I love books. (memed)

(tagged by Swish)

Number of books I've owned: Oh, lord. Well, if it's any indicator, our next big purchase is going to be another bookcase. To relieve our overstuffed coffee table, and night stands, and pantry...
Last book I bought: Two on the same day--a collection of Rackham-illustrated Aesop's (four dollars, worth every damn penny and occupying a place of honor by my colored pencils), and Wesbster's Dictionary of Word Origins (yet to be cracked).
Last book I read: I'm currently in the throes of Donald Kagan's (brilliant) The Pelopponesian War. This is after a failed attempt at Thucydides' masterwork on the same topic. I guess you've gotta start somewhere that's right for you.
Five books that mean a lot to me:
Achilles by Elizabeth Cook (the closest any modern writer has come to imitating the classics--it's poetry masquerading as prose)
The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (once a year--I try to start them in September, in honor of--well, you should know)
The Iliad by Homer (because The Odyssey is for chumps)
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (the reason that I'm such a wack case over the movie is because the screenplay was done by Beagle himself--this book is like a series of pictures)
East of the Sun, West of the Moon written and illustrated by Mercer Mayer (I still have the same copy that I got when I was three and I credit it with jump-starting my fascination with illustration and with all things magic. A must have.)

I'll hand this off to Crunchy, the Toybox, and Marshmallow world.