[Traveling Mercies.] The autobiographical essays in this collection cover faith and family, booze, men, and self-love. They’re full of the small moments in [Anne] Lamott’s life, the observations that make you laugh really hard and make you bawl really fast — two of my favorite activities. She talks about how the most popular prayers are “Help me, help me, help me” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I’ve read all her work, and she continually surprises me and speaks to me. One of the lines from this book that I love is: “All you can do is show up for someone in crisis. Your there-ness… can be life giving, because often everyone else is in hiding.” That’s just killer.
Lamott is so open an...
Related posts tagged 'Favorite books'
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Related posts tagged 'Favorite books'
The Waste Lands. Blaine is a PAIN! That being said the entire series is an awe inspiring work of glory. At points it's like Stephen King had some kind of cosmic meltdown and left this mystical radiation all over the series.
I will always put "Here Comes Snoopy" by Charles Schulz first because my dad gave it to me when I was seven and I stayed up all night reading it and it was the first book that made me laugh out loud
I loved the Great Gatsby. I can’t believe they did it in 3D. What the fuck? Dahrma bums. these are just random. My Travels with Charlie. Grapes of Wrath. Crime and Punishment. Slaughterhouse 5. All vonugut when i was a youngster. Catcher in the Rye. 9 Stories. SOmething by Thomas Mann I can’t remember. Heart of Darkness. I claudius. The Golden Ass. Hercules my shipmate. Fire from Heaven. Persian boy. The chronicles of narnia when I was a kid and now my daughters. TR biography. lots others.
The first adult novel I read, and this is a favorite memory of mine, resulted from my grandfather — who was a voracious reader — taking me to Novel Idea in Tulsa, Okla., to pick up a book for school. As we headed to the checkout line he said, ‘Why don’t you pick out something to read for pleasure?’ I went to the Young Adult section, and he stopped me: ‘No, no. Go to the Fiction section.’ I was 12, and this was a big deal. The Fiction section is where all the books with sex and bad language lived. I self-consciously browsed the aisles, careful to avoid unwittingly picking up Fear of Flying or something, until I came to a paperback with a spooky cover. The title: Salem’s Lot. Description: Vamp...
Fragments of a Journal by Eugene Ionesco Nietzche (bio by Walter Kaufman is a great bible for Nietzche) Socrates (books about him and Plato's works) I'm reading a lot of psychology, some by Koestler I read comic theory, THE HUMOR CODE is a good read, as is Koestler's act of creation and I've been reading a lot of The Far Side and R. Crumb stuff too.
codependent no more, leaving the enchanted forest, the language of letting go, drama of the gifted child, IM FINE...AND OTHER LIES
Finished [Running the Light by Sam Tallent]. One of the best books I've read. Ever. Especially if you're a comedian.
Q: What’s the best book on the subject of death other than the works of Becker?
A: Wow, this person knows the works of Becker? Well that's probably the best one, Becker's Denial of Death. There's a book by Otto Rank, the trauma of Birth, he talks about death in that one a lot. You probably don't want to read about death, but if you do want to read about death, it's a good "summer read."
Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Memory of Fire: Faces and Masks by Eduardo Galeano
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Honey and Junk by Dana Goodyear
Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl
Grist For The Mill by Ram Dass
Shambhalla the Sacred Path Of The Warrior by Trungpa
The Shining!! by Stephen King
Lord Amberson Volt's amazing "Home Surgery Guide"
My favorite memoir is Steve Martin’s “Born Standing Up.” I think that’s the best book about being a comedian, written by a comedian, ever done.
I have an obsession with books about kids with Asperger’s syndrome. I like the way they think — it suits me. The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time by Mark Haddon is great. That and [Jonathan Safran Foer’s] Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close — they’re on a separate bookshelf. They don’t understand what the other books are saying by their facial expressions, but they’re perfectly lined-up.
The Nixon Tapes: 1973 Ed. by Douglas Brinkley & Luke Nichter
I watched the Watergate hearings while I was a boy in Canada. They said Nixon was the ultimate politician, but no: He was stiff, he’d sweat, he was human, a tragic figure who got caught up in his own insecurities. My favorite part [in these tapes] is the banality: Nixon talks about his mother-in-law making this pie he f—–g hates, and all these guys going, “Yessir!”
Up in the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
I love oral histories. Mitchell was a New Yorker writer who’d go around a city and write about interesting people he’d met, from the mayor to the lowest bum. He was probably the first to do New Journalism, [before] Gay Talese. Hi...
Growing up, it was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - I would read the whole C.S. Lewis series out loud to my kids. I was once reading to Zelda, and she said "don't do any voices. Just read it as yourself." So I did, I just read it straight, and she said "that's better."
When I was in first grade on the last day of school, Mrs. Stafford, our teacher, said, "I want to give out a special present today, to a kid in the class who has tried so hard to improve his handwriting." And she's going through this whole speech about this kid; I'm staring at this kid that I knew that she liked, and I just hated him, and I was getting more and more angry. And then at the end, she said it was me! The present was a Dr. Seuss book, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, that I have since thrown out. But I remember it was in purple cellophane wrapping, and I still consider it the greatest honor to have received that gift. So, that was my favorite book.
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