[it wasn't always easy but i sure had fun]

[minervacat]

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,

Comments

[oh_peccadillo]

1. Anna Quindlen. I've been reading her every-other-issue Newsweek columns since I can remember. This woman has a brilliant knack to say the perfect thing at the right time. She always manages to take what I'm thinking and make it more clear and eloquent than I thought possible. She's liberal and feminist and flat on right most of the time; if more people paid attention to what this woman had to say, then maybe there would be a lot less suck in the U.S.

2. Irvine Welsh. The first quarter of the first Irvine Welsh book is a killer, but once the dialect starts working its way into your brain, this man owns. His satire and his humor are blunt and brutal, and he'll make you fall in love with characters and places that you'd typically scorn. Glue is just a brilliant fucking thing, and he's had me ever since. This guy gets people and his works are incredibly affecting (and hilarious and painful and fun) because of it.

3. J.D. Salinger Salinger is and will always be my main man. Per usual, forget Catcher and meet Seymour, Buddy, Zooey and the rest. "Raise High" is one of my favorite short stories of all time, so vividly written I can see splashes of it in my own memory. "Zooey" unfairly makes you fall for an actor, and though some argue against the style of "Seymour", I can't help but relate in its rambliness and in the inability of a fan/admirer to figure out why it is how it is. That's priceless to relate.

4. Michael Chabon. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Wonder Boys. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Nuff said.

5. Rabindranath Tagore. The most beautiful poetry ever to exist on the face of the planet. And translated nonetheless. This guy is a little known Nobel Laureate who Yeats brought into the Western light. He writes so eloquently and with so much awe at the beauty and magnificence of nature, the world, humanity, and life. Gitanjali 1 is where his writing has begun and ended for me for over six years, but the whole work is a masterpiece. Final Poems has a different form and feel. Its "Sickbed 17" makes me warmer than anything.

[minervacat]

Nuff said.

You forgot Werewolves in the Youth (I think that's the right title; the one with werewolves in the title, at any rate)! Which is my favorite! I ♥ Michael Chabon so much. Brilliantly talented, that man, and even better on the second reading than on the first.

[oh_peccadillo]

Oh, of course! He read an excerpt from the title story This American LIfe, at which point I fell in love with his voice and that story. If Michael Chabon wanted to read me everything he's written backward, forward, and upside-down, I wouldn't object one bit.

And second readings are what it's all about.

[minervacat]

There's so much more in a second reading than a first, yo. I am a huge advocate of re-readings. Makes books so much better.

[phoebesmum]

And another "amen" on Michael Chabon - I found The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay via an Amazon recommendation - so, you see, they do serve some purpose - and, although it took me over a month to read and made me cry, it's undoubtedly the finest novel I've read all year. Possibly for several years.