i may be a bird in a cage but at least it's your cage

happy birthday, fitofpique! i hope your day is wonderful, full of chocolate and alcohol and naked boys. i love you muchly and miss you lots. ♥

( in which i obsess about obsessing, rhapsodize about the piven, and confess to a small problem involving an inability to stop downloading bootlegs from archive.org )

anyway. thursday. thursday, thursday, thursday. today? sucks. it's hot, and work is boring, and i would demand a do-over on this week, except that this week has been a) hot and b) boring and c) sucky, and i don't want to relive that. instead, have a top five list, spawned indirectly by a conversation with pru last night: top five books you "should" have read but haven't. classics. or not classics. whatever. fair game includes things you started but couldn't or didn't finish. you know the drill.

my list:

1. ulysses, james joyce. i was an english major. i should have read this. i haven't, because fact: i think james joyce sucks. and the man didn't know a full stop from a hole in the ground, jesus christ.

2. wicked, gregory maguire. i am sorry, apparently this is excellent, people who know my love for retold stories tell me i will love this, but i think the man cannot write a lick and i have never managed to finish this book.

3. stranger in a strange land, robert heinlein. i love scifi. i have never made it further than three pages into this book without falling asleep.

4. look homeward, angel, thomas wolfe. maybe not a "should have" for everyone out there, but it's a classic of north carolina literature and, you know, if i'd gone the english phd way instead of the library science ms/info science phd way, i'd have ended up writing about some aspect of literature of the american south. so it's a travesty, really, that i haven't read this. but. well. i fell asleep in the middle of page 41 this morning.

5. walden, henry david thoreau. (eta: HA, not emerson! also, i suck.) uh, do i have to give my english BA back now?

OKAY, NOW YOU GO. come on, all of you who've held out on dan brown! fly your flags high here! (seriously. i read the da vinci code, and that is four hours i would like back, please. if you haven't read it, i want to know so i can praise you for not wasting your fracking time.)

(also, in terms of "should have", i think that sars' essay book smarts is one of the best things i've ever read about should have versus wasting your time on stuff that sucks. and yes, of course, i know: who decides what sucks? this is a top five that's open for much interpretation, play it however you want to read it. okay? okay.)

finally: i have some big, big love for the tarheel baseball team today, because last night they advanced to the championship series in the college baseball world series for the first time ever, and it was all because of a play at the plate, made by an adorable, sweet-tempered, thoroughly mediocre catcher. ♥

hey, it's thursday! it's the new year! top five list! etc!

top five favorite novels. yours, that is. what are they? all-time favorite novels. graphic novels, children's fiction, anything goes. just talk to me, work is boring.

my list:

1. tender is the night, f. scott fitzgerald. god. i read this one in paris, in a bathtub in a hotel in montmartre, and it couldn't have been more appropriate or hit me harder. the scene where nicole gets dressed before she goes to sleep with tommy? slays me every time.

2. the time's traveler's wife, audrey niffenegger. not everyone who read this loved it like i do. but i did, i do, this is my chicago, this is a love story to end all love stories set in a city that i love.

3. beach music, pat conroy. my copy has been re-read so many times that the last time i re-read it, forty pages out of the middle fell out of the book into the bathtub. um.

4. tam lin, pamela dean. if you go and read the reviews of this on amazon.com, you'll see a lot of complaints that say "no one real talks like this." if you've read this? my friends talk like this. carleton students talk like this. like time traveler's wife, this book is about a place that i love very, very much, it is a fairy tale set in a place that was nothing but normal for me, and i adore it.

5. shoeless joe, w.p. kinsella. i of course prefer the thrill of the grass to even this one, but that's short stories, not a novel. and this - field of dreams is a good movie, but this book is a masterpiece of loving baseball.

come on, people, talk books with me. please? otherwise i might go out of my mind with boredom at work today.

i know love-ins aren't as much fun as hatefests, but i thought we'd give it a try this week, okay? immediately contrary to last week's top five of hate and rage, this week's is top five fictional characters you love without bounds. not, of course, necessarily romantic-type love; just the fictional characters, movies or tv or books or whatever, who're your favorites. the ones you'll jump to protect or defend if somebody slags them off. you know.

my list:

1. josh lyman from west wing. even when josh is being an asshole, which is frequently, i still want to take him home and feed him soup.

2. dan rydell from sports night. aaron sorkin has a character type, and i am a sucker for it every time.

3. wesley wyndham-pryce, from angel (never wes on buffy, though). even - especially - fucked-up crazy possible evil wes from the end of s3. there's nothing wrong with him that a lot of booze and the love of a good woman lawyer won't fix.

4. kay howard from homicide: life on the street. i once said that kay is the closest i'll get to seeing myself in a character on tv. i stand by that.

5. remus lupin from harry potter, etc. which is why i persist in torturing him mercilessly in stories; i only hurt because i love, remus. i only hurt because i love.

honorable mentions to the macmanus brothers, ray kowalski and sirius black. but other people defend all four of them better than i could, so i leave it to y'all.

love is just as fun as hate, kids. LOVE!

unrelatedly, carleton was on a trimester system - nine and a half weeks of class, then finals, three times a year. it was perfect for my attention span, because as soon as i was starting to get bored with a class, it was over! this semester thing? is KILLING me. i'm completely checked out of all three of my classes and i still have massive projects to finish and presentations to give and it sucks.

in conclusion, ray kowalski.

dear god, is it thursday again already? would you guys mind terribly if i skipped the pleasantries and went straight to the top five, because i'm exhausted and cranky and sick and basically i want to die, which is no way to feel the day before the boy arrives for the weekend, plus i have a department meeting this morning.

so. top five fictional characters you really just want to punch in the face. which is a particularly colorful way of saying "top five fictional characters you hate". go on, then. hate!

my list:

1. lily bart, from house of mirth. oh. my. god. shut. UP.

2. jay gatsby, from the great gatsby. either go get your woman, asshole, or stop whining about her!

3. the main character from the stranger, whose name i can't remember if in fact he actually has a name. apparently i have no patience for existential crises. *shrug*

4. gregory house on house, m.d. i'm sorry, people. i really am. my sister loaned me the first season of this on dvd, and i suffered through seven episodes before deciding that not putting my fist through my tv into hugh laurie's character's face was more important than finishing the season. i tried, i really did, but mostly i just wanted to kick house in the teeth.

5. ... wow, i think that's it. that's a first for me, a list without five entries. except for maybe the karaoke list way back when. anyway.

all right, kids, go: what fictional characters do you want to punch in the face? HATE ON ... NOW!

blah blah blah this space is spoiler-free for half-blood prince if you spoil me intentionally or even unintentionally i will kick you in the head and then ban you from commenting in my journal forever i am entirely serious about all of this etc.

now THAT'S out of the way, top five. in honor of hbp coming out on saturday (two! days!), today's top five is top five favorite children's and/or young adult novels. books that you love that are intended for children, or young adults. they can even be books that you loved as a kid that have stood the test of time. but books. for kids. that you love now. not just that you loved as a kid. books for kids you love now. or at least think fondly of. i'm not picky.

my list:

1. song of the lioness, tamora pierce. this probably goes on my top five all-time favorite books like, no qualifiers. so.

2. dogsbody, diana wynne jones. she sued j.k. rowling because of this book, which is about the dog star, sirius, being falsely accused of murder of another star, and as punishment, he's trapped in a dog's body on earth, and which dwj published in 1975. she didn't win, but i love that little bit of trivia, and i love this book.

3. harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban, j.k. rowling. it's my favorite of all of them, and i don't think that's going to change. sirius! remus! the shack! oh, the love.

4. missing angel juan, francesca lia block. i love this book so much i sent my copy to cee when i found out she hadn't read it. the best sort of urban fairytale.

5. it's like this, cat, emily neville. you know, i re-read this once a year and have every year since i was nine, and it's still really, really good. so.

all right, minions, spill! what are you favorite children's books? i want to hear all about them.

omfg. i was just sitting at my desk, doing my work and minding my own business, and our hr manager randomly gave me both our tickets for the cubs game this afternoon. woo!

Happy happy birthday, sashybaby! I love you bunches and I hope your birthday is wonderful and I will buy you a drink tonight. ♥

In brief, the Cubs game last night. ( good/bad/ugly )

All right, now that my Cubs squee is out of the way, today's top five list. Top 5 Books You're Supposed To Love But Secretly Hate. Classics that you just don't get; bestsellers that you thought were boring and uninteresting or just plain bad; books that multiple people have recommended to you and you just couldn't read. Come on, minions, I know you love to bring the hate. BRING THE HATE TODAY!

My list:

1. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's not his most accessible work (This Side of Paradise) and it's not his best novel (Tender Is The Night), plus it's boring and contrived, so why the hell does everyone teach this in classes? HATE.

2. Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger. This book sucks, and if you disagree with me, I'll kick you in the head. OVERRATED! Read Nine Stories or Franny and Zooey instead.

3. Wicked, Gregory Maguire. I'm sorry about this one, I really am. But while I enjoyed the premise and the story, I thought the writing was so appalling mediocre that I just couldn't understand the raves. I expect a novel to bring it all to the table, not just two of three, you know?

4. On The Road, Jack Kerouac. I really dig the Beats, for the most part, as a purely clinical observer, but I thought this was a big pile of crap. Boring, and if I am told one more time how revolutionary it was, I might vomit.

5. Three Uses of the Knife, David Mamet. There is Mamet-meta that is good. This is not it. One of the reasons I'm actively glad to be out of theater? I will never again have to listen to someone trying to force me to read this crap. Blech.

COME ON, MINIONS, HATE!

In conclusion, Ray Kowalski. (What? It's one of my three default brain settings these days: Why Do The Cubs Suck, Information Technology And Me, and Ray Kowalski.)

Dear Red Sox fans:

Thanks for not burning Boston down, yo.

Love,
Min

P.S. I heard some outrageous rumor that your team beat the Yankees to win the AL pennant; way to go! *grin*

In other news, there is no other news, but there is a Top 5 topic. Top 5 Authors You Think Everyone Should Read. We've done Top 5 Books You Think Everyone Should Read, but this is for authors. The funny ones, the brilliant ones, the ones your life wouldn't be complete without. And tell us what we should read first, second, and last.

My list:

1. Christopher Moore. Start with Lamb, move on to Bloodsucking Fiends, and then from there, you're on your own to decide which of his laugh-out-loud funny novels you want to read. (I liked Practical Demonkeeping particularly.)

2. Reynolds Price. One of the most underrated of the so-called American Southern writers. He has a way with language that I've never seen rivaled, and his stories are incredibly powerful. Start with Kate Vaiden; after that, you can make your own decisions, but they should usually include The Great Circle trilogy (start with The Surface of Earth) and The Laws of Ice.

3. Diana Wynne Jones. Because she's been writing clever, funny, empathic young adult novels about magic and wizards and the supernatural since the 70's, and she's been doing it better than JKR for that long, to boot. Start with the four Chrestomanci books; Dogsbody, Fire and Hemlock and The Merlin Conspiracy are all excellent after that.

4. Sarah Bunting, aka Sars of Tomato Nation and Television Without Pity. Note to self: don't read Tomato Nation at work. It only leads to hysterical choking giggles and failed attempts to hide your ridiculous grin. Start with The Cape Cod League, move on to Nine Reasons To Give Baseball Another Chance, Book Smarts, and For Thou Art With Us, her column on 9/11, which managed to make me laugh and cry 'til I was choking. Then hit the archives. It's all brilliant.

5. Lewis Grizzard. I shout down your protests that he was racist, sexist and xenophobic by agreeing that yes, he was, and he was also the damn funniest man I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and if you like the South, football or newspaper, you should read Grizzard. Start with If I Ever Get Back To Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet To The Ground, which is the story of his newspaper career, complete with loathing for Chicago in no uncertain terms; move on to Kathy Sue Luodermilk, I Love You, his best collection of columns, and then see where your library shelf takes you. His collections of columns are better than his straight books, excepting Georgia, but it's all funny and he's sorely missed, now that he's gone.

What about you?

Folks, there's no rule that says you can't repeat someone who's already been mentioned. Happens all the time when we do music top fives, after all. If you think they should be in your five, say so!

Nnnnnnngh. Another insanely busy day. I'd forgotten how crazy the fall schedule at work usually is. The spring schedule doesn't compare in any way, shape or form of intensity, and I'm only a week into the fall and I'm already wanting to hide under my desk until December. Not good.

But! That is not the point. The point is the Top 5 list. Another lazy list, but hey, I need more stuff to read! So: Top 5 Best Books You've Read This Year, that is to say, the best books you've read since January 1, 2004. Anything you've read, regardless of when it was released. Pretty straightforward, yes?

My list:

1. Lamb, Christopher Moore. The yak shaving. The Jesus-stuck-in-a-bottle. The dead lizard trick. This was both laugh out loud funny and absolutely emotional wrenching, and it is the best book I have read this year.

2. The Time-Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger. Beautiful writing, a gorgeous, unique, inventive story, and a main character who should be played by febrile in the movie. Gorgeous.

3. Obliviously On He Sails, Calvin Trillin. A collection of Trillin's political poetry, I spent several days reading this out loud to Michael and scaring the cat by the both of us weeping with laughter. I quote the entirity of the title poem to express his genius:

On The Release Of George W. Bush's Yale Records To The Public:
Obliviously on he sails,
With marks not quite as good as Quayle's.

<3 Calvin Trillin.

4. The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson. A true-crime story that happened in Chicago during the 1893 World's Fair, this book was absolutely fascinating. I couldn't put it down, I had nightmares for weeks, and between this and re-reading The Stand for the 18th time, I think I know why I'm writing weird urban horror stories set in Chicago.

5. The Darkest Road, Guy Gavriel Kay. The third book in the Fionavar Tapestry, I wept harder at the end of this novel than I have at the end of just about any other novel ever. So lush, and so detailed, and so the synthesis of everything in the fantasy genre that I love. Mmmmmm. Gorgeous.

And you?

Today's Top 5 list is from bryiarrose. Top 5 Desert Island Books. This is a list of the five books you'd want to have with you if you were trapped on a desert island alone - Rosie says that in this case, it's about readibility, not favorites. I mean, The Stand would go on my list of Top 5 Favorite Novels Ever, but I'll be damned if I'd want to read it on a desert island all by myself. Creeeeepy. Keep that in mind - for the purposes of this list, these are the only five books you'll ever get to read again.

My list:

1. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. What? It's not cheating, it all comes in one book! Besides, what's not to like here - you've got comedy, drama, histories, fantasy. Everything. And if you get really bored, you can pull a Kenneth Branagh and do a totally ostentatious one-man production of Hamlet for the sea gulls.

2. Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton. A book that really is, at its core, about how to live alone.

3. Beach Music, Pat Conroy. There's so much in this novel - it's not great literature, but Conroy knows the sounds of the South and how to write them, and Beach Music is full of that. Tiny details, huge sweeping storylines, things that make me weep after 15 readings. I cannot imagine ever getting tired of this novel. Thus, on the list.

4. If I Ever Get Back To Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet To The Ground, Lewis Grizzard. I always end defending my love for Lewis, and I should just stop, because why do I need to justify loving something? Okay, so he wasn't the greatest guy in the world, he hated women and foreigners and Georgia Tech fans, but he could flat-out write, and if I'm going to be stuck on a desert island, I want to laugh. Lewis makes me laugh.

5. A blank book. And a pen. Cheating? Possibly. But being alone makes me want to write, and reading makes me want to write, and Shakespeare certainly makes me want to write, so I'm going to exercise control over the list and say this is okay. It's a book, after all - just one with no words yet.

And you?

Please post your list either in a comment here or a link to an entry in your own journal on this entry. Feel free to post your list in your own journal, of course, but my point with these lists is fostering discussion between the people on my friends list, whether it's arguing over whether or not Catcher In The Rye sucks (it does) or simply sharing a common bond with someone over a book, a movie, a song. Also, if you're going to ask people this same question, please link to this entry and suggest they post here - this isn't a meme, really, but rather a feature of my journal specifically. I welcome anyone who wants to play.

This morning, there was a big ol' poster for Troy on the side of my bus, and I very nearly licked Orlando as I waited for the driver to come back from getting coffee. If the bus driver hadn't shown up and forced me to get on the bus so I wouldn't be left behind, I might have.

Anyway.

Today's Top 5 list is from tablesaw, and it's sort of a cross-genre list. Pretty self-explanatory, as well: Top 5 Books That Were Much Better Than The Movie. Whether you read them before you saw the film or afterwards, the film version just didn't hold up to the book. Maybe the movie itself was awful. Maybe the movie was fine independently of the book, but the adaptation was wretched. Maybe the movie was good, even, but it just wasn't as good as the book. What are they?

My list:

1. Prince of Tides, Pat Conroy. The movie, which really isn't terrible, loses all the lovely intricacies of Southern storytelling that make this novel so good. The movie is clumsy everywhere the book is graceful, and what seems exactly perfect in the novel often seems melodramatic and overdone in the film. In fact, skip any movies made of Conroy's novels, and just read the books instead. He's an incredible storyteller.

2. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, J.K. Rowling. Aside from Lucius Malfoy's Great Fur Hat Of Eeeeeeevil, this movie completely missed the boat on what's lovely about this book. And that, my loves, is why I'm so looking forward to Cuaron and Azkaban, because I think he's going to find the real magic in the story this time around.

3. Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells. Not that this book is particularly important literature - but the point a lot of people miss with it is that it's not just about Great Womyn Power; like many other novels written by people of Southern descent, it's about storytelling. And the movie misses this point entirely, and Sandra Bullock was wretched, and whoever thought casting Dame Maggie Smith as Southern should be taken out behind the outhouse and shot in the head.

4. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier. I didn't like the book much, actually, but Lord knows it was better than 2 and a half hours of Jude's accent. Blech.

5. A Beautiful Mind, Sylvia Nasar. Because the movie cut out so much of what was interesting about Nash, beyond the crazy. Because you can't ignore things and pass the result off as truth. Because Russell Crowe was good, and Paul Bettany was pretty, but Ron Howard did not deserve that Oscar. And because there wasn't enough math in the movie.

Honorable mention to Election, which was actually a pretty good film, but at least when I read the book I didn't have to look at Reese Witherspoon for 2 hours. So the book wins. Also, the satire's better.

And you?

Please post your list either in a comment here or a link to an entry in your own journal on this entry. Feel free to post your list in your own journal, of course, but my point with these lists is fostering discussion between the people on my friends list, whether it's arguing over whether or not Catcher In The Rye sucks (it does) or simply sharing a common bond with someone over a book, a movie, a song. Also, if you're going to ask people this same question, please link to this entry and suggest they post here - this isn't a meme, really, but rather a feature of my journal specifically. I welcome anyone who wants to play.