Tag ! You're it !

I was ignoring this as hard as I could. I didn't want my juvenille tastes to be displayed like this. But when the queen herself demands that you do it, you can only oblige. So here goes.

1. Total number of books owned ? Right now, I have about 30-40. Back home in Madras, I've got about 200+ books on non-techie topics and about 100 books on techie topics.
   


2. The last book bought ? Collected Plays by Mahesh Dattani - I have read most of these as individual works in some fashion or the other, but as a collection they are really awesome in content. It makes it so much easier to see what Dattani was getting at.
   


3. The last book you read ? Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle, Volume One) by Neal Stephenson - A totally mindblowing dramatization of the invention of what we now can casually term, modern science. Stephenson goes a tremendous distance to towards showing how infinitely intricate history really is - millions of stories woven together to make up the collective human experience.


4. 5+ books that mean a lot to me

• The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav

The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the center, the heart of the matter.... This book deals not with knowledge, which is always past tense anyway, but with imagination, which is physics come alive, which is Wu Li.... Most people believe that physicists are explaining the world. Some physicists even believe that, but the Wu Li Masters know that they are only dancing with it.

• The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Even to classify The Fountainhead as a novel seems slightly beside the point. It can be called a novel in roughly the same way in which the architectural creations of its protagonist, Howard Roark, can be called houses, apartment complexes, filling stations, and office buildings [...] Rand's vast, self-commissioned work is a novel and something more than a novel. It's a metaphysical statement, a treatise on psychological theory, an aesthetic manifesto, a commentary on American architecture, an analysis of ethics, a declaration of political principles. It has often been seen as a palace, fortress, treasury, and temple; and, let me add, one doesn't have to be a simple-minded "cultist" to see it in that way.


• There's Treasure Everywhere--A Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson - What more can be said about the little guy and his stuffed tiger that hasn't already been said ? I had this strip up on my website, during my life as a graduate student. It captured just about everything there was to say about my life at that point.





• The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion by J R R Tolkein
  


• The Art of Computer Programming by Donald E Knuth - I remember when I was visiting my friend in Stanford, that we got a fleeting glimpse of the man himself. I swore to myself, right then and there, that I would, eventually, finish reading those books. I'm still working on it.
  


• The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov - In my opinion, the greatest science fiction epic ever written. The vastness of time and space, the pragmatism of science and the endurance of one man's legacy - Salvor Hardin, in Foundation -
• "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."
• "It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety."
• "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."


• Any Uncle Fred/Jeeves Omnibus by P G Wodehouse - For their unmatched ability to make me laugh. Anytime. Anywhere.

Passing this along to Grrl, Angel, Swaroop, Jax, Rat, Swathi and har|sh. If there is someone who hasn't done this yet and is reading this post, please get it over with. Soon.

PS: I cannot begin to tell you how important Google was to this post. What would we do without it ?!?!