Pearsall of Pearsall’s Books has tagged me with a new meme, so here are some Things about me and books.

1) Total number of books I’ve owned:

~300, including the ones in boxes. Still own pretty much all of them, except the ones which have been nicked.

2) The last book I bought:

I was going to say What the Media Do to Our Politics by John Lloyd. It’s well-written, well-argued, well-researched, and I still disagree with almost every aspect the book – in some ways, an ideal read.

Then I remembered that I bought The Rise Of The Indian Rope Trick as a light read when I went on holiday. Whimsically diverting, but not exactly edifying, not that it’s supposed to be. And it’s written by a Professor of Magic Studies, which is rather an excellent job title.

3) The last book I read:

This is slightly hard to answer, since I normally read several books at once. The last book I started was White Mughals by William Dalrymple. I started it on the Tube this morning, so haven’t yet got very far… The last book I finished was How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer. Probably not a book I’d normally have chosen to read, since it consists of beautifully written, well-characterised and twisted coming-of-age stories about Jewish-American girls, but a friend lent me it and I’m glad that she did. And I’m also in the middle of rereading First Love, Last Rites, which makes much more sense now than when I was 15.

4) Five books that mean a lot to me (in no particular order):

The Rachel Papers. I know, I know; I suspect it’s mostly nostalgic value, and there’s a chance I’d find it almost as lame as Martin Amis’s recent work if I reread it now. But at the time, it was the most evocative book In The World Ever.

The Long Dark Tea-time Of The Soul by Douglas Adams. Douglas again probably partly wins out of nostalgia – but this is a book that was still brilliant on adult rereading. It’s far more imaginative and original than the H2G2 series – instead of (brilliantly) satirising English life using scifi clichés, it goes beyond parody to create something very, very strange indeed.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Do I need to say anything here? A comic novel about the horrors of love and totalitarianism, which manages to be one of the funniest, most upbeat, bleakest and most downbeat books ever written. And which actually has some explicit and non-lame sex scenes, which is unusual in anything written by a man (or a woman, come to think of it. Writing about sex is as difficult and pointless as fucking about poetry).

Christ, narrowing this down is hard. Err, how’s about The Picture Of Dorian Gray? Wilde is the pioneer and master of the whole ‘applying the plot of classical tragedy while also being entirely flippant the Terrible Moral Sins that his characters commit’ thing, which is something I like stylistically. Light comedies about suffering and death. Auschwitz The Musical. Yeah.

And A Treatise of Human Nature. Bollocks to metaphysics. Be sceptical. Humean behaviour is by far the most civilised incarnation of human behaviour. Also, go vote for him in Radio 4’s Greatest Philosophers poll. Vote for anyone else, and I’ll break your legs.

5) Tag five people and have them fill this out on their blogs:

Damn, this is getting harder as the UK blogworld expands. Err, Dsquared, Sarah, Gert, Harry Hutton & Sean Thomas.

Side note – Zoe Williams had a piece in the Guardian on Saturday about the category error of trying to Google for one’s keys. More than once while putting this post together, I’ve fired up Google with the aim of Googling my bookshelf…

Update: I’ve been re-tagged by the Pedant General. Thanks, Pedant.