book tag!

virginia hamilton (1936-2002), my first favorite author

i just got tagged by the inimitable bernard bradshaw of sex and the 2nd city. since i was so honored to be tagged on his blog (and i don't mean that in my usual sarcastic, assholish way), i'm postponing the "guys i'd lose 'the gay' for" entry until next week. so now...let's play book tag.

1. total number of books you own: not enough. i mean, i pass for a grad student, but my library (though organized alphabetically) needs a lotta work.
2. the last book i bought: the portable sixties reader, i believe. for the orals list, of course.
3. last book i read: pauline hopkins' wack-ass of one blood for the umpteenth time. the shit makes me crazy.
4. current book reading: i should prolly be reading one of those books on the sidebar, but i'm not. so we'll just go with gayl jones' corregidora.
5. fiction or non-fiction: i'm a literary skolar in training, homie. fiction, of course.
   
6. first book read: man, iono. prolly green eggs and ham or i can read with my eyes shut. dr. seuss was my nigga.
7. largest impact: the house of dies drear. i read this in 5th grade, and i remember being so pleasantly surprised we were reading something about black people, that i read the first 7 chapters during silent reading. we read dies along with the hobbit and the phantom tollbooth in class that year. hey, publik skool wasn't so bad. anyway, i just love virginia hamilton. i was very sad when i learned she'd died. she was my first favorite author.
8. favorite scholarly book: hmmm...whatever do you mean by scholarly? i do fuck with jimmy baldwin's essays, and years ago i was intrigued by marcuse's one-dimensional man. but wayne booth's the rhetoric of fiction, et. al. make me happy b/c they are so clear.
9. most read book: prolly their eyes...
   
10. sexiest book: i often read books with incest in them, and that ain't really all that sexy--unless you're a chester. but, um, i'll go with sula because e'rybody knows in the unrated version, sula and nel got down. then again, the ending of gayl jones' eva's man is kinda sexy (in a fucked up sorta way). i'll quote: "'tell me when it feels sweet, eva. tell me when it feels sweet, honey.' i leaned back, squeezing her face between my legs, and told her, 'now.'" i wouldn't really call it a sexy book, though.
11. biggest disappointments: i've yet to get through toni morrison's love, so that's definitely up there. also, though it wasn't that bad (i actually really liked it), danzy senna's symptomatic kinda couldn't fuck with caucasia. flannery o'connor's novels aren't as great as her short stories. a few of the stories in z.z. packer's drinking coffee elsewhere were a bit disappointing. yet i tend to find something i love in each book i read. except, of course, faulkner.
12. five books that mean something to me: the house of dies drear, definitely. the fall of freddie the leaf by leo buscaglia. sister outsider by audre lorde. the autobiography of malcolm x as told to alex haley. their eyes were watching god by zora neale hurston.
13. book tag (you're it): i tag nahmix, saf, deshi, nick, and mwilli.