[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

[irihs]

A lot of my answers or potential answers have been taken, but I'll add 2 for now:

* Margaret Atwood - both her poetry and her novels.
* Beverly Cleary - no child should grow up without the Ramona books. It would be negligent parenting.

[minervacat]

There's no rule that says you can't repeat someone who's already been said, you know. :)

Margaret Atwood wrote one of my all-time favorite lines of poetry: messy love is better than none, i suppose, but then i'm no authority on sane living. *shiver*

[sylvia101]

1. jeanette winterson

2. shakespeare

3. tom stoppard

4. barbara kingsolver

5. george orwell

[mellyflori]

1) Yes. Sweet heavens, yes. That woman makes me ache sometimes. And I've never had a more satisfying reading experience in my life than I did with "The Passion."

[ludditerobot]

If I had a #6, I would've put Orwell. I'm listening to his book on the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia, on tape during my daily commute these days.

[minervacat]

Written on the Body is one of the best books I've ever read, and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit changed my life in high school. Gooooood call on Winterson.

[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

[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.

[ludditerobot]

1. Douglas Adams - I say this with much trepidation, because either you know the five volumes of The Hitchhiker Trilogy are for you and have already read them, or they aren't for you and you'll wonder what the point of "42" is. The book I'd recommend to the second group, and forcefully press on the first, is his non-fiction work on endangered species, Last Chance To Sea. There are parts, like the kakapo's deep and bassy mating call and the recording of the mechanical noise that deafens the Yangtze river dolphin are preposterous and heartbreaking. I think it's the best thing he's done.
   
2. Thomas P.M. Barnett - He's a professor at the Naval War College and the author of The Pentagon's New Map. I don't think you can understand contemporary American foreign and military policy without reading this book. You might disagree with his ideas, but I think he sets the vocabulary. (He's planning on voting for Kerry, in case you think he's a warmongering neo-con.)
   
3. Neal Stephenson - I thought about Gibson and Sterling for a while, but Gibson's

[minervacat]

I can't read Stephenson - I've tried, I've fought my way through Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon and the one with the high-tech virtual books with the actress in the virtual reality booth who acts it out (do you know which one I mean), but he just overwhelms me.

He's brilliant, but I can't do it. I wish I could; I feel like I'm missing out.

[ludditerobot]

I'm so sorry about that. If I could give you the key, the way into his world, I would. You are missing out. In Cryptonomicon there's a scene where the NSA types are breaking into Our Hero's ISP and Hero's sitting on the hood of his car, hooking his laptop into his cellphone and hoping he can SSH to his UNIX box and unmount and overwrite his mailspool before they get in. Meanwhile, 2600 types are making ready with a HERF gun, right over his shoulder. And that's just one scene.

And I must admit, I have that book (Diamond Age) and haven't read it.

[minervacat]

Oh, I wish I could too - I know I'm missing a great author. But the writing's just too dense for me and more often than not, the computer hacker super sci-fi stuff goes right over my head. I just chalk it up as a loss, and know I've tried. I enjoyed Diamond Age more than the others, but even that was a struggle to finish, and I finished only because goddamnit, I started it, I can conquer it.

Which is, alas, not a great way to enjoy an author. I don't hate Stephenson, by any stretch of the imagination. I just look at him sadly because I can't read him and I don't think I'll ever be able to.

[girlfromsouth]

1. Micheal Cunningham. OMG. Everything this man writes has a lyricism that I've never seen anywhere else, ever. It's BEAUTIFUL. I don't even know where to tell you to start except maybe I'll say A Home at the End of the World because it resonates so broadly and perfect with everyone who has ever built their own family for themselves, and as a novel, it's slightly smoother than Flesh and Blood, but please, though I know some people hate it, don't skip The Hours because it is...let's just say reading it made me want to actually try to read Mrs. Dalloway again and FINISH it, which both an undergrad and graduate degree in English never managed to do.

2. Gregory Maguire. Sometimes, it's hit or miss, and I get the feeling Mirror, Mirror isn't as good as his earlier work but for really fun reading, and interesting takes on fairy tales you think you know, try it. It's incredibly entertaining. Start with Wicked, and go from there.

3. Maya Angelou. I've never been that big a fan of her poetry, but I love her prose--for honesty, and humour

[minervacat]

I love Irving, but I always come out in the minority among Irving fans because my favorites aren't any of the big ones; I love Hotel New Hampshire and The Water Method Man and, yes, A Widow For One Year (which I am re-reading right now and remains one of my favorite of his novels). But yes. He's brilliant, and he's so underrated. I was just talking about that this weekend.