Cheryl has called upon me

A blogger friend of mine, Cheryl has tagged me with the following.

1. The number of books I own. Shelves and shelves and boxes and boxes. I read therefore I am. I read fiction, bios, history, technicals books and despite what Rev. Dr. Abi may thnk I read from both views of an issue. I read contempory junk and classicsal literature. I read what ever I can get my eyes on. I am a lot like the robot in Close Circuit, I need input.

2. Last Book Purchased? Recently Blaze my eldest daughter bought me a gift card at Borders so it has come in handy. The last book purchased was "Praying for Sheetrock", non-fiction by Melissa Fay Greene. It is a story of a smalltown in the south that has its first collision with civil rights.

3. Last Book Completed? A Stranger in the Kingdom, fiction by Howard Frank Mosher. The story takes place in Northern Vermont during the 1950s. Its filled with baseball, small town characters, juvenile adventure, and bigotry.

4. Five books that have meant a lot to me? (1) Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck. I can not look at Americans or large poodle dogs the same since I read it. It is set in the early 1960s when the original "hippie" Steinbeck decided to go out and re-live America and its experiences. He has a custom pickup and camper manufactured to suit him and his large poodle dog, Charley and his whiskey. They then set out to travel the borders of America. (2) Sea Wolf, by Jack London. This book is full of adventure, doubt, hate, deception and love. The story begins in San Francisco before there was a Golden Gate Bridge and the trip across the bay was done on ferries. There is a collision in the fog with one of the ferries and an ocean goig steamer. The protaginist, Hump, is found floating in the ocean by a seal hunting ship. They retrieve and revive him but he has to stay on board until their seal hunt is over. The seal hunt takes him to the northern Pacific along Japan and toward the Behring Strait. A soft handed writer then has to evolve and learn to be a sailor, hunter and survivor. Humps antaognist is Captain Wolf Larson the meanest SOB I have ever met on paper. (3) The Zen Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pursig. This story tells of a trip across Northern United States on motorcycles with the author who is a professor of philosophy, his young son, one of his students and the students girlfriend. The story pursues the truth of life from one point during the professors obvious midlife crisis, its is the confrontation of his ghosts from the past. It is an excellent examination of life and sanity and insanity are so closely paralleled. (4) The Legend of Bagger Vance, by Steven Pressfield. It is the parallel of golf and life and how as things change they stay so much the same throughout history. (5) Northern Borders, by Howard Frank Mosher. I have recently discovered Mosher and have developed a real kinship with his words. This story is about a young boy, Austen Kitridge who is sent to live with his paternal grandparents in northern Vermont during the 1940s and 1950s. Austen lives with his grandparents from the first grade until he graduates from high school. The story is full of great characters, adventure and real life relationships between people within a family and throughout a real life.

Five books that made an impression on me is really difficult since I read and write daily. Over the years many stories I have met, if you will have made impressions on me that I can not actually point at or overtly draw from. I suppose everything I have read has made me different I am just not in tune to the change.

I honestly could put together another list if asked three of four weeks from now. I have read most of everything that Hemingway, Steinbeck, Twain, London, Kesey, Grisham, King, and Patterson have written.