ckd | The book of the meme, or something like that

When tagged by

fluffcthulhu, a proper Minion must respond.

1: Total number of books I own:

Number? Actual number? You must be kidding. Lots. The number is certainly well over 1000; I don't think it's over 10K, but it could well be.

To give you an idea: our bed has a bookshelf headboard. It is full, and since what it is mostly full of is stacks of mass-market trim paperbacks, it is probably holding about 150 books. Possibly more.

2: The last book I bought:

Visual Function, Paul Mijksenaar. This is an interesting (the subtitle is "An Introduction to Information Design") short (56 pages) book with lots of notes on design from the London Underground map to the airport signage at Amsterdam's Schiphol. It can best be described a very condensed combination of Edward Tufte's and Donald Norman's writing. $6 on the MIT Press Bookstore clearance table.

3: The last book I read: Dale Brown's Flight of the Old Dog, after being reminded of it in an online discussion about its implausibility.

4: Five books that mean a lot to me:

Worth & Lechner, Beneath Apple DOS. My first real introduction to the inside guts of an operating system, minimal though it was (the OS, not the book). This really gave me a start on the "mucking about with computers" track.

Strunk & White, The Elements of Style. A classic work, of course, but in my case something a bit more; I needed to write an admission/scholarship application essay on "a book that changed my life" and used this. I got the scholarship.

Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. This gives me something to aim for when presenting information or doing anything else that involves graphic design. His later books are important as well, but this is the wellspring.

Richard Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!. If you have to ask, then you need to read this book.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory. "The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart." This was one of the books I read while deciding whether to take a job offer I had in hand, or turn it down to try for the one I really wanted. I wound up getting the latter, and the company the former would have been with has fallen on hard times since then.

5: Tag five others and have them do it on their blogs:

I'm not much for tagging folks. If you want to do this one, then do it.

EDIT: I screwed up the orders of magnitude. Fixed.