Tuesday, January 30, 2007

BOOKS: Well Played, Art Garfunkel

Holy cow, you people deliver. I was expecting a solid handful of list ideas, but you guys have blown my mind. I love how specific some of them are, too, though methinks a few of you are projecting a tad. (I'm looking at you, Sandy D., with "Books Whose Authors Have Gone Psycho on You After a Bad Review." Heh. I think you're required by law to share that story with the class.)

So here's what I'm a-gonna do. I'm in the process of adding your list titles (and consolidating the duplicates) to the list in my original post, which I've linked from the sidebar. I'll keep updating this list, so please keep suggesting ideas. And every time I create a new list, I'll create a link from the master list. That all makes sense, right? How could it not?

One more thing. I noticed a few list suggestions that I think I may have already covered way back in the day. I'm going to add those list titles to the master list as well, and I'll dig through the archives and create links to those posts.

And to answer a few people's question: please do play along, either in the comments section here, or on your own site. If the latter, make sure you post a link here so I can read your lists!

And speaking of lists, I just came across a fantastic new one, courtesy of Bookliness: this complete chronological list of every book Art Garfunkel has read since 1968. Ever since watching part of the 1980 film Bad Timing, in which Garfunkel plays a sexually obsessed college professor, I've been looking for something to pave over the indelible mental image of his naked, fornicating ass.* This list, strangely, helps.

If I had the time, trust me, I would go through the entire list and tally all the books both Mr. Garfunkel and I have enjoyed. And if you're honest with yourself, I think you'll admit that you would, too. Instead, I perused his list of favourite books (also organized chronologically) and couldn't help noting with no small degree of pleasure that the man who brought us one half of the harmonies in "Scarborough Fair" counts Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, The Razor's Edge, and Vanity Fair among his all-time favourite reads.

Well played, Mr. Garfunkel. I almost forgive you for making me watch you have sex with that dead woman. Almost.

*I may have also sighted the Garfunkel unit, but this image, happily, seems to have been scoured from my retinas.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Garfunkel's list has me torn; should the fact that I've read more books in the last 10 years than he has in the last 40 fill me with weird geek pride, or weird geek shame?

Knowledge wants to know.

(Okay, I've watched the entire run of The Show in the last week and it's affecting the way I write. Duckies.)

Anonymous said...

Or, you know, the last 30 years. I'm a book person; I think we're legally prohibited from being good with numbers.

Kailana said...

I think it might have been that web site that started me keeping track of what I have read. I just remember stumbling on a site of someone relatively famous that keeps track of the books they read...

Anonymous said...

Now, see, this raises a terrible question for me. Two actually. Raises terrible questions.

1. Has Mr Garfunkel really not read a favourite book since 2003? I see the lists have been updated since then so am I really to believe that he hasn't read a book he thought was grand for very nearly FOUR YEARS?

That makes me so sad!

2. Do you think, if Mr Garfunkel read a book (as an example: 'Sloppy Firsts' by Megan McCafferty) and he thought it was really, truly the best book he'd read (maybe in the FOUR YEARS?) he would admit to it on that list? Because look at the list, it's rather erudite!

Maybe I just think that because those sorts of books are a struggle to me! Maybe I am a philistine!