Best Books Ever Part One

I recently started reading Pride and Prejudice and am now wondering what took me so long to start reading this book. I love it!!

So I decided to start compiling my own personal list of the 100 Best Books Ever Written. In compiling my own, I thought it would be fun to find other lists that have the best books ever written. Over the next few days, I will be posting various top 100's. Let me know what your top 100 books are....

This list is from - http://bluepyramid.org/edpop/booklist.htm

The 100 Best Books I’ve Read So Far
1. Watership Down, Richard Adams
2. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley*
3. 1984, George Orwell*
4. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
5. Non-Violent Resistance: Satyagraha, Mohandas K. Gandhi
6. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
7. Island, Aldous Huxley
8. Green Shadows, White Whale, Ray Bradbury
9. In the Penal Colony, Franz Kafka
10. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger*
11. The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis
12. Borderliners, Peter Hoeg
13. Animal Farm, George Orwell*
14. Our Town, Thornton Wilder
15. Beware the Fish!, Gordon Korman
16. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
17. The Mouse That Roared (series), Leonard Wibberly
18. Night, Elie Wiesel
19. Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
20. The Short Stories, Ernest Hemingway
21. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
22. Antigone, Sophocles
23. I Sing the Body Electric!, Ray Bradbury
24. Trout Fishing in America, Richard Brautigan
25. All Creatures Great and Small (series), James Herriot
26. Babar’s Anniversary Book, Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff
27. Pigs Might Fly, Dick King-Smith
28. James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl
29. The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling
30. Gandhi on Non-Violence, Mohandas K. Gandhi
31. The Little History of the Wide World, Mable Pyne
32. The Magus, John Fowles*
33. The Silver Chair, C. S. Lewis
34. Hamlet, William Shakespeare
35. Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton
36. A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest J. Gaines
37. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
38. The Zucchini Warriors, Gordon Korman
39. The Celery Stalks at Midnight, James Howe
40. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: an Introduction, J. D. Salinger
41. Beloved, Toni Morrison
42. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
43. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
44. Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare
45. Danny, Champion of the World, Roald Dahl
46. The Illustrated Man, Ray Bradbury
47. The Time Garden, Edward Eager
48. The House at Pooh Corner, A. A. Milne
49. A Medicine for Melancholy, Ray Bradbury
50. 40 Stories, Donald Barthelme
51. Matilda, Roald Dahl
52. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
53. Losing Joe’s Place, Gordon Korman
54. Uncle Wiggily’s Story Book, Howard R. Garis
55. Nine Stories, J. D. Salinger
56. The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot
57. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
58. No Coins, Please, Gordon Korman
59. The Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
60. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", C. S. Lewis
61. Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger
62. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson
63. The Peace Book, Bernard Benson
64. The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe
65. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
66. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain
67. Boy, Roald Dahl
68. Nothing But the Truth, Avi
69. Little House on the Prarie (series), Laura Ingalls Wilder
70. The Toynbee Convector, Ray Bradbury
71. Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr
72. The October Country, Ray Bradbury
73. Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Roald Dahl
74. The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
75. Bunnicula, Deborah and James Howe
76. Charlotte’s Web, E. B. White
77. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis
78. A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag, Gordon Korman
79. The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
80. We, Yevgeny Zamyatin
81. Magic or Not?, Edward Eager
82. The Voyages of Dr. Dolittle (series), Hugh Lofting
83. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
84. Driving Blind, Ray Bradbury
85. Long After Midnight, Ray Bradbury
86. Early Stories, Anton Chekov
87. Marcovaldo, Italo Calvino
88. Dubliners, James Joyce
89. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
90. Quicker Than the Eye, Ray Bradbury
91. Miracle on 34th Street, Valentine Davies
92. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
93. How to Play Better Baseball, C. Paul Jackson
94. Dear Mr. Henshaw, Beverly Cleary
95. The Golden Apples of the Sun, Ray Bradbury
96. Frog and Toad are Friends (series), Arnold Lobel
97. I Will Adventure, Elizabeth Janet Gray
98. The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
99. Mossflower, Brian Jacques
100. Who is Bugs Potter?, Gordon Korman

Funny Quote of the Day

I just watched the movie Adam and Steve - and Parker Posey has the funniest line in the whole movie - "You know, Oprah has made it impossible for me to have a close relationship with anyone, besides Oprah."

Tony Bennett

I want to get this new album - it's on my must list for FALL 2006. A little bunny told me that the KD LANG track is one of the best! I can't wait to hear it.

Track Listing for TONY BENNETT: DUETS/An American Classic
Boulevard Of Broken Dreams /STING
Smile/BARBRA STREISAND WITH PINCHAS ZUKERMAN (Violin)
Put On A Happy Face/JAMES TAYLOR
The Shadow Of Your Smile/JUANES
Rags To Riches/ELTON JOHN
The Very Thought Of You/PAUL MCCARTNEY
Lullaby Of Broadway/DIXIE CHICKS
Cold, Cold Heart/TIM MCGRAW
The Best Is Yet To Come/DIANA KRALL
For Once In My Life/STEVIE WONDER
Are You Havin' Any Fun?/ELVIS COSTELLO
Because Of You/K.D. LANG WITH CHRIS BOTTI (Trumpet)
Just In Time/MICHAEL BUBLE
Sing You Sinners/JOHN LEGEND
The Good Life/BILLY JOEL
I Wanna Be Around/BONO
How Do Keep The Music Playing/GEORGE MICHAEL
I Left My Heart In San Francisco/TONY BENNETT WITH BILL CHARLAP (Piano)

I am looking forward to this album - and I must say to the new Killers album - which will hopefully be fun.

For Cat Lovers In Chicago

I met someone today. He was so handsome and an incredible flirt. He had short gray hair and a low deep voice. His name is Moses. He is seven and a domestic short hair. For those slow on the uptake, he is a cat. An adorable handsome boy cat. I met him at Felines, Inc.

Felines, Inc. Website

Felines, Inc. is a no kill cat shelter in the Edgewater Neighborhood of Chicago. I went over there today to learn more about there organization.

Here is what their website says: "Founded in 1977, Felines Inc. is a licensed cageless, no-kill cat shelter located on the north side of Chicago.

As a not-for-profit 501(c)(3), Felines Inc. is funded almost entirely through membership, adoption fees, fundraising events, and the generous tax-deductible donations of caring individuals like yourself. We do not receive any federal or state funding.

We care for over 160 cats and kittens in our two floor house. Our small but dedicated staff tends to the daily needs of the cats and, with our highly valued team of volunteers, spends time with helping to heal the bodies and souls of the injured, abandoned and abused cats brought to our shelter.

Our goal is to find the right lasting and loving home for each of our residents. We work with our adopters to find the right cat for them, with the understanding that a lifelong relationship is about to begin. We follow up on all our adoptions and are available for consultations to help ease the cat's transition into its new home.

Every cat admitted to Felines Inc. is examined by a vet, is spayed or neutered, and is kept up to date on all their vaccines. Most of the procedures are carried out on the premises by a skilled team of vets and vet techs. "


It was a really incredible experience to see all these great cats who need homes.

It's slowly happening....

My sister-in-law created this interpretation of my nightmare

Mama Rose - Back with vengeance

Months ago, my partner Rob and I were driving up Lake Shore Drive in our deep blue Volkswagen beetle having a very important conversation. The topic - what classical musical theater piece would be right for Patti LuPone? I know, I know - I mean while some people obsess over Oprah's sexuality, Tom's obvious imprisonment of Katie, and Jennifer's on again, off again marriage to Vince Vaughn, my Rob finds solace in Filofax agendas and Patti Lupone's career strategy.

So I was with great joy that the musical theater gods overheard our conversation and days after we decided that the only role Patti LuPone had truly left to play was Mama Rose in Gypsy, that the show was announced at Ravinia.

The day of the event, we rode the gayest train in Chicago - the Ravinia express. Another hundred homos got off of the train, another hundred homos got off of the bus and are looking around...I think you get the idea.

Anyway, the thousand of us gay men piled in to the theater prepared to be brought back to another time. A time when lyrics were actually rhymed and people actually sang. As the orchestra played the brilliant score by Jule Styne, we realized we were seeing something special. A brief moment of history was being recaptured.

It was incredible, or I should say she was incredible. The cast was fine, the orchestra was lovely, and the costumes were spot on, but is was LuPone's performance that shined. She was perfectly cast as Mama Rose, and with the subtle work she did in the critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd I am not surprised.

For a more indepth review - visit this spot on review at the NYTIMES. New York Times - Gypsy Review

NO Carbs after 5pm - I am going to go insane

A few weeks ago, I went to Minneapolis to do an talk show about my documentary film. It was a public access show and they give you your tape when you leave. I sat is horror as I watched the footage. I am tall, 6'5" and weight - 1230 pounds - ok maybe not that much, but let's just say I am fat - obese even. As I am watching the footage, I notice I look like a bald duck. I have big lips that protrude from my face. Almost Angelina Like. And I am nodding, repetatively. Very much like a duck.

I am an active listener. I also have been. I am the kind of person that would watch Days of Our lives in College and nod or scream at the television - giving the characters my advice as they would get buried alive or turn in Satan.

So, I realized in watching myself on this television interview program, that somehow without my knowledge, I have turned into a fat, bald duck. I don't know exactly when it happened, but slowly over the course of 5 years I have put on more weight that I would care to admit.

Working my crappy day job for 4 years didn't help matters. I would show up to this nasty ugly job and work from 9-9:30am to 8-9 at night. Now that may not sound like much, but when you hate your boss, and your job, and the company you work for - it's torture.

So I am making a change, I know - I have sad this many many times before, but I am doing. I just quit smoking. And I sure as hell am not going to up even more weight on from that. So I made the change, I went to the gym. It's a nice gym, It's has a pool and is in an old hotel ballroom. I go in the morning, before i go to my office (where my production company is located). I am looking at this like it's my job. Hard crappy work that I don't want to do - but if want to get what i want - I have to.