I find that the making of lists is a wonderful exercise in truly examing your own values and getting a perspectives on who you are. The orders within the lists are not necessarily by preference.
(as published in The Lexington Hearld Leader, 2007)
These are the books that have been the longest on a special shelf in my bedroom. Other than the Bible and the Tao Te Ching, these are the ones I seem to pick up most frequently for thought, comfort and joy.
1. Essays and Journals by Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
3. Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke
4. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
6. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
7. The Rock Garden by Nikos Kazantzakis
8. Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens
9. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
10. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1. Hyperdrive by Jefferson Starship
2. Levon by Elton John
3. Whiter Shade of Pale by Procol Haram
4. Famous Blue Raincoat by Leonard Cohen
5. Put Your Lights On (The Wraith) by Santana and Everlast
6. 200 More Miles by Cowboy Junkies
7. The Pretender by Jackson Brown
8. One By U2
9. White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane
10. What's Going On by Marvin Gay
1. The Poem You Asked For by Larry Levis
2. The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens
3. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
4. Traveling Through The Dark by William Stafford
5. Little Gidding by T. S. Eliot
6. Meditations At Lagunitas by Robert Hass
7. somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings
8. Do The Dead Know What Time It Is? by Kenneth Patchen
9. Home Burial by Robert Frost
10. That Nature Is A Heraclitean Fire by Gerard Manley Hopkins
1. Apocalypse Now
2. Blue Velvet
3. Doctor Zhivago
4. Casablanca
5. My Fair Lady
6. The Big Chill
7. The Disapearance of Garcia Lorca
8. Stealing Heaven
9. The Piano
10. The Apostle
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