A childlike sense of wonder

Today, on my birthday, if you will indulge me, I am going to talk about my childlike sense of wonder.

 

When I was a very young man, maybe even a teenager, there was a book that captivated me. It was called The Tracker, because it was about a guy who was good at tracking things, in the wilderness. 

I'll just say here that it was sort of non fiction.

Isn't everything?

The World itself is sort of non fiction! If you ask me, which you did. Although your asking me was sort of non fiction.

Well, and so was this book.

And one of the things that stuck with me from The Tracker was the author talking about tracking lost kids in the woods, and their difference from adults. Adults, according to the tracker, just sort of plod on. Their path is full of straight lines. They go from point A to point B, even if they don't know where they're going. But kids are full of curiosity. They wander off the trail. They go investigate a tree stump. They climb down and they climb back up. Their paths are full of exploration and whim and interest.

When I read this, and it was very clearly in favor of how kids are, and sad and critical of how adults are, I wished I could be in the author's defined "good" group, curious kids, rather than in his sad group, uninspired adults. But I did my fair share of walking in the wilds back then, and I grimly knew how I walked, like an adult. 

I don't think this would get to me now, but way back then, it was... disappointing.

Now let us rotate the Earth around the Sun, one, two, maybe 30 or 40 times. And there I am walking in the great Autumn Woods of Minnesota. I have one big camera that I love, slung over my neck. I have another camera in my pocket, sleek and odd, technically a phone, that I use even more often. I am walking, but it is hard for me to get anywhere.

This day I would like to make it into Mendota, the place where my walk let off a couple weeks earlier, when I came at it from the opposite end, but I am delayed. Every ditch, every strange tree, every bird is an attraction to me. I thrash off into the grasses at the least provocation. I climb up on fallen trees. I follow any stream as far as I can. I thrash down the embankment and tiptoe into an island in the middle of the water. I cross. I stare at the water. I circle back to where I was. I take pictures.

And it comes to me in a moment of understanding.

Thirty-five years later, I walk like a child.

The Tracker

The other day I launched into a discussion about how true some of the important (to me) works of non fiction actually were. One of the books I talked about was The Tracker, by Tom Brown Jr. It's a book about Tom Brown Jr. growing up on the edge of a wild area called the Pine Barrens, in New Jersey. And it's about his friend and an Apache "Grandfather" who teaches them woodcraft. Tom learns animal tracking and survival skills at a level so accomplished it almost can seem like magic. When I read the book for the first time I took it as wonderfully true. In the piece I wrote yesterday I put it in more of an at least somewhat not true category. But it's still an important book to me, and though it has been some years since I read it, I still sometimes think of it.

And so I have been thinking of it lately, particularly as I wander my neighborhoods with my new camera, stalking squirrels, robins, ducks, and flowers. I have long been aware of the negative side of photography, where the world becomes something less to be in, and more something to encapsulate or memorialize. Enjoying the sight of a flowering magnolia tree is easily diminished when it is replaced by a desire to get a good picture of it. Experience, presence, pleasure, attention is sacrificed for something else; a collection, the future, proof, the desire to make the statement "I was here".

This is part of why I gave up taking pictures, in addition to not being terribly good at it, developing other interests, and a few other things.

And yet...

As I now walk my neighborhoods and cling to the Mississippi River bluffs in search of pictures I have become aware of a different value in it, and also a more positive way that it effects me. And something that I remember from Tom Brown's books helps me to express it best.

Because of his unique skills, Tom Brown used to help track lost people, and so he had followed the tracks of many people for many reasons. And in one of his books he reflected on the difference in how adults walk through the woods and how children walk through the woods. He said that adults walked in straight lines, blinded and incurious about the world around them, missing much that was happening all around them. But the paths of children were very different, meandering, stopping and starting, circling, wandering, and attentive to all sorts of details and interests.

On my morning walks I am very much an adult. It's not that I am incurious. I look around! I smell and think and admire. But I rarely pause, only for exceptional things. I move on. I keep to the sidewalk or path, and if I take a look at a flower or a bird it is rarely more than a little pause before I keep on. If Tom Brown could track me on a sidewalk or a hard earth river path (which by all accounts he could) mine would be a simple trail to follow, and it would tell a simple story. On a map my path would often be merely a straight line out and a straight line back.

Not so me with my camera. 

As I make my way taking pictures the sidewalk is only the vaguest of guides. I wander up hillsides and embankments. I squat in the gutters and streams. I follow robins around and around some grassy yards in a crazy maze of stop and start. I hang out under a tree with a family of squirrels for ten minutes until they all mysteriously disappear. I climb down a cliff and back up. I get on a log. I stick my face into a tree. I crawl quietly into someone's flower bed and look at all the flowers from all the angles. I dash across the street to see a blackbird.

I guess that my path with a camera must be like a child's. It makes no real sense. It is full of event. It wanders crazily, ever distracted and curious and enticed.

Yes, I am taking pictures. To be honest most of them don't turn out that well. There's usually a few I like. I don't cover a lot of ground. And the time goes by too quickly.

But when I look back, I'm always surprised by how much I saw, and by how much I had no idea was there.

Versimilitude

On my ramshackle list of once and present beloved books lies The Tracker, by Tom Brown Jr. It sits uneasily in my Non Fiction section in between Carlos Castaneda's The Teachings of Don Juan and Farley Mowat's Never Cry Wolf and People of the Deer. This sub genre of Non Fiction might best be described as great non fiction books properly read as non fiction, but anywhere from 10 percent to 100 percent made up.

That's some tricky stuff!

On the high end of this, one has The Teachings of Don Juan, a book it would be hard at this point not to understand as basically a complete fabrication. As a young man (or even before that), reading this book (and its sequels) was an involving, powerful, and sometimes terrifying experience that exerted a strong influence on me. In some ways it is a coming of age, rite of passage story as told through Shamanism, personal teaching, and the stripping away of our perceived reality to reveal the deeper, harder, truer mystical reality lying beneath. As the fiction it more accurately is, I suspect some share of its power would be much diluted for the reader, and writing about the books now I feel little interest in reading them again to see what I would feel.

On the low end of this strange mini genre we have Farley Mowat. It would be extremely hard to say what percentage of his early masterpieces were fudged. Though clearly grounded in his striking and true travels, relationships, and events, he does seem to have used a free hand in augmenting his given experiences to make his narrative as vivid and "true" as possible. Whether they are 10 percent or 50 percent fictional is well beyond me to say. I am inclined to keep them solidly in non fiction, which is a dodgy category to begin with anyway. But I do recognize that my estimation is perhaps to be taken with a grain of salt as I consider these books of his to be among the greatest books ever written, and so am inclined to forgive them almost anything.

Somewhere between these books lies The Tracker. Yet another coming of age story with Native Americans as teachers and wisdom givers, but written by (mostly) white people, The Tracker is the account of the author's training, with an older Native American man, in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, in extreme wilderness survival, respect for the natural world, and most specifically in animal tracking. However true this book is, many things have stuck with me from it (and too from a couple of its sequels), one of which I plan on talking about tomorrow. Like my first two examples I am ill-equipped to judge how much of this account is fictionalized. I can only feel confident that some is and some isn't, and feel comfortable placing that amount as somewhere between the respective amounts of Don Juan and Never Cry Wolf.

These books occupy a curious category in which the authors' later lives reflect on the depth of the quality of their earlier works that brought them to notoriety and acclaim. I'm not sure Caravaggio's paintings aren't just as good to me despite all his dabbling in... murder, but even if they weren't his being a murderer doesn't tell on his earlier work which is at least somewhat more independent of its creator. For allegedly non fictional accounts, the context is changed by the consistency, or lack thereof in the author's life. Their lives tell on the earlier work in a more direct way and are capable of exposing it. The authors Tom Brown Jr. and Carlos Castaneda both seemed to get, in their own ways, a little culty and dodgy as they got older and made use of the rewards of their fame. Farley Mowat seemed to remain, well, Farley Mowat. How he spoke, wrote, believed, worked, and lived feels consistent with his own portrayal of himself in his youth and with his point of view then.

I will still take things from my experiences reading the Don Juan books and The Tracker. Like Farley Mowat's books they are even a small part of what formed me. But only the Farley Mowat books remain true to me. Only Farley Mowat's books feel as true as events of my own life. And only Farley Mowat's books remain, after all these years, as true as the best fiction.

The grisly scene

Rarely do I come across evidence of such a dramatic story. The violence and heavy symbolism of this one led to easy interpretations, but I find the easy interpretations are never quite all the way true.

But let me tell you.

I took my regular walk into the University. It was my first cold morning of the season. Strange pebbles of white ice, almost like hail, were scattered thinly on the sidewalks. The water features of the University were frozen into hard sheets of cracked ice.

Something had happened up on The Scholars' Walk. This is a path lined with glass plaques engraved with the names of honored scholars from the University's history; MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars, Nobel Prize Winners and dozens and dozens of other categories you may or may not have heard of. One of the plaques was shattered. I don't know what the honor category was because far too much of the glass was broken. Only a small portion of the bottom of the engraved glass remained, with jagged spears holding the last few bits of lost names. The walk was strewn with glass...

And blood.

Great splatters of blood weaved along the walk. Like a tracker I followed it, but I needed no skill or intent as it marked the path I was traveling anyway. Here is where the person listed to the side and paused, raining blood, before stumbling on. There the blood splashed down, there flung, there dripped. And ever it marked the weaving way leaving the scene of the smashed monument.

People are just full of blood.

I noted the splashes and trails with irresistible interest. But finally, at a corner, I had to part ways with the path of blood, which, hopefully, may have been thinning. A bleeding wound can do one of two things: clot or run out the source.

What a sight. What a trail. I'm thinking I won't ever find out the story, but stories are for making up anyway. 

For me I picture a drunk scholar, perhaps a chemist, passed over again by the National Honor Society of Chemists, expressing the frustrations of his unrealized dreams as twilight falls on his career. He is teaching Advanced Chemistry today, badly hungover, but with a secret twinkle of satisfaction in his eye, and all the while with the class eyeing his mysterious great white bandage, wrapped copiously around his right arm and hand.

Naturalist of the library

There is a book I have loved called The Tracker. It is a true story, sort of, but then aren't they all, of a boy growing up in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey and his journey of learning how to read nature and to survive in any wild situation on his skills alone. There is big fat red quote by the author, Tom Brown, on the back cover:

"When someone moves something in your house, you notice it. When somebody moves something in the woods, I notice it."

Though I loved the book this emblematic quote never fully resonated with me because the "you" didn't manage to apply to me. I am not terribly alert to people moving things in my house. I'm pretty sure sometimes things in my house move of their own accord. And when they do I'm not all that clear on what happened.

So the quote just sat there, waiting for its personal revelation. A year, five years, ten, twenty, and then suddenly one night I was at the library, working again, tracing down some infinitesimal sin of one of my co-workers: a misplaced scissors, a wrong date, an abandoned cart, and finally, after these many years, that lightning bolt struck.

I am a naturalist, a survivor, a tracker of the library workroom.

This is where I have eeked out my living, attuned to every detail. I know the footprints of my co-workers, the meaning of every item left lying around, the tell tale signs of the computer screens and their open tabs. I know whose initials have been casually withheld from that unhelpful note. I know who's doing their job well enough, and I know every tiny corner someone cut in their workload and left in a box for the next person to deal with.

The staff at my library is undergoing a notable downgrading. Good solid people are leaving, or have been, and many of the new hires have serious problems and deficiencies. So the woods of the backroom of the library are a small chaos for those who can read the signs. It's like there was a snowfall and now endless tracks are everywhere. I can read a thousand stories a day at the library, none of them in books, following the tracks to some laziness, some cleverness, or some small, bloody disaster splattered into the snow. They are all stories of a days work. 

There are not many of us left who can read this environment in such detail. If you look around you can probably spot us if you look for those of us muttering bitterly under our breath. We have been there for years now, ever students even as we become masters. We are tracking every tiny movement and disturbance, knowing that only our furious knowledge, after all these years, can keep us alive.

A book moves somewhere and I know it

I have not been getting enough sleep lately. Late at night I go downstairs into my bitterly cold basement, turn on a small electric heater, and wrap a giant faux sheepskin blanket around me. For some reason this makes me feel like Victor Hugo, so, naturally, I write. Blog posts, yes, but I try to make them as good as his poem The Ocean's Song, which is not as high a bar as one might think. And then I go to bed and get six hours of sleep. It is a well known scientific fact that I require 11 hours of sleep each night to function properly. So I am spending a lot of time in a strange hallucinatory daze at the library. This daze makes me a less efficient worker, but it also gives me access to strange and heightened clerking abilities. So, though most of what I am capable of at work in this sleep deprived state is, 1. reading books, 2. leaning on things, and 3. staring into space, I am also at my peak of what I'll call Heightened Library Awareness, or HLA. This is a skill that leads to feats that, from the outside, can look a bit like magic, or ESP, but really just has to do with the power of the human mind.

I'll explain.

There was a book that I loved when I was younger called The Tracker. It is Tom Brown's story of growing up spending a lot of time in the Pine Barrens, in the woods, and it is about learning about tracking, and the wilderness, from an older Native American teacher. I'll add it to my list of beloved books (here). But what I am thinking of now is the quote on the back. Tom Brown says:

When somebody moves something in your house, you notice it. When somebody moves something in the woods, I notice it.

Well, when somebody moves something in the library, I notice it.

Tom Brown, in this entertaining book, recounts some amazing abilities, say, being able to observe a few scuffs in the dirt, a mark on a tree, a bit of grass out of place, and construct an account of the travels of a small bird that ends in finding it on, yes, over on that branch there. And there is the bird.

It is not only what he has learned, but his deep presence and familiarity with the woods.

I am very familiar with this library. I am interested, and I am here a lot. Sometimes I'll be listening to the radio, or hear people discussing books, and a book will come up that I've never read, but invariably the cover will appear vividly in my mind, perhaps a blurb from the back, and its precise location on the shelves. Sometimes a patron will come to the front desk and say "I just have a quick question." and I will know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what the question is.

But it is only when I am exhausted, with my conscious mind too bleary to put up a fight, that my strongest HLA, heightened library awareness, comes through.

A woman comes to the desk.

"It's in the Board Room." I say. "Go upstairs. Left, and left again."

Not believing I can know the answer to her question before she asks, she asks. "Where is the PACA meeting?"

"It's in the Board Room." I say. "Go upstairs. Left, and left again."

I am walking through the library in a daze, perhaps on some vague mission to get some Mo Willems books from the kids' room, when a man at a computer waves an arm to flag me down. I don't even look. "After you hit print, select "shrink to fit page" on the lower right." I say it not even breaking my shambling stride.

"How did you know that?" The man calls after me. "How did you know that!"

I'm in the back tending the machine, or leaning on the machine, or whatever. A couple co-workers come back because a book that a patron had on a table got "cleaned up" and put onto the machine. No one remembers what the book was. It could be anything in 25 bins. I walk to one bin and pull out a paperback. "What about this one?" They laugh. I am being silly again. "No, no, try this one." I say. Me and my comedy routines. One co-worker heads back to the patron for more information. I stand there in my stupor saying "This one. This one." 

It ends up being that one indeed.

Even writing this Dave asks to use the computer for a minute. He needs to put something to mending.

"It's stained." I say. And though you cannot see that until you open the book, it is.

So how do I do this? How do I know all this?

I've seen it all. Over and over. And I am so tired. Too tired to pretend I don't know exactly what's going on in this place just to be polite. I will tell you this though. All of these magic tricks put together are probably not worth being able to get a whole cart of books shelved without staring into space drooling for 45 minutes.

I have got to get some sleep.

My recommended books: The Hundred Greatest Books, Albums, and Artists (With Romantic Comedy recommendations too!)

This is a list of my recommended books. or, as I am increasingly calling it, The Hundred Greatest Books of All Time! 

You will also find The Hundred Greatest Albums of all time list here (in progress). I am just starting The Hundred Greatest Artists too. And a Recommended Romantic Comedy list has been added. All of this is below. 

Three brief notes before the recommendations:

1. Every (usually Red) colored title, name or sometimes word in here is a link to one of my at least somewhat relevant blog posts. 

 

2. Books are by genre and so may duplicate in multiple genre lists.

The Hundred Greatest Books ever written, with each individual book being the single greatest book ever written. By genre.

Mysteries:


The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde.

Coyote Waits and Sacred Clowns by Hillerman (I liked his mystery series very much, but it peaked here for me and qualified for my list).


 Straight, Proof, Whip hand by Dick Francis (and actually most of his mid career mysteries, some of the early ones, none of the late late ones)

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Haddon 

Murder on the Orient Express and various Poirot by Agatha Christie


The Doorbell Rang, well, and all Nero Wolfe mysteries by Rex Stout. Yep, the whole lot of them. I suppose I could nitpick away half a dozen out of the "Love" list, but I won't.


The Big Sleep by Chandler (the whole series, though it's been awhile)

Collected Sherlock Holmes (Though possibly not after Return of Sherlock Holmes) by Arthur Conan Doyle








Young Adult/Children's:

 Catcher in the Rye by Salinger


 Wee Free Men and Hat full of Sky, Wintersmith, and I Shall Wear Midnight by Pratchett (The first four of the Tiffany Aching saga)

 The Snarkout boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater

Dragonsong and Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey 


Blue Sword by Robin Mckinley

The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife by Pullman ( but sadly, not the third one)

 The Last Dragonslayer and The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde   

The Adrian Mole Diaries by Townsend (I can only commit to the first two volumes, when he is still a teenager).

Sabriel and Lirael by Garth Nix

Pippi Longstocking by Lindgren

Wizard of Earthsea, Tombs of Atuan, and (maybe?) Farthest Shore by LeGuin 

Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother by Cory Doctorow 

There's a Boy in the Girls Bathroom and all the Wayside School books (including the new one-this being noted here in 2020) by Louis Sachar 

 Danny Champion of the World  and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Dahl

The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith

Tomorrow When the war Began by John Marsden (and the whole "Tomorrow" series. It's about a bunch of older teens off camping in Australia when their country is invaded by Indonesia or something. They become Guerilla fighters. A more real world feel Hunger Games) 

The Chosen by Potok 

The Last Dragonslayer and The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde

The Absolutely True Story of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie (the appearance of this book on this list is largely inspired by the piece here that the title links to. Let's just say for now that I like this book very much). 

Deadly Education by Naomi Novik!!!! (New!)

Lockwood and Co., starting with The Screaming Staircase and exemplifying every quality of a multi book fantasy series done right from start to finish (I think I'd better write a post about this, so one day this should be highlighted). A five book series by Jonathan Stroud.

Harry Potter 1-3 by J.K. Rowling

Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer by Twain 

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Winnie the Pooh, and House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

Alvin's Secret Code by Clifford B. Hicks   (A book I read regularly when I was young, but not since!)

Maniac McGee by Jerry Spinelli

A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck

A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck
 
The Mr. Putter and Tabby series by Cynthia Rylant and Arthur Howard





Romance:

Blue Sword by Robin Mckinley

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (nothing else of hers quite does it though)

Bridget Jones Diary by Helen Fielding

Sci Fi:

The Left Hand of Darkness, The Disposessed, The Word for World is Forest, Four Ways to Forgiveness, and a lot of the story collections by Ursula K. LeGuin

Cats Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut (and I think Sirens of Titan, which I might want to reread)

The Eyre Affair and all its sequels by Jasper Fforde

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

The Long Walk by Stephen King

Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem

Night Watch by Lukyanenko

The Rook by Daniel O'malley

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

Fantasy:  

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (and really, and all its sequels)

 The Last Dragonslayer and The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde



Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett and a scattering of others, most of which include the witches

Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss


Wise Mens' Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (sequel to above)


Blue Sword by Robin Mckinley

Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (I don't even want to talk about the movies, feh)

The Golden Compass by Pullman (and The Subtle Knife, but sadly, not the third one)

 Sabriel and Lirael by Garth Nix

The Left Hand of Darkness by LeGuin (and large amounts of her other books, including some of the story collections, and Disposessed, Wizard of Earthsea first three)


Nightwatch by Lukyanenko 

Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Lockwood and Co., a five book series by Jonathan Stroud, starting with The Screaming Staircase and exemplifying every quality of a multi book fantasy series done right from start to finish.

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faerie by Heather Fawcett






Memoir:


Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman by Feynman and some other guy (this actually is the exception to my rule that no good book is written by two authors, one vastly more famous that the other).

 Fishwhistle, and Uncle Boris in the Yukon by Daniel Pinkwater

 The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston


My Family and other Animals by Gerald Durrell (the post this links to importantly qualifies this entry)

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, The Boat that Wouldn't Float, Never Cry Wolf, People of the Deer, all by Farley Mowat

It's Only Slow Food Until you Try and Eat It by Bill Heavey

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

Maus by Art Spiegelman

Non Fiction: 

(See above category as well)


In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan 

Summerhill by A. S. Neill

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe 

Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

The Tracker (also) by Tom Brown Jr. (honestly it probably doesn't so much belong in non fiction, but...)

 Never Cry Wolf, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, and People of the Deer by Farley Mowat (come to think of it let's add The Boat Who Wouldn't Float which is awfully nice to spend a bit of time with)

 The Man Who Ate Everything by Steingarten 

Searching for Bobby Fischer by Fred Waitzkin


 Context by Cory Doctorow

The collected Miss Manners Books (any that are mainly compendiums of the columns) by Judith Martin 

 

Adventure:


Ship of the Line by Forester (and the whole Horatio Hornblower saga) 

Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway

The Dog Who Wouldn't Be, The Boat that Wouldn't Float, Never Cry Wolf, People of the Deer, all by Farley Mowat

Call of the Wild by Jack London

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rytkheu

Just regular old Fiction:




In Watermelon Sugar by Brautigan (and a healthy bit of the poetry and Trout Fishing)

The Magic Christian by Terry Southern

 Don Quixote by Cervantes (revered literature!)

Bartleby the Scrivener by Melville (look at me with the revered literature stuff!)

Finnegans Wake by James Joyce (based on about four pages, but, still, there's something about it. Search my posts for my encounter, no, wait, go here, and here) This choice elevates the tone of my list like crazy!

Dead Souls by Gogol


King of the Schnorrers by Zangwill

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Resurrection, Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy (more literature! Not for the faint of heart!)

Mice and Men, Tortilla Flat, Grapes of Wrath, In Dubious Battle, by Steinbeck

Wise Blood, Violent Bear it Away, Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'connor

Picture Books:

Dragons Love Tacos by Adam Rubin

Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg

Nanette's Baguette, Gerald and Piggie series, The Pigeon Books, and really most everything by Mo Willems



The Sleep Book, Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches the Egg, Green Eggs and Ham, and The Lorax by Dr. Seuss (also maybe a couple others?)

The Mr. Putter and Tabby series by Cynthia Rylant and Arthur Howard

100 Greatest Albums

(With each album being individually the greatest album ever, so, not a ranked list)

On the Beach by Neil Young

Mustt Mustt by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Kind of Blue by Miles Davis

The Red Album by The Beatles

Live at the Fillmore by Lucinda Williams

World Gone Wrong by Bob Dylan (The World Gone Wrong links to the series post about that album, but watch out for the "Bob Dylan" link as it connects to a vast listing of my many, many Bob Dylan posts)

Grapesongs by Gabriel Arquilevich    (Curiously like the Bob Dylan link above this second link will link not just to a single post, but to a vast series of posts about the the person who made Grapesongs).

Blues for Allah by The Grateful Dead

Chopin's Nocturnes by Chopin as performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy

Ok Computer by Radiohead

Ladies of the Canyon by Joni Mitchell

Good Old Boys by Randy Newman

The B-52's by The B-52's

Gone Again by Patti Smith

John Prine Live by John Prine

The Kinks Album by The Kinks

For Emma Forever Ago by Bon Iver

The Paris and Vienna Concerts and The Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett (not official entries)

Hmm, I am not even close to finished. So, more later...

The Hundred Greatest Artworks of All Time! (New)

The Deposition from the Cross by Pontormo (In Florence)

Sleeping Cupid by Caravaggio (In Florence)

Romantic Comedy Movies:

(Of all the lists here this alone is not heralded as "The Hundred Greatest". Why? Because even though I adore these movies all but a few have... imperfections? Let's leave it at that for now).

This is your starter pack: 

The Romantic Comedies (and this) I love and recommend include:

Moonstruck
Notting Hill
Love Actually
Music and Lyrics
French Kiss
The Holiday
Tin Cup
Wimbledon
Two Weeks Notice

Groundhog Day

Management
New in Town
About Time
I.Q.
The American President 
Mamma Mia

Long Shot

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Princess Switch

The Sandler/Barrymore trifecta:

Wedding Singer
50 First Dates
Blended

Coming additions: 100 Greatest Artists

last revised:

Many dozens of unnoted times until I started to list edit dates:

10/9/20

10/11/20

10/13/20

10/29/20
10/30/20

11/7/20

11/8/20

11/9-20

1/15/21

9/18/24 

11/18/24

 

The Basement for this post (includes previous introductory notes and information that may find a home elsewhere in time):

This list is growing more complicated all the time, so I will try to give as brief as possible an introduction. I'll do it in list form!

 1. Important! This list has evolved into a weird collection of nearly, but not quite, random links across the several thousand post history of my blog and so is maybe a good exploration vehicle to the history (not necessarily to "The Best") of Clerkmanifesto. Every colored title or name or sometimes even word in here is a link to one of my at least somewhat relevant blog posts (even "recommended books" above is a link to a discussion of book recommendations!). So click freely on red text! It's a good way to follow what piques your interest. Short essays will explain my title choices sometimes directly, sometimes it will discuss something about the author. Sometimes it is very direct; an essay, a review, or a reference, but also it can be a complicated, idiosyncratic connection. There's only one way to find out.

2. Every one of these are books I love, but, yes, in some cases the love is a bit rusty. I may not have read some books for a long, long time, and I would maybe feel differently about them now. Still, I'll try to keep all books to ones I suspect I'd still at least kind of love if I read them now.

3. I'm listing things into Genres of all kinds. Many books may be mentioned more than once if they fit in multiple genres/categories.

4. It looks terrible I know. Sorry. It has been patched, added to, repaired, and corrected hundreds of times in its seven years, and now it looks like an ancient battered suitcase held onto for nostalgia's sake. Today, 10-9-2020 I spent several hours working on it just to get it to a state where it looks like it needs a lot of work. So just take what you can from it.