Bill's Favorites
These are some of my favorite quotations:
"Show up on time and know your lines."
Clark Gable's advice to Robert Stack.
And this one of my favorite stories:
Two monks were on a pilgrimage when they came to a raging stream. They forded the torrent, and then one returned to the other side and picked up an untouchable women and carried her across to the far side where he put her down. The monks then continued to walk. Two days later, the second monk turned to the first and said, "How could you do that? How could you carry that woman in your arms? The first monk replied, "I only carried her across the stream; you have been carrying her for 100 miles."
The best Today Show Host - Dave Garroway. Absolutely the right man for the job.
The second best Today Show Host, and absolutely the wrong man for the job - Scott Simon. How could they not know he wore corduroy suits and suede saddle shoes?
Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite books.
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White. rex quondam rexque futuram. Sort of an owner's manual for your soul. I have only read it straight through twice, but I read in it constantly. (As with most of the books on this list.) You have to try hard not to visualise Richard Burton as King Arthur though.
These next three books are, respectively, a math text, a handbook for goat owners, and a cookbook. You don't have to know anything about math or goats or cooking (Well, you have to know a little about math) to appreciate the authors's wit, intelligence, and insight into their subject matter. Whatever that is.
Two books by Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly (which I still think was written before The Southpaw) and Wake Up Stupid. The only problem with the first is that Harris patronisingly feels he has to tell us it is not about baseball. And if you ever get a letter from me you will know that I have reread the second.
Here, again in the order that I find them, are a few poems.
W.B. Yeats
Robinson Jeffers
HurtHawks
Leigh Hunt
Rondeau (Jenny kissed me)
Ogden Nash
Old Men
Edna St Vincent Millay
Two sonnets
Garcia-Lorca
The Unfaithful Married Woman
I know I said (alright, to myself) that there weren't going to be any songs, but the next two are poems of some merit
Rod McKeun
If you go away
Listen to Neil Diamond, or, better yet, Sandler and Young. Avoid, at all costs, Rod McKeun.
Johny Mercer, et al.
When the world was young
Sandler and Young, Dietrich, or, best of all, Dinah Shore.
And here, finally, some short stories:
Do you know this Hemingway story? -
Hills Like White Elephants Warning! - this is not local, and it is a very slow load anyway!
And this one by Irwin Shaw?
Girls in their Summer Dresses