Three-book meme.

Choose three books from your personal library that as a set of three would allow most of your friends to guess with reasonable certainty that they came from your house, and explain why if necessary. The aim is to pick books if possible such that any two of the three don't necessarily uniquely define you.

a) Jane Lindskold, Legends Walking
b) Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You
c) José Martí, Ismaelillo / Versos Libres / Versos Sencillos (collected).

Substitute for (a), her Changer or Mike Resnick's Santiago. I might have done better to substitute a Sandman book, or one of the ones on paganism, for (b), since those are things many of my friends would more readily be aware of. That book of poetry belongs on the list, however.

Then choose three more that people would be surprised to find on your shelves (Terminal damage to your street cred is optional).

Hmmm. I'm not sure anything would be a huge shock to most of my friends. If it's a book, anyway. The things seem to sort of wander in and set up shop no matter what. And I shan't cheat by listing ones that are there because Scott likes them.

*eyes library dubiously* Um. The poetry books shouldn't surprise anyone. The books on religions and Mesoamerican cultures aren't exactly blink-worthy to many of my friends. SF/Fantasy won't surprise anyone. (I could point out that I own a lot of Zelazny, but that would be breaking the "don't cheat by listing Scott's books" rules, so...). Books of fiction and poetry in Spanish? No dice. Um.

Heh. I own some writing books. Bova's Notes to a Science Fiction Writer maybe? (I own one on writing mysteries that's more unlikely, but I've never read a page of it that I can recall.)

Aha! Linda Katherine Cutting's Memory Slips. There's an unlikely one (acquired more to study how she puts it together, having seen it mentioned elsewhere, than being drawn to it by interest in the subject matter, which I wasn't - the presentation was what I wanted to watch).

I don't suppose anyone would accept Writing Solid Code or Code Complete as unlikely? No, didn't think so.... Okay, rule out the rest of the computer books....

Hmm. No, I don't think any title from the next section of shelves would be surprising to my friends. They'd probably raise their eyebrows if I posted it publically, given my shyness factor, which is fair: if I did, I'd be brilliant red. Moving right along, since I don't want to match my t-shirt....

So, let's try Die Broke for the third. (Why? Because I've just about run out of bookshelves to consider titles from.)