Is it possible to count number of XML nodes in a node-set with JSTL XML tags?

I searched for a solution for this but couldn't find an answer.
   
  I'm trying to count the number of book nodes from the xml below:
   
  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<books>
 <book isbn="212112">Book Title 1</book>
 <book isbn="212313">Book Title 2</book>
 <book isbn="343444">Book Title 3</book>
 <book isbn="343424">Book Title 4</book>
 <book isbn="656433">Book Title 5</book>
</books>
   
  I tried using XPath's count function, inside the JSP page, but it gives 0 instead of 
  5 - (the number of book nodes)
  
<c:import url="books.xml" var="xml" charEncoding="UTF-8" />
<x:parse doc="${xml}" var="xml_doc" />
<x:out select="count($xml_doc/books/book)"/>
   
  Is it possible to obtain the count of a node set inside a JSP or do I have to first transform the source XML into another XML which obtains the count and then read the count from the second XML file?
   
  -Rashmi

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