I haven't been posting with the same frequency as I usually do, and that is because I've spent the latter half of this week with some kind of hell-plague.
Anyway, here's your friday five, made up of the books that I can reach on my shelf without moving too much.
-Lenny Bruce's How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Lenny Bruce is a very funny man, who also became very paranoid. There's the old joke, "is it still paranoia if they are all out to get you?" Sadly, the answer is yes, because paranoia involves a break from the rational, and if he kept it together he might have won. This isn't a judgment on him though. He kept it together longer than I think most people could.
-David Eddings' Belgariad. Ok, This isn't a book, it's a series of five books, but really the five books make up one story. This was my favorite series when I was about 12, and it has stuck with me and everyone else I know who read it around then. If you're an adult you might not want to read it right now, I still enjoyed it when I reread it a couple of years ago, but the flaws in his writing were much more clear. However, if you have a younger person in your life, you should definitely get them this series. Also great fun to read aloud.
-Brian Jacques' Redwall. On the subject of great fun to read aloud, it's hard to top Brian Jacques, he writes many vivid characters with distinctive accents, and there lots of fun to read aloud. Another great book to give the young person in your life.
-Adam Zagajewski's Without End. So far, I have yet to come across a Polish poet that I didn't like. Zagajewski is part of the 'younger' generation of Polish poets, which means he's not currently deceased or in his 90's. Excellent poetry.
-Alan Alda's Never Have Your Dog Stuffed. I'm not typically one to recommend celebrity autobiographies, most of them are only 'as told to' anyway. Alda clearly wrote this though, and it's done well enough that he's got a second coming. He's led a very interesting life. Even though I loved MASH, I love that he spends almost no time talking about the show in this. It's kind of an intentional swipe at the celebrity autobiography market. There's a lot that's very personal, a lot about his father and the burlesque world he grew up in.
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Re: Brian Jacques, I can also attest that he is a very classy gentleman. My brother wrote a fan letter to him as an elementary schooler, printed in the coolest Gothic font our printer could handle at that time. It included a priceless poem about how much my bro loved the Redwall books. I remember it rhymed "guosim" with "awesome." Not only did Mr. Jacques send a personal, hand-typed (i.e. on a typewriter) reply, but in a later book in the series he included a character named Benjy (my brother's name).
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