Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife and I have been spending more time indoors reading and listening to music. And making lists. So I thought I would list my favorite songs and books, which are listed here for those who might be interested.
Note that for both lists only the top ten ordering is solid. The remaining ordering is fluid and semi-random, basically what I could remember (which is somewhat diminishing) as it popped into my head.
Looking at those lists (especially the music one, and maybe the books one too) you can probably guess my age (Hint: Old) and my interests. Anyway, just for a distraction in these unusual times are some of my personal favorites in the music and book categories.
Favorite Music/Songs:
1. “Gimme Shelter” — The Rolling Stones
2. “Come Together” — The Beatles
3. “All Along The Watchtower” — The Jimi Hendrix Experience
4. “La Grange” — ZZ Top
5. “Hotel California” — Eagles
6. “Ball and Chain” — Big Brother & The Holding Company
7. “Stairway To Heaven” — Led Zeppelin
8. “Couldn’t Stand The Weather” — Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
9. “Rockin’ in the Free World” — Neil Young
10. “Rockin’ in the Free World (Acoustic)” — Neil Young
And now in no special order, 92 of my remaining favorites:
“Locomotive Breath” — Jethro Tull
“New Year’s Day” — U2
“Burning Down The House” — Talking Heads
“Let’s Dance” — David Bowie
“Twilight Zone” — Golden Earring
“Free Bird” — Lynryd Skynyrd
“Beast of Burden” — The Rolling Stones
“My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue)” — Neil Young & Crazy Horse
“Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black)” — Neil Young & Crazy Horse
“Life During Wartime” — Talking Heads
“Edge Of Seventeen” — Stevie Nicks
“Born to Run” — Bruce Springsteen
“Master of Disaster” — John Hiatt
“Fresh Air” — Quicksilver Messenger Service
“With Or Without You” — U2
“6th Avenue Heartache” — The Wallflowers
“A Hazy Shade of Winter” — Simon & Garfunkel
“America” — Simon & Garfunkel
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” —The Beatles
“Get Back” – The Beatles
“I Am The Walrus (‘No you’re not!’ said Little Nicola)” — The Beatles
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” — The Band
“Purple Haze” — The Jimi Hendrix Experience
“Whole Lotta Love” — Led Zeppelin
“Trampled Under Foot” — Led Zeppelin
“I Need A Man To Love” — Big Brother & The Holding Company
“Straight On” — Heart
“Cocaine” — Eric Clapton
“I Shot The Sheriff” — Eric Clapton
“Sultans of Swing” — Dire Straits
“Theme from ’Shaft’” — Isaac Hayes
“Wake Up” — Rage Against The Machine
“The Best Things” — Filter
“Money” — Pink Floyd
“Learning To Fly” — Pink Floyd
“Rhiannon” — Fleetwood Mac
“White Rabbit” — Jefferson Airplane
“3/5’s of a Mile in 10 Seconds” — Jefferson Airplane
“High Flying Bird” — Jefferson Airplane
“The One I Love” — R.E.M.
“Running On Empty” — Jackson Browne
“Still Got The Blues” — Gary Moore
“Separate Ways” — Gary Moore
“As The Years Go Passing By” — Gary Moore
“Cold Day In Hell” — Gary Moore
“Natural Blues” — Moby
“Sitting on Top of the World” — Cream
“Crossroads” — Cream
“American Pie” — Don McLean
“Come Together” — Sugarland (country acoustic version)
“St. James Infirmary” — Louis Armstrong
“Death Letter” — Cassandra Wilson
“Don’t Fear The Reaper” — Blue Öyster Cult
“Burning For You” — Blue Öyster Cult
“What’s Going On” — Marvin Gaye
“Helpless” — k.d. lang
“The Maker” — Willie Nelson
“Year of the Cat” — Al Stewart
“Rock the Casbah” — The Clash
“Rock the Casbah” — Something for Kate version
“Rock el Casbah” — Rachid Taha (sung in Arabic with Middle Eastern instrumentation)
“The Fish Cheer & I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die Rag” — Country Joe and The Fish
“Days Go By” — Dirty Vegas
“Take Five” — The Dave Brubeck Quartet
“In the Morning” — David Lawrence
“Murder Ballad in G Minor” — The Rosewood Thieves
“Nevermind” — Leonard Cohen
“Adagio for Strings” — Samuel Barber & London Promenade Orchestra
“La Gota Fria” — Carlos Vives (in Spanish)
“A Dios Le Pido” — Juanes (in Spanish)
“Psycho Killer” — Talking Heads
“Houses In Motion” — Talking Heads
“Nowhere to Run” — Martha and The Vandellas
“Papa Was a Rolling Stone” — The Temptations
“Layla” — Derek & The Dominos
“Love Shack” — The B-52’s
“Back in Black” — AC/DC
“Misirlou” — Dick Dale and his Del-Tones
“Pipeline” — Dick Dale & Stevie Ray Vaughn version
“Rumble” — Link Wray and His Ray Men
“Down By the Water” — The Decemberists
“Calamity Song” — The Decemberists
”Misunderstood” — Carolyn Wonderland
”I Found The Lions” — Carolyn Wonderland
“Miss You” — The Rolling Stones
“Turn It Around” — Lucius
“Road to Nowhere” — Talking Heads
“Fortunate Son” — Creedence Clearwater Revival
“Johnny B. Goode” — Chuck Berry
“The Weight” — The Band
“Maggot Brain” — Funkadelic
“The Ecstasy of Gold - L’estasi Dell’oro” — Ennio Morricone (with Edda Dell’Orso)
Favorite books that I have read (not including Shakespeare who I love):
1. Moby Dick or, The Whale — Herman Melville
2. Catch-22 — Joseph Heller
3. Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children’s Crusade — Kurt Vonnegut
4. Dispatches — Michael Herr
5. Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
6. Offshore — Penelope Fitzgerald
7. A River Runs Through It — Norman Maclean
8. Underworld — Don DeLillo
9. Cloud Atlas — David Mitchell
10. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — John le Carré
And now in no special order, 61 of my remaining favorites:
To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
The Sun Also Rises — Ernest Hemingway
Mrs. Dalloway — Virginia Woolf
A Gentleman in Moscow — Amor Towles
The Bookshop — Penelope Fitzgerald
Valentine — Elizabeth Wetmore
Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness In The West — Cormac McCarthy
The Iliad — Homer (Robert Fagles translation)
Tenth of December: Stories — George Saunders
Masters of Atlantis — Charles Portis
The Handmaid’s Tale — Margaret Atwood
The Testaments — Margaret Atwood
Our Souls at Night — Kent Haruf
Under the Volcano — Malcolm Lowry
One Hundred Years of Solitude — Gabriel García Márquez (Gregory Rabassa translation)
Living to Tell the Tale — Gabriel García Márquez (Edith Grossman translation)
Collected Fictions — Jorge Luis Borges (Andrew Hurley translation)
Pedro Páramo — Juan Rolfo (Margaret Sayers Peden translation)
The Shadow of the Wind — Carlos Ruiz Zafón (Lucia Graves translation)
Winter’s Bone — Daniel Woodrell
Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
In Cold Blood — Truman Capote
A Clockwork Orange — Anthony Burgess
As I Lay Dying — William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Shipping News — E. Annie Proulx
The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro
The Things They Carried — Tim O’Brien
The Short-Timers — Gustav Hasford
Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
Desert Solitaire — Edward Abbey
The English Patient — Michael Ondaatje
The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion
The Night Circus — Erin Morgenstern
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore — Robin Sloane
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — Michael Chabon
Night — Elie Wiesel
The Illustrated Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time — Dava Sobel & William J. H. Andrewes
Double Whammy — Carl Hiassen
Armadillos & Old Lace — Kinky Friedman
The Horse’s Mouth — Joyce Cary
Charming Billy — Alice McDermott
Littlejohn — Howard Owen
The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett
The Long Goodbye — Raymond Chandler
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle — David Wroblewski
A Thousand Acres — Jane Smiley
A Confederacy of Dunces — John Kennedy Toole
Dune — Frank Herbert
Goat Mountain — David Vann
Bad Monkeys — Matt Ruff
The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon
Daphne du Maurier’s Classics of the Macabre — Daphne du Maurier
The Golem and the Jinni — Helene Wecker
The Library Book — Susan Orlean
A Dark-Adapted Eye — Barbara Vine (pen name for Ruth Rendell)
Case Histories — Kate Atkinson
Life After Life — Kate Atkinson
Endurance: The Greatest Adventure Story Ever Told — Alfred Lansing
The Original Illustrated Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Annotated Alice (The Definitive Edition): Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass — Lewis Carroll & Martin Gardner
So enjoy a few diverting minutes, and figure out how eccentric/crazy/old/eclectic I really am...and maybe you too. Thanks for the indulgence. At least it’s something to pass some time today.