Oy, I've been passed a book meme. It's about books, and it's short, so I can't pass it up.

Last Book bought:

On the Origin of Phyla by James W. Valentine. It hasn't arrived yet, so I can't say much about it. There are no good bookstores near me (well, there is a decent used bookstore in Alexandria, about 45 minutes away), so most of my book purchases are by mail, and there's a lag between desire and satisfaction.

Last Book read:

Savage Run by C. J. Box. There's a whole series of these stories about a crime-solving game warden in a small town in Wyoming, and they're not bad.

I picked it up in our town library, with which I have a love-hate relationship. It's a nice library, with a supportive staff, and they do occasionally pick up interesting books—but they also reflect some truly scary community tastes. I swear, half their stock consists of Louis L'Amour and Harlequin Romances. They have a shelf of the new acquisitions near the front, and what I'm seeing dribbling into the library are bucketloads of Christian/Apocalyptic fiction. Everything Jenkins and LaHaye write gets picked up as soon as it is published, but there are these other long, long series of religious novels that I've never heard of before that I see on the shelf: The A.D. Chronicles, The Cross and the Crown, something that looks like apocalypse horror with the tagline, "Pray for the light", and more…it's just bizarre.

Five Books that Meant A Lot:

What does that mean? And only five? I guess I'll just pick a random subset that have made an impression on me, with an attempt at keeping the list diverse. I could pack this with an easy dozen biology books, you know.

The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini. I read all of Sabatini's books as a kid, and just about anything to do with seafaring. There was a time in my youth when, if a square-rigged ship had sailed into Puget Sound on a provisioning stop prior to heading to the South Seas, I would have been gone. Just my luck, nothing stopped by.

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. Once, when I was laid up with appendicitis, my dad made a trip to the library to stock up on reading material for me. He actually went into the adult section and came back with a number of things, but this was the one I remember. I read it, and thought to myself, "So that is science-fiction!" and was hooked for life.

Gilgamesh : A Verse Narrative by Herbert Mason. I found this in my late teens, when I'd experienced a whole series of losses, and it meant a great deal to me: I wasn't alone, the death of loved ones is something humanity has been suffering with for its entire existence.

Sociobiology by E.O. Wilson. This book came out when I was a freshman in college and taking piles of chemistry and math, but no biology…so I got it and read it to see if biology really was what I wanted to do with my life. Forget the controversies, forget the philosophical issues—I was dazzled by the breadth and depth of Wilson's writing on the subject. Oh, yeah, I was going to be a biologist.

Developmental Plasticity and Evolution by Mary Jane West-Eberhard. Like Sociobiology, this is a magnificent survey. It's not easy reading, but wow, does it ever hit the real controversies in biology hard, raising interesting questions on every page.

I'm supposed to pass this along to other people, but just naming them isn't evil enough. Instead, I'm just going to say that anyone who comments on this article is required to sate the devouring meme themselves.