Crap.

Some­one hit me with the book meme.

Num­ber of books I own?

Too many. Boox­ter says I have 120 books at home and 129 in my office. I prob­a­bly have at least 500 – prob­a­bly an even thou­sand – lan­guish­ing at my par­ents’ house, wait­ing for me to live some­where with space to store them.

Last book I bought?

The very last book I bought was 100 Great Cur­ries. I also bought The Cook’s Ency­clo­pe­dia of One-Pot & Clay-pot Cook­ing.

Last book I read (for the first time)?

I’m almost done with Shake Hands with the Dev­il : The Fail­ure of Human­i­ty in Rwan­da by Roméo Dal­laire. Chill­ing.

Five books that have influ­enced me a lot?

Only five? I’ll break this down into book clus­ters, sim­i­lar books with influ­ences dif­fi­cult to separate.

The Trum­pet of the Swan got me start­ed on the trum­pet, but since I’ve dropped that instru­ment, maybe it was­n’t so influ­en­tial. I do still lis­ten to Miles and Louis, so maybe it bal­ances out.

No one in ecol­o­gy can help hav­ing been changed by Geo­graph­i­cal Ecol­o­gy by Robert H. MacArthur or Macro­e­col­o­gy by James H. Brown. Both lay out a major new direc­tion and offer new insights and oppor­tu­ni­ties for sci­en­tists. Both real­ly carved out a vision for where the sci­ence could go, and what we should be doing. I’m almost think­ing of Hubbel­l’s The Uni­fied Neu­tral The­o­ry of Bio­di­ver­si­ty and Bio­geog­ra­phy, but it does­n’t quite make the cut.

Species Diver­si­ty in Space and Time by Michael L. Rosen­zweig is anoth­er major work, but not real­ly inspir­ing.
I’d prob­a­bly have to pick some­thing by Ed Abbey, though I can’t decide what. Desert Soli­taire? One of the books of essays? Prob­a­bly not the novels.

And to round it out, let’s say Pur­ga­to­rio. I dis­liked Par­adiso, and Infer­no was­n’t as inspir­ing, though it was very excellent.

Five blog­gers to inflict this on?

Who has­n’t done it? I want to answers from Kevin Nyberg (in the com­ments), Pat Hayes, Jason Miller, Mike the Mad Biol­o­gist (as soon as he fin­ish­es unpack­ing all those books), and Ed Bray­ton.