Tag, I'm it... apparently.

That book meme that's been making the rounds on the Catholic blogs seems to have landed on my desk finally... courtesy of Clayton over at The Weight of Glory. Ok, hmm... The five questions:

1) Total number of books I own: Like so many others, that's a toughie... I seem to accumulate books quite easily. However, I also tend to "redistribute" books also quite easily, between the loaning, the losing, and the letting go to better homes. At the present moment I would guess I have between 250-300. But, I'm leaving for a year in Italy in August... and so many of my books will likely be going on to new homes before then.

2) The last book I bought: Well, I have the good fortune (misfortune?) of living only 30 minutes from Loome Books in Stillwater... and ended up there last week on other business, but walked away with an old copy of "St Thomas Aquinas: Theological Texts" selected and translated, with notes and introduction by Thomas Gilby (with imprimatur from 1953), as well as a nice nearly-new copy of James Monti's The King's Good Servant but God's First on the life and writings of St. Thomas More, published by Ignatius.

3) The last book I read: Read totally? Completely? Entirely? Hmm... I dunno. I don't think I ever read anything entirely anymore, at least it doesn't seem like it. Probably I Believe in Love, a wonderful spiritual book that is a compilation of retreats given by Fr. Jean C. J. d'Elbee, a French priest, on the spirituality of St. Therese (but not just limited to her, with much interweaving of the Bible and writings of other saints).

4) Five books that mean a lot to me: (Like many others, I'm saying up front that the Bible and Catechism are givens...)
* "The Lord of the Rings"... yup.
* Msgr. Romano Guardini's classic, "The Lord"
* Caryll Houselander's "Reed of God" (wonderful little Marian book)
* St. Augustine's "Confessions" (first saint's writings I read, when I was coming back into the Church -- wow, good stuff.)
* Toss up... Either St. Therese's "Story of a Soul" or perhaps G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy." They may seem totally different, but they both had pretty much the same impact on me, making my soul take a good look and realize how little I am and how little the world is -- something I think we all need to be reminded of these days.

5) Tag five people: I'm lousy at this kind of thing... If you are reading this, and you are a blogger, and you have not done this yet, then consider yourself tagged and just do the dang thing already! :)