I love and mistrust "best" lists. They're 95% a way into a listmaker's mind and 5% an objective taste-making guide. So rather than an "essential" or "desert island" list, I shall (oo, he said shall!) begin here a compendium (oo, he said compendium!) of books, CDs, movies, TV shows, other things that, when I think about them, make me realize I would have been improverished without them. The better name for this list may be "important" titles. Occasionally I may justify an entry, but for now this will be a messy unwieldy list.
I don't think of these as necessarily "favorite" or "best" but more as, well, stuff that's stuck with me. And this is just a start. Also, yes, I am aware that I am looking over my shoulder at you, theoretical reader, and trying to make myself cool by what I include.
I think I'll break this up over multiple entries.
Music:
George Harrison, All Things Must Pass
The Proclaimers, Sunshine on Leith
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Amy Winehouse, "Rehab"
KC and the Sunshine Band, "Please Don't Go"
The Clash, London Calling
Bob Seger, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man"
Rupert Holmes, 85% of Partners in Crime
Nick Lowe, Labour of Lust
Elton John, Rock of the Westies
Beatles, The Beatles and Abbey Road
Stones, Beggar's Banquet and Let it Bleed (yes, I love Exile too but don't feel it always delivers)
Neil Young, Tonight's the Night; "Ordinary People" (perhaps my favorite 18-minute rock song)
TV:
Six Feet Under
The Office (US)
American Idol (for better and worse)
Books, stories, poems:
James Wright, Above the River
Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action
Mark Halliday, Keep This Forever
John Berryman, The Dream Songs
Mary Beth Fennelly's Berryman sequence in Unmentionables
Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking"; "The Death of the Hired Man"; "Design"
Abraham Verghese, My Own Country
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (no, I haven't read it all)
Alice Walker, "Nineteen Fifty-Five"
No comments:
Post a Comment