From Mark Steyn, 5Apr04...
The time: last month; the place: MTV. The interviewer asks: ''Well, we know that you were into rock 'n' roll when you were in high school, and we know that you play the guitar now. Are there any trends out there in music, or even in popular culture in general, that have piqued your interest?''
''Oh sure. I follow and I'm interested,'' says John Kerry. ''I'm fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important . . . I'm still listening because I know that it's a reflection of the street and it's a reflection of life.''
...
By comparison, here's Gov. Bush four years ago being given a ''verbal Rorschach'' test on American pop culture by Glamour magazine: What comes to mind, David France wanted to know, when you think of Madonna?
''I'm not into pop music,'' replied Bush.
I didn't agree with everything W said or did but, well, I'm not into pop music either. But I do like to read, and here's a partial list of my favorites, starting with a subject-to-change Top Ten, in no particular order:
1. Sometimes A Great Notion, Ken Kesey (author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest).
2. East Of The Mountains, David Guterson (author of Snow Falling On Cedars).
3. Lord Of The Rings, J.R.R. Tolkein.
4. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh.
5. Up In The Old Hotel, Joseph Mitchell.
6. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, John Le Carre.
7. Smiley's People, John le Carre.
8. The Godfather, Mario Puzo (hey, I didn't say I wasn't into pop literature!).
9. Crossing To Safety, Wallace Stegner.
10. No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy.
and in no particular order...
--The Essential Earthman, One Man's Garden; and Henry Mitchell On Gardening, Henry Mitchell (long-time gardening columnist for the Washington Post).
--The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams.
--The Red Limit: The Search for the Edge of the Universe; Coming of Age in the Milky Way; The Whole Shebang: A State-of-the-Universe(s) Report; and Seeing in the Dark: How Backyard Stargazers Are Probing Deep Into the Universe and Guarding Earth From Interplanetary Peril; all Timothy Ferris.
--Come to Me: Stories, Amy Bloom.
--Truck, A Love Story; and Populatuin:485, Michael Perry.
--Presumed Innocent; Pleading Guilty; The Laws of Our Fathers; The Burden of Proof; Reversible Errors; Limitations; and One L-The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School, all Scott Turow.
--A Drinking Life, Pete Hamill.
--A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean.
--Legends of the Fall, Jim Harrison.
--Addie Pray (aka Paper Moon), Joe David Brown.
--Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson.
--Catch-22, Joseph Heller.
--The Last Picture Show; and Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry.
--Blue Sky, A.B. Guthrie.
--Three more by Cormac McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses; The Crossing; and Cities of the Plain, (aka The Border Trilogy).
--Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer, Steven Millhauser.
--Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories, Jean Shepherd.
--Little Big Men; and A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess.
--The Cyberiad, Stanislaw Lem.
--Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen.
--Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger.
--Alas, Babylon, Pat Frank.
--A Canticle For Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
--Kitchen Confidential; and The Nasty Bits, Anthony Bourdain.
--16 more by John le Carre, especially Little Drummer Girl; The Russia House; The Honourable Schoolboy; and The Secret Pilgrim.
--Practically everything ever put to pen by Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov.
--23 by James Lee Burke, the best being Into the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead; Rain Gods; Jolie Blon's Bounce; and Bitteroot.
--The Glass Castle: A Memoir, Jeanette Walls.
--A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson.
--One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
