Now that fall is here, Medium Cool with BG returns to Sunday nights, starting next Sunday, 10/18. Not sure yet whether the time will be at 5, 6 or 7, or somewhere in between.
In the meantime, let’s play One Book, One Movie, One Song. (Okay, the song can actually be an album, or an opera, or any piece of music.)
These can be your favorites of all time.
Or they can be the book, the movie and the song that made a big impact on your life.
Or they can be the ones you would take with you if you could only take one of each with you to a place where these would be your only book, your only movie, and your only song.
It’s your choice, but you have to tell us which of the three options you went with. Or you can answer it all three ways!
Open thread.
HumboldtBlue
Kind of Blue
The Aubrey-Maturin series
Godfather
On my desert Island
Hoppie
Foundation (all three), Lord of the Rings (all three), Running on Empty. What I would take with me.
Dave P
One Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
One Movie: Casablanca
One Song: “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye
NotMax
This is the sort of quiz I find plain impossible to answer satisfactorily.
DRickard
Can I get one bourbon, one scotch, one beer instead?
Yutsano
Book: Dune. Just the first one.
Movie: The Princess Bride
Song: The Karelia suite by Sibelius. Yes I’m stretching the definition of song. Don’t care.
Chetan Murthy
Book: the Sherlock Holmes canon
Movie: Blade Runner
Song: Beethoven’s Ninth; if pressed for a movement, I’d pick Ode to Joy.
Phylllis
The Lord Peter Wimsey series, Gaudy Night if I have to pick just one, Casablanca, and Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors.
NotMax
@Dave P
Trivia regarding Casablanca:
The movie studio bought the rights to an unproduced (and purportedly terrible) play in order to make the film. Among other changes was excising dialogue from the play wherein Rick, to her face, calls Ilsa a bitch.
HumboldtBlue
@Chetan Murthy:
My older sister gifted me a leatherbound collection of the Holmes canon when I was about 13 and I have been in love ever since.
A few months ago someone here mentioned a Sherlock Holmes TV series from the 80s and it’s quite simply the best Sherlock I have ever seen. Jeremy Brett is brilliant.
Chetan Murthy
@HumboldtBlue: I agree completely about Jeremy Brett.
WaterGirl
@DRickard: Absolutely!
HumboldtBlue
@Phylllis:
Have you seen this impromptu performance?
Ajabu
Difficult to pick one in each category. There’s so much quality material I’ll have to double up. Sorry…
Book: Wretched of the Earth/ Autobiography of Malcolm X(defined my life)
Movie: Black Orpheus/ Little Big Man
Song: Little Niles – Randy Weston. (altered my musical direction)/ Songs in the Key of Life – Stevie Wonder (made me a better composer)
Calouste
My favorites:
Book: On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Movie: La Grande Belezza
Song: 3 i 2 by King Crimson
TheOtherHank
One Book(s): The Disc World books. If I have to pick just one, Small Gods
One Movie: Young Frankenstein
One Album: A Night at the Opera
DesertFriar
Book: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Movie: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Song: Manfred Mann ‘Instrumedicine Song’ from Plains Music
piratedan
book(s): The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois MacMaster Bujold
Music: Nick Lowe (what can I say, I dig self-deprecating and witty)
Movie: Monty Python and the Holy Grail
damn tough to even try and play fair, but I did my best to not bend the rules too badly.
nwerner
@Calouste: I am a huge KC fan but don’t know the track you mention and can’t find a Google citation (but I am on a phone and googling on phone sort of sucks). Is that a shorthand name from one of the live boxed sets?
SectionH
@DRickard: Lol! Has to be repeatable, right?If you can read the book or watch the movie or listen to the song over and over again… hmmm, I need to think about this…
Phylllis
@HumboldtBlue: Oh yes. Her accompanist is in hog heaven.
Omnes Omnibus
Book: Norton Anthology of English Literature. Both volumes – I’m already cheating so does that really matter? It’s followed me around for 40 years; it would be lonely if I left it.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Oh yes. We watched those when they were new, and absolutely fell in love with them. He died way too young, at the age of 61 in 1995.
Fun facts I discovered fairly recently: Jeremy Brett had quite a good singing voice. He played Freddy Eynsford-Hill (the upper-class twit) in the film version of My Fair Lady. But they dubbed in somebody else’s voice for “The Street Where You Live” because Brett’s sounded too mature.
You can find Brett singing in his real voice on some YouTubes.
I’m not answering the main topic because I always have trouble with lists like this. There are too many to choose from, and when I do make my choices, I always see other people choosing things I wish I’d chosen.
cope
I think I get this one.
Book: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
Movie: “It Happened One Night”
Song: “One Toke Over the Line”
Do I win?
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
Book: The Starless Sea
Movie: The Fifth Element (I would also accept the remake, Jupiter Ascending)
Music: Begin to Hope by Regina Spektor
JanieM
Oh sigh, bending the rules. It’s hard to pick only one in each category, or at least the books and songs; I hesitate to admit it (please don’t throw too many rotten tomatoes at me), but I’m not a movie person and would rather use that slot for another book. More or less my desert island choices, though LOTR is also a “favorite of all time.”
Book #1: Lord of the Rings
Book #2: A Gentleman in Moscow
Song: Apollo’s Fire playing Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #3, via the video that’s on YouTube, because part of the fun is to see what a good time they’re having while they play it.
Mike in NC
One favorite movie is “The Bedford Incident” (1965) starring Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark. It’s about a cat-and-mouse game between an American destroyer and a Soviet submarine in Arctic waters. I was on a ship of the class the producers used (the movie uses sound stages and large radio-controlled models only) and it was always a crowd-pleaser with the guys down on the mess decks. If you’ve ever seen the movie, you can maybe guess why.
The Golux
@Chetan Murthy:
The thing I despised about the Basil Rathbone dramatizations was that they played Watson as a buffoon, whereas I always saw him as an earnest and intelligent companion. Sure, he wasn’t on Holmes’ intellectual level, but then who was? And after all, why would Holmes rely on such a mediocre assistant?
SectionH
I’m still working on my own list. And also getting George T. outta my head
Guess it’ll start with opting for 2 book selections and not worrying about a movie.
The Discworld oeuvre, and the MIddle-earth one. Not necessarily in that order.
Music to be named later
Ah, edited to wave at JanieM! Of course we can.
HumboldtBlue
@Phylllis:
One of my favorites, I can watch that over and over. The woman just oozes personality and love.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
That’s already happened with each comment.
MomSense
@DRickard:
Or you could drink a whisky drink, drink a vodka drink, drink a lager drink and a cider drink.
Ninedragonspot
Book: Tom Jones
Movie: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Song: Beethoven’s 4th Piano Concerto
Poe Larity
Book: Voyage of the Coral Sea Gull. Not because it was great, but because it was the only adventure book a third grader could check out of the school library (I tried to check out Jonathan Livingston Seagull and they wouldnt let me).
Movie: Sergio Leone’s Duck You Sucker
Song: Miles Davis’ Right Off
As you can see, I never got past 1971
Spanish Moss
Based on these being my only choices to read/hear/watch (and the fact that I have enjoyed each repeatedly):
Book(s): Game of Kings (Lymond Chronicles) series by Dorothy Dunnett
Music: Lark Ascending, Vaughan Williams
Movie: Pride and Prejudice, Joe Wright version
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Me too.
Omnes Omnibus
@The Golux: Everything you say is true and I truly despise Nigel Bruce’s Watson, but the one that the Rathbone Holmes movies had that no other version did was Basil Rathbone.
SiubhanDuinne
Book (okay, books): The Lord Peter Wimsey canon of Dorothy L. Sayers. If I absolutely must limit myself to one title from the series, it would be Gaudy Night.
Movie: Casablanca.
Music: Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen (“The ‘Ring’ Cycle”). No, I refuse to pick just one opera of the tetralogy.
A Ghost to Most
For Everyman, Jackson Browne
syphonblue
Book: The Count of Monte Cristo
Movie: The Shawshank Redemption
TV: Lost
Video Game: Chrono Trigger
prostratedragon
Imagine a hat for each possibility and here’s what I drew this time:
Book: The Bluest Eye (Malcom X and Waiting for Godot had a big influence on me also).
Song: Beethoven Symphony #7 opened up music for me when I was little.
Movie: This one’s real hard, but I going with La Strada as the first non-English movie I recall. It almost needs no subtitles.
Shoutout on “Little Niles,” one of many for me but a piece I really love. Solo piano version by composer Randy Weston
rikyrah
Book-A Testament of Hope ( writings and speeches of MLK)
Movie- The Philadelphia Story
Song – Ain’t No Way
hueyplong
Ask me next month and each will be different (because these things are in rotation in a pandemic):
Book: Wartime (Paul Fussell)
Song: Harlem Air Shaft (Duke Ellington)
Movie: Miller’s Crossing (Coen bros)
Tony Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
I remember that discussion. Glad to hear you have such excellent taste.
One of the pleasures I enjoy most about working from home is returning from the school run, picking a Brett Sherlock from YouTube and enjoying the soothingly gentlemanly Victorian sleuthing over breakfast and a coffee. Extra marks if the new case arrives at Baker Street when Holmes and Watson are just sitting down to their morning repast. It’s nice to feel involved.
Brachiator
Heavily influenced me, if not my favorites
Book: Great Expectations, Chuck Dickens
Movie: Samurai Trilogy (1954 – 1956, Hiroshi Inagaki)
Song: Tight Like This, Louis Armstrong
Arclite
9 Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
John Carpenter’s The Thing
2112 by Rush
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: Oh god, I saw Chumbawumba in concert back in the day. Because of Tubthumping, there were a ton of tweens there with their parents. Damn, did they get a shock. The band is a very left-wing (British left-wing), very political group, and their US hit was not typical of their work. Plus, the venue was the kind of stripped bare old theater with horrible, horrible restrooms and sticky floors.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue:
Oh, that is lovely. I love Dolly.
...now I try to be amused
@nwerner: “Three of a Perfect Pair”, perhaps?
Hungry Joe
Book: Huckleberry Finn
Movie: Ikiru (foreign), His Girl Friday (American)
Song: The Weight (male voice), Jolene (female voice)
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: Album: London Calling
Movie: Young Frankenstein
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: I assume that everyone will treat the rules as, let’s say, flexible.
Gin & Tonic
Gravity’s Rainbow
Bach’s Mass in B Minor
Badlands
My desert island stash.
WaterGirl
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Maybe someone would look at yours and think of something they wish they had chosen.
If it’s not your thing, it’s not your thing. Just want to be sure you know that it’s a conversation starter, not a test. :-)
WaterGirl
@cope: Right before I read this, I pointed out to Ceci… that it’s not a test. I guess I should also say that it’s not a contest. :-)
Or it can be a contest like it is in little league, where the point is participation.
Omnes Omnibus
If you have to ask, the answer is no.
Kristine Pennington
Book: The Way Home – Poems by Edgar Guest
Movie: Grease
Music: Led Zeppelin I
WaterGirl
@JanieM: All rules in these culture posts are flexible!
debbie
Book: The World in the Evening
Movie: Wizard of Oz
Song: Ripple
Craig
Big Influence.
Book: Neuromancer
Film: Once Upon a Time in the West.
Song: 22 Going on 23, Butthole Surfers.
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
What a great movie!
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Rules?! In a knife fight?!
WaterGirl
@Hungry Joe: I think I should have made this a contest to see who could think of the most ways to stretch the rules. I love it.
Hungry Joe
@Gin & Tonic: “A screaming comes across the sky.”
It took me MONTHS to get through that book. I’d read, like, pages 145-170, then next day 160-190, the next day 180-205, etc. So I practically read it twice the first time. It was worth it, but barely.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, I pretend they are rules, and present them as if they are. But we all know they are not.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
In Gene Wolfe’s Shadow of the Torturer, Servian meets the librarian of the Empire who tells him that for some children, there is a golden book, after which all things are different.
For me that was a book about ancient history called “Secrets from Ancient Graves.” Its central thesis was that at certain stages of human development, every society understands there are solstices, equinoxes etc. So they drag huge rocks to form some kind of structure whole sole function is spiritual that lines up with the solstices, equinoxes etc. . e.g. Stonehenge, the ziggurats, the Great Pyramid, etc.
Except that the heavens take no notice. Plagues, wars, famines, and death come as before.
So while no-one ever says these great stone piles are failures, they never get repeated. Humans built amazing huge stone things thereafter but after a certain point the temples (or palaces or arenas or theaters) all serve as a gathering place for living beings, because since the heavens aren’t budging there’s no reason the structure can’t accommodate people as well.
It really blew my mind to learn that everyone can agree on something and yet everyone can be wrong. I certainly wasn’t being taught at home that the authorities could ever be wrong. But here was evidence from every culture around the world that the authorities could be wrong.
And when they were wrong, no-one ever said they were wrong. They just didn’t do that again.
It ultimately led me to studying classics in college which got me way, way out of my home town.
Hungry Joe
@WaterGirl: Rules without penalties are just suggestions.
Baron Elmo
One of each!? Ooargghhh… What you ask is madness. I could happily select dozens of titles in each category, and would suffer the agonies of the damned at having to make do without them all.
Having spent nearly three decades toiling in record stores, I insist on being allowed to select a favorite song AND album, so there.
Film: The Seven Samurai. Adventure, romance, humor, tragedy, kick-ass battle scenes and Toshiro Mifune. What else do you need? Runner-up: Once Upon a Time in the West.
Book: Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker. A dazzling document of the possibilities of language. Runner-up: William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury.
Album: The Anthology of American Folk Music. Changed my life, will surely change yours. Runner-up: Rolling Stones, Beggars’ Banquet.
Song: Bob & Earl: “The Harlem Shuffle.” A silly song about the hot dances of the day that somehow unlocks the mysteries of the universe. Runner-up: The Music Machine, “Talk Talk.”
JanieM
@SectionH: Waving right back. :-)
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: as for “movie” and “music,” well, “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which I saw at 16, made me think about sex differently, and the Talking Heads made me like rock’ n’ roll. So there’s that.
Craig
@Omnes Omnibus: What a magical scene!
zhena gogolia
I guess my book has to be Jane Eyre.
My movie is 1995 Pride and Prejudice.
Song? That’s harder. “Long Ago and Far Away.”
HumboldtBlue
@Tony Jay:
Mine is at the other end of the day, when it’s about 5:30 p.m. and I open a beer and smoke a bowl and then watch an episode.
Calouste
@nwerner: It’s a track on ProjeKct One – Live at the Jazz Cafe. Not sure whether the album is still in print, although it is included in the recent Heaven and Earth box set apparently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_ProjeKcts
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: I just binged the 1995 P&P last night. Kept me up until 3:00 am. I had never watched it before.
Hoppie
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Saw Rocky Horror on stage in ’75 when it was still at Kings Road. I was impressed at how faithful the movie was. Strange to be an old person.
HumboldtBlue
@zhena gogolia:
That’s just pure human connection.
LuciaMia
Great. with this posts title now I got this running thru my head: “One bourbon, one scotch, one beer…”
HumboldtBlue
@prostratedragon:
I tried so hard to understand that fucking play and I still don’t.
Hoppie
@HumboldtBlue: Wait for it.
Tony Jay
@HumboldtBlue:
That also works extremely well.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I hope you liked it! Colin Firth IS Darcy and Jennifer Ehle IS Elizabeth Bennet. And Benjamin Whitrow IS Mr. Bennet. And David Bamber IS Mr. Collins. And Barbara Leigh-Hunt IS Lady Catherine.
HumboldtBlue
@Hoppie:
That’s all I can do and it’s why I drink the waiting is interminable.
LuciaMia
E.F. Benson’s ‘Mapp & Lucia’ novels, in one compilation. You can dip in anywhere and be delighted, for the rest of your life.
Galaxy Quest.
Nightnoise, by the celtic group of the same name.
WaterGirl
@Hungry Joe: But it’s so much more fun to call these rules!
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Wish I could find the “Robot Chicken” clip with Keanu Reeves being unwilling to dance. “Yes, but what if I fail?”
I know it’s not a test but I know I still won’t end up liking whatever I write. So I’ll just sit here and admire everybody else’s choices.
oatler.
Book: anything by John Crowley or Gene Wolfe.
WaterGirl
@LuciaMia: I think that was running through my head when I came up with the idea.
OldDave
So many good suggestions here.
On music, I’ll suggest John Prine’s eponymous album from 1971. So many beautiful, heartfelt, amazing songs, all written by a postman in his 20s making his rounds.
Leto
Book: Dune (#1)
Music: Sgt Peppers Lonely Club Heart Band
Movie: O’Brother Where Art Thou (it’s doing double duty because the music is excellent)
NotMax
@HumboldtBlue
Well, while waiting there’s always Buck Godot.
All hail The Winslow!
:)
:)
Wyatt Salamanca
Book – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison’
Movie – The Godfather Part II
Song – Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who
mesmer a la carte
Movie: Stagecoach
Album: Welcome/Santana
Book: 92 In The Shade/McGuane
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Say what now? In what universe is that the case, if one may be so bold to ask?
Miki
On this night –
Book: 100 Years of Solitude
Movie: Catch 22
Song: Brahm’s 4th Symphony
Feeling nostalgic and gloomy. Ask me again tomorrow.
ArtSpider
I’ve been reading this blog for years and have never posted before. I know this isn’t on-topic, but since there are a lot of animal rescuers here, I thought maybe you can help this person in Detroit. I came across this at the DailyKos website and felt compelled to try and help. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/11/1985722/-Very-sad-news-I-need-to-rehome-the-over-and-underlords. I am on the east coast, nowhere near Detroit, but I thought if any of you are in the area and can help, please do. I honestly don’t know if this is even the right place to post this, but, I’m giving it a try.
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I think she means t-ball.
Emma from FL
Book: The Divine Comedy (yes, three volumes. Sue me)
Movie: Rashomon
Music: This one is hard. The Hammerklavier ? The Opus 110? Can I just take Claudio Arrau’s complete set?
Amir Khalid
Book: H2G2
Song: Superman March, John Williams
Movie: Monty Python’s Life of Brian
I might have different answers on a different day.
trollhattan
“Battle Cry of Freedom”
“Goodfellas”
“Oranges and Lemons” XTC
As me tomorrow and get a different list.
HumboldtBlue
@DesertFriar:
Now I’m down a Manfred Mann rabbit hole.
A Mannhole?
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I did mean t-ball!
WaterGirl
@ArtSpider: Welcome!
Anne Laurie is the front-pager who usually handles the pet blegs. Can you send the information to her by email?
Is this enough of a clue for you to know the email address?
anne-laurie at balloon-juice.com
Craig
Desert Island.
Book: The Lord of the Rings
Movie: The Godfather
Songs: Electric Ladyland
WaterGirl
@NotMax: Omnes is right, I was thinking of t-ball. Little League is probably vicious!
Richard
@HumboldtBlue: the Aubrey-Maturin series. Yes. Also Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West and The Charioteer by Mary Renault.
Hoppie
@Amir Khalid: I would have different answers on a different day. Duh.
Austin Bailey
Book: Catch-22 (Best American novel of the 20th century – 2nd half of century at least)
Movie: Casablanca (saw it first at UCLA with massively appreciative audience) Was blown away by The Seven Samurai on the big screen (but, was somewhat stoned at the time)
Song: The Times They Are A-Changin’
HumboldtBlue
@Amir Khalid:
Have you seen the letter Klopp wrote to 11-year-old Lewis who wrote to him explaining how he was anxious about school?
geg6
If I could take one of each to a desert island, the album would be The River by Springsteen. It’s a double album, so lots of music and he explores a lot of different kinds of songs on it. I thought it was brilliant when it came out and still do. The movie would be Young Frankenstein because it, too, is absolutely brilliant in every way. The writing, the direction, the photography, the sets and costumes and the acting—not a false note anywhere. Books are much harder because I love so many of different types. But I’m going to go with the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. All the books in the series are huge doorstops and there are eight books in the series so far. She plans on ten in all, so I’m not leaving for the island until she’s done.
raven
The House of Yes
Alas Babylon
Jingo
ArtSpider
@WaterGirl: Got it, thanks
OldDave
@NotMax: I, for one, find myself staying up late 3x/wk waiting for the next Girl Genius page. And I’m guilty of using The Winslow as my picture on Twitter.
Bruuuuce
Things that helped me to start growing up (I’m still working to get there)
One paid of books: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Tao of Pooh. The search for excellence and an example of excellence from when I was young, looked at differently. Eyes wide open!
One movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Got to the theater just in time, had to sit in the front row, and oh my GODS when that rock came down!)
One song: “Ocean Gypsy” by Renaissance. I had grown up in a household that didn’t appreciate music past the Beatles, and not much sudeways of them. This song opened me up to the world of prog rock, and that led me back to real rock and roll and its other avenues (Talking Heads! The Ramones!).
206inKY
Kate Bornstein and Caitlin Sullivan’s Nearly Roadkill
In Good Company
Taylor Swift’s new album Folklore
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
@LuciaMia: I love, love, LOVE Galaxy Quest. But it hits its peak by being in a double feature with Trekkies. Doesn’t matter which is first. The other double feature in my life is King of Kong and Dodgeball: An Underdog Story. If you ever wanted to know who Ben Stiller based that character on, King of Kong answers your question.
KenK
Book: The Golf Omnibus, P.G. Wodehouse
Movie: Casablanca
Song: Canon in D, Pachelbel
cope
@WaterGirl: But mine is the only reply with the word “One” in each title. I guess I missed the point.
WaterGirl
@geg6: Timing is everything. :-)
Hoppie
@HumboldtBlue: Drinking for Godot is an epiphany. Wait, er, attend for it.
WaterGirl
@cope: @cope:
Your cleverness was totally wasted on me! :-)
Well done!
WaterGirl
@ArtSpider: Great!
Now that you have commented the first time, don’t be a stranger.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Book: Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Movie: Femme Fatale
nwerner
@Calouste: thanks! Love the fans that go with a deep cut that very few (even devoted fans) will know. I’d probably go with a version of Fracture but there are many tracks from the more recent incarnations that can be listened to multiple times and still offer surprises deep in the mix.
Raoul Paste
@Wyatt Salamanca: Won’t Get Fooled Again by the Who is the best rock and roll song ever. Well done.
HumboldtBlue
@Hoppie:
Like I got a fucking choice.
PIGL
@HumboldtBlue: I know you weren’t talking to me but I did happen to stumble upon this recording sometime in the past few years. It’s remarkable. It shows that maybe she just is the wonderful human being that she appears to be from a distance.
If you know any different please don’t tell me.
geg6
@Raoul Paste:
Certainly the best rock and roll scream of all time. I can’t believe Daltrey didn’t completely shred his vocal cords forever with that.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
Book: Women in Sunlight by Frances Mayes
Movie: White Christmas (for Vera Ellen’s dancing) and Casablanca
Song: Cast Your Fate to the Wind Vince Guaraldi
HumboldtBlue
@PIGL:
There are no rules here and the comments are for everyone because I make the rules and say so. Rules that don’t exist. ‘Cause I roll like that.
Also, all I have ever heard was that Dolly is as genuine and kind as you can imagine so no Debbie Downer from me.
TiredOfItAll
Book: Don Delillo, The Names
Movie: Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World
Song: Steely Dan, My Old School
randy khan
Favorites:
Book: A.S. Byatt, Possession. It’s a tour de force about academia and poetry and the limits of knowledge. It’s deeply fascinating.
Song: Suzanne Vega, Solitude Standing. I love, love, love Suzanne Vega. I watched a live stream of her performing instead of the VP debate (which was a wise choice). This album has her two most famous songs, and they’re not even the best ones on it.
Movie: Wow, this one is harder than I thought. So I’m going to cheat and go with theater instead and say Sunday in the Park with George.
Desert Island Choices:
Book: Neal Stevenson, The Baroque Cycle plus Cryptonomicon, which really is part of the series
Album: Suzanne Vega, Solitude Standing
Movie: Star Wars, original trilogy plus Rogue One, which definitely really is part of the series.
debbie
@randy khan:
Someone else likes Byatt!
Matt McIrvin
Ones that affected me deeply when I was a young man and thought a lot about favorite books, movies and songs (I’m not sure they’d be my favorites if I first encountered them now, but they did what they did when they did):
Book: Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
Movie: Brazil
Song: They Might Be Giants, “I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die”
ThresherK
Movie: Metropolis. I saw a bit of it on TV when I was eight and visiting my grandmother, who lived close enough to a TV station which would show it. (Why she left me alone to change channels I’ll never know.) I had only vague fleeting memories of it and had to hunt it up just to remember the title when I was older. It largely made me the silent/old film geek I am today.
Tehanu
Life-changing … not “favorites”:
Book: Lord of the Rings (and yes, I was 14)
Movie: A Man and a Woman (realized that “foreign” didn’t have to mean “pretentious, highbrow, and boring”)
Song: In Memory of Elizabeth Reed (realized that rock music could be intricate and complex)
Sandia Blanca
Book: as someone above has mentioned both “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and a P.G. Wodehouse choice, I will second those and add Jasper Fforde’s “The Eyre Affair” and the subsequent books in the Thursday Next series.
Movie: either “Bedazzled” (the original, with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore), or “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension.”
Song: this changes by the minute, but the one that’s in my head now is “Moondance” by Van Morrison–preferably played on a good car stereo as you drive down a dark highway in Central California, which is where it first kicked me in the gut.
HumboldtBlue
@Tehanu:
It’s imprinted on my brain. I was a kid in the thick of daily instrument and vocal training when an older sister brought that album home. and it makes me shiver.
Eat a Peach and at Fillmore East. What albums.
Virginia
Book: Little Big Man
Movie: The Princess Bride
Music: The Graceland album
The Lodger
@TiredOfItAll: The oleander cure reminded me of that song.
SectionH
Ok, I’m also trading in the song category for Plum. (That’s P.G. Wodehouse for the rest of you. And how the fuck didn’t I think of him 2nd?
Sorry, WG, some of us anarchists just can’t stop making all our choices books.
cope
@WaterGirl: Too clever by half, I’m afraid.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Raoul Paste:
Thanks, nice to discover someone else who feels the same way about that song.
Who’s Next sounds as fresh and vibrant to me today as it did when I first heard it decades ago.
@geg6:
Agreed, I can’t think of a a better scream in rock music.
prostratedragon
@HumboldtBlue: Waiting for God, or …
:)
prostratedragon
Just saw a nice movie on Amazon Prime: 2/1 [Two/One]. Stretches a point a little in order to demonstrate it.
Bonnie
Book: A Tale of Two Cities
Movie: Casablanca
Music: Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony (all of it)
James E Powell
Category: Big impact
Book: Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
Movie, or film as we snobs prefer to call them: Cool Hand Luke
Song: “Honky Tonk Women” – The Rolling Stones
HumboldtBlue
@prostratedragon:
Does he got the weed?
Bad Poetry
East of Eden
Groundhog Day
Resigned by Michael Penn (whole album)
BigJimSlade
Hmmm, I’ll cheat and go big:
The Riverside Shakespeare
A movie… damn. Apocalypse Now, no, The Big Lebowski, no, Life of Brian… I dunno.
Mahler’s 1st (I might need to keep it light for repeated listening). Or Stella Blue. Or Shostakovich’s 5th, or Tell the Truth (Derek & the Dominos), or something by Sly, or Jimi, or, or… sigh. I know, the whole album Red by King Crimson, no, wait… Bob’s Blood on the Tracks. Damn, a song?!!! This is torture!
Jeffery
Book: How Long Has This Been Going On? by Ethan Mordden
Movie: Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell
Music: Akhnaten by Philip Glass
Czar Chasm
BOOK: The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson. This got me out of a deep depression I experienced for my entire freshman history, which killed my academic career for 7 years. It also introduced me to Discordianism, which gave me 7 of the best years of my life, & introduced me to my current partner of 20 years. Fnord!
MOVIE: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. The most beautiful & haunting love story on film. Sorry, Almodovar, but Charlie Kaufman can do no wrong.
SONG: “Strangers”, Portishead The song that inspired me to dance anywhere, to start moving my hips, and the value of musicality while in motion.
bluefoot
@HumboldtBlue: There’s a quote (I forgot who said it) which goes something like “Jeremy Brett is Sherlock Holmes; everyone else is acting.” I can’t disagree with that assessment.
I was just watching the episode “The Specked Band” last weekend. It’s both one of my favorite stories and one of my favorite productions.