mark sinker wanted me to answer these

How many books have you owned?
buying b/w 4 and 6 a week for 15 years or so, including gifts, splurges, and thrifts, i would say about 4000 or so, but that doesnt mean that i havent left a whole bunch on buses, sold large chunks when i needed space or money, gave dozens away, etc--my library tends to constantly circulating, right now, i have about 100-150 in Toronto, and 800 or so upstairs and downstairs here, maybe a bit less.

What was the last book you bought?
i bought a dozen a couple of days ago--6 gor paperbacks (sinker recommended them as sort of pulp delany), goethes book on young wether (because of barthes), hell angels by hunter thompson(i needed a copy), fruit machine by a quebcois queer critic (its quite good), vintage baker(nicholson), phillip jose farmer comp from the mid70s (read him now pat), and the 14th century italian school of whoredom (i collect porn). (raymond what you said about me being ecclectic, you win)

What was the last book you read?
a collection of kinky friedman essays about country music and presidents, plus a really funny and moving essay on heller

Name the five books that mean the most to you.
fuck this is going to be hard, they change all the time--but here it goes.

the complete gospels--edited by robert funk
i grew up with things added and things taken away from the bible, but also the belief of the inerrancy of the bible, so i walked this razor fine line for most of my childhood, and then i sort of gave up on the scriptures for a long long time, and i read this i guess in my second year of high school, and sections of it gave me a personal, intense realtionship to scriptures that i didnt get from either the canon or the apcoraphya---and it was an easy, trade paper back, cheap and easy to access, i know the problems with it, and i know its history, and ive read lots more about it, but as a beginning, it was helpful at best...
and the gospel of thomas is amazing, because it gives hope that if one thinks enough, one can puzzle things thru, i think that it made me a gnostic.

Complete Poems--Frank O Hara
every person who writes poetry now, wants to write like frank o hara, aand for huge portions, i ended up doign the same thing.

Birth of the Clinic--Michel Foucault
its one of thsoe things that burrowed so deep that i cannot write about it so much

Alice In Wonderland--there is a reason why the new book on queer children is called curioser. (and strangeness, and pseduo freudian sexual dynamics, and lush writing, and a sense of meloncholy sadness, and a certain anarchist upending, and those rackham illustrations.)

the bangers and mash series of elemetary readers--made me a life long anglophile.