Book Meme *Grumble*

I thought I was going to avoid getting officially tagged by the dreaded book meme that's been running rampant throughout all of blogdom. Alas, Joel was kind enough to end that hope. :) I tend to bow out of most of the memes I see as they are either very long or very repetitive or make me come up with numbers and such that I just don't want to do, as is the case with this one. But here goes anyway...

1. How many books do you own?
I honestly have no idea. Somewhere on the order of 200 or 300. It would be more, but I didn't read too much growing up unless it was school-related (translation: I didn't read anywhere near as much as I do now), and the books I did read have long since found there way into garage sales, boxes in my mother's garage, or used book stores. I guess it's rather impressive that the 200 or 300 books I do have are the result of only two or three years worth of buying and collecting. Does not bode well for bookshelf space in the future.

2. What was the last book you read?
Just finished Holly Lisle's Last Girl Dancing this morning. Good, quick read. A book you can read while you're sloggin your way through a larger tome, like I am. I did enjoy it, even more so because I figured out the whodunnit pretty darn early. Been a while since I beat the MCs to the solution by a good twenty pages or more. Nice to feel smart while my brain is finding new ways to blonde out on me during pregnancy.

3. What was the last book you purchased?
Also Last Girl Dancing. The next book will be Harry Potter. The book before LGD was MJ Rose's The Halo Effect, read that one during my trip out to Chicago in airports and planes.

4. Name five books that mean a lot to you.
To Kill a Mockinbird by Harper Lee--came face to face with my first real, live bigot in my ninth-grade english class because of that one, taught me a lot.
The Ruins of Ambrai by Melanie Rawn--my first fantasy read, during my first summer on my own after college, completely pulled me into that world.
StarDoc by S.L. Viehl--my first SF series that I started and completed, with the possible exception of L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time books (can't remember if I finished those); those books taught me a lot about what SF could be and how I wanted to write it.
The Cell and Virology--academic books by various professors whose names I'll never remember even while staring at the books, talk about unlocking the cool and mysterious present in and around us every single day (yes, I'm a geek)
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron--I highly recommend this book for anyone struggling with creativity, it's amazing and really helps you reconnect with what's important to you.

5. Tag 5 more people.
Seeing as how I'm probably one of the very last bloggers to do this, I'm not going to bother. I'm pretty sure that all the blogs I read have already done this one, and I'm the sort of person to stop chain letters because I don't want to bother anyone else. :)

Seriously, the meme has been in my mind for a while, making me think about all the books I've read and how I organize and handle the ones on my self, etc. Good stuff for an aspiring author to ponder now and again.