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.<\/p>\n
However, Bunny asked<\/a>. Soon to be joined in the peer-pressure effort by our favorite bible-reading cosplay freak<\/a>. 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). <\/p>\n So here goes… Expect a rather freestyle approach to the whole meme-answering thing, though.<\/p>\n Since this one was asked in French and it’s been a while: I doubled the effort and made a bilingual post<\/a>.<\/p>\n N\u00e9anmoins notre Bunny helv\u00e8te pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e<\/a> a gentiment demand\u00e9, suivie par un certain geek neuros\u00e9<\/a>. Je pouvais difficilement refuser sans passer pour un pisse-froid…<\/p>\n Je c\u00e8de donc \u00e0 la pression, et vous pr\u00e9sente en exclusivit\u00e9 le premier et dernier “m\u00eame” \u00e0 jamais para\u00eetre sur ce blog. J’ai n\u00e9anmoins pris de grandes libert\u00e9s avec le format.<\/p>\n Vous noterez aussi, je l’esp\u00e8re, l’effort inhabituel pour r\u00e9pondre en fran\u00e7ais. How many books a year do you read?<\/i><\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n A shitload.<\/p>\n 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 bound 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Un paquet.<\/p>\n Cela ne surprendra personne d’apprendre que j’ai toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 un rat de biblioth\u00e8que (je me suis d\u00e9barrass\u00e9 des lunettes en cul-de-bouteille depuis, merci bien). J’ai appris \u00e0 lire vers 5 ans, et imm\u00e9diatement entrepris de lire m\u00e9thodiquement la biblioth\u00e8que de mon p\u00e8re dans son int\u00e9gralit\u00e9. Je n’\u00e9tais pas cens\u00e9 savoir que ce genre de biblioth\u00e8que couverte des oeuvres compl\u00e8tes de tous les auteurs classiques, en volumes reli\u00e9s et dor\u00e9s sur tranche, est plus l\u00e0 pour la d\u00e9coration que pour \u00eatre lu par de jeunes esprits facilement influen\u00e7ables. Apparemment, mes parents non plus, sinon ils auraient probablement veill\u00e9 \u00e0 ce que mes premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de lectures n’incluent pas les oeuvres compl\u00e8tes de Marcel Proust, Geoffrey Chaucer et Friedrich Nietzsche.<\/p>\n De nos jours, \u00e0 cause de mes diff\u00e9rentes occupations, des gribouillages bizarres dans lesquels sont \u00e9crits les livres du coin, de l’\u00e9mergence d’une vie sociale depuis mon adolescence ainsi que, ne nous voilons pas la face, les m\u00e9faits de l’interweb, mon rythme de lecture a dramatiquement baiss\u00e9. Je dois tourner autour d’une vingtaine de livres par an. Plus, quand mes voyages me permettent de ramener des r\u00e9serves de lectures accessibles sans l’aide d’un dictionaire. Retourner vivre dans une cabane au bord de la plage dans l’Oc\u00e9an Indien avec quelques malles de bouquins et suffisamment de r\u00e9serve pour une ann\u00e9e de gin&tonic, fait partie des plans les plus s\u00e9rieusement consid\u00e9r\u00e9s dans mon futur proche.<\/p>\n <\/lang_fr> 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<\/em> (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<\/em> by Lie Tseu), minor part of the early taoist canons, and slightly disappointing in fact.<\/p>\n
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\nCombien lisez-vous de livres par an ?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nWhat’s the last book you bought?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n