or that you particularly enjoyed.

I am pathologically bad at lists. Even more so with books, seeing how I do not even care to attempt ranking the thousands of books I have read, and wouldn’t know where to start anyway.

All I can offer is a glimpse at my bare-bone travel library, which holds some of the books I just couldn’t bring myself to give away or leave behind with a friend, each time I moved country. They do not represent my “definitive top 5 list”: some are only there because of the memories they keep with them. Others because I enjoy opening them and reading random excerpts, every once in a while.

• Lao Tzu - Tao Te Ching: not my personal bible by any stretch, but most definitely a great book to leaf through. At any rate: the best value for your page count.
• Albert Cohen - Solal (and any of the few other books he wrote): because I am still an angsty teenage girl at heart. And also because he’s the best damn writer there ever was.
• Douglas Adams - Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: overplayed as it is, it still might be the funniest book I have ever read. And Douglas Adams is one of the only sci-fi writer who can write.
• Italo Calvino - Il barone rampante (The Baron in the Trees): childhood’s reading that still work for any age, by one of this century’s most brilliant author.
• Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du Mal: even though I am not much of a poetry reader, it’s yet again one of the best read for your buck: easy to carry around (the rather dilapidated pocket edition I own has been following me in my backpack for over ten years now) and fit for every mood. Plus: perfectly fits the angsty teenage part mentioned above.

Who are you going to forward this (3 blogs) and why?

Nobody.

For each “meme” forwarded on the blogosphere, God kills a kitten. And I’d rather do that myself.

But do feel free to take the ball and run with it: either post a link to your own entry or answer directly in the comments.