Chris Bryne of AnarchAngel is propagating a book meme.  In the interests of peace and harmony within the blogosphere I will resist commenting on the glowing words he has for David Eddings. 

1. Total number of books owned
2. Last book bought
3. Last book read
4. Five books that mean a lot
5. Tag five people to continue the meme

Well, my library has probably about a thousand books in it at the moment.  That's after several rounds of culling to stay within the available space.  I hope to expand the space allocated to my books and resume increasing my collection soon.  The last book I acquired for the purposes of reading is the Chronicles of the Lensmen (Volume 1).  The last book I read was The Path of Daggers, by Robert Jordan.  (Yes, I'm behind on posting reviews -- I hope to catch up this weekend). 

And as for five books that mean a lot... well, I'm going to cheat and use series for some answers.  A series can be handled as a sequence of independent works, or as a single story told in multiple volumes; the latter is close enough to a single work to qualify.

1. The Long Run, by Daniel Keys Moran: Rousing and nearly prescient science-fiction with a distinctively libertarian bent.  Very hard to find.
   
2. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress: Ditto, except Heinlein did it first and better in some ways.
3. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time: This doesn't really belong here in terms of quality, but in terms of the amount of time invested (wasted?) on analysis, discussion, multiple rereads, and so on.  The series definitely means something to me.  I'm just not sure what.
   
4. Tigana, by Guy Gavariel Kay: Pure emotion polished to a shiny gleam, with an edge sharp enough to cut the soul.
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula LeGuin: classic and poetic, a paen to the power of language, the importance of self-knowledge, and the necessity of restraint accompanying strength.

UPDATE: When originally posted, I didn't have time to search out 5 other people who hadn't been tagged and tag them.  Now I do.  So here they are:

1. Patrick and Teresa, of Making Light [Accepted]
   
2. Rachel Mills, of Full Frontal Liberty
3. Professor Bainbridge
4. The Angry Economist
5. Alphecca [Accepted]
   

UPDATE: My other blog, TriggerFinger, got tagged for this meme from David Codrea at The War On Guns.

TFS Magnum reports that there's a movie in the works for Ender's Game.  It should be noted that this is an unconfirmed report at this time.

Orson Scott Card's best-seller, Ender's Game, is being made into a movie. Wolfgang Petersen is directing (In the Line of Fire, Airforce One) so there is at least some hope that the action of the book will make it to the screen.

If you are a SciFi geek, you probably already know the whole Ender's Game series, if not all I can say is that it is worth while. (I think there are 5 books in the series, and not all of them are great, but the overall story is good. Check out at least Ender's Game and Ender's Shawdow.)

I tend not to be a strong fan of adaptations.  Sometimes, as with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you get an amazing piece of work that holds true to the material it was based on while providing some of the concrete visualization that the written word lacks.  Most of the time, however, you end up with a script that follows the vague outlines of the plot, but falls apart on any sort of close examination.  Sometimes, you don't even get that.  Witness, for example, the EarthSea series.

However, if you don't encourage the movie industry's attempts at bringing speculative fiction to the silver screen, you won't even get the chance to try.  For that reason I try to approach things with an open mind.

I am not optimistic about an adaptation of Ender's Game, though, because it's tricky.  You could tell the story as a straight action movie, sort of, with a few of the plot twists from the book thrown in; but you'd miss a lot of the point.  Doing it right requires a subtle touch and truly talented actors.  I'm afraid I don't trust Hollywood to have that kind of vision and insight.  

Most likely, this will be turned into an anti-war movie, and if it is, that will be a grave injustice.  But I will most likely go see it anyway, because I hope it will turn out right.