Camping trips, writing, traveling, knitting fluffy sparkly things, staring at camp fires, reading, shooting pool, decorating Christmas trees, fine dining, throwing darts, throwing parties, playing Sudoku and cribbage, cooking, staying up too late, visiting the Pacific Northwest, train trips, wandering the Columbia River Gorge, roundabouts, retail therapy, dog mushing, ghost stories, Saturday morning coffee, road trips, new shoes, Snood, roadside diners, and hearing really great live music.
I also love the rubber corks on Smoking Loon wine because they say "Whooh" on them -- and anyone who has heard the haunting call of a loon float across a still lake knows that is exactly how they do sound, and that it's one of the most beautiful disruptions of an otherwise silent moment.
Aliens.
And Chris Stevens from Northern Exposure.
Pearl Jam
Coldplay
My Morning Jacket
Chris Ledoux
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammar
Casey Neill Trio
Tori Amos
Lucero
Dar Williams
Indigo Girls
Dashboard Confessional
Everclear
The Killers
Johnny Cash
Patti Griffin
The Pierces
Death Cab
Ani DiFranco
Modest Mouse
Radiohead
Joni Mitchell
Tom Petty
John Denver
Counting Crows
Iron and Wine
Rosie Thomas
Bearfoot Bluegrass
Iris DeMente
Loreena McKennit
Beastie Boys
The Beatles
Led Zepplin (duh)
old school rap
old Madonna
any solid classic rock tied to happy memories of parties and road trips, mixed tape my awesome sister makes me.
Gone With the Wind
Star Wars
Casablanca
Shakespeare in Love
Whale Rider
The Breakfast Club
Galaxy Quest
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hoosiers
Good Will Hunting
Charade
Shawshank Redemption
Band of Brothers
Some Kind of Monster
Lonesome Dove
High Fidelity
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Empire of the Sun
Pan's Labyrinth
Election
The Big Lebowski
Almost Famous
Lord of the Rings trilogy
Sideways
The Muppet Family Christmas
Excalibur (sentimental fave)
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Chinatown
The Goonies
Lost in Translation
Dazed and Confused
Dirty Dancing
The Usual Suspects
The Untouchables
How to Make an American Quilt
A River Runs Through It
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters."
- "A River Runs Through It"
Deadwood
Lost
Gilmore Girls
Northern Exposure
Sex & the City
The Office
Firefly
Angel
Deadwood
Everwood
La Femme Nikita
The Tudors
Mad Men
"It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs."
- Thomas Hardy
"The Mists of Avalon" by Marion Zimmer Bradley and "Angle of Repose" by Wallace Stagner and "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy are my top three, no contest.
Runners up:
"Lady Chatterly's Lover" by DH Lawrence
"Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"The Awakening" by Kate Chopin
"The Other Boelyn Girl" by Phillipa Gregory
"Lonesome Dove" by Larry McMurtry
"Gone With the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell
"Drawing Down The Moon" by Margot Adler
"House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton
"Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver
"Into Thin Air" by John Krakauer
"The Boleyn Inheritance" by Phillipa Gregory
"Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert Persig
"Lady of Avalon," "Priestess of Avalon," etc., all by Bradley
"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac
"Maus" by Art Spiegelman
"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austin
"The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova
"What Was She Thinking" by Zoe Heller
"My Antonia" by Willa Cather
"The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss
"The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein
"Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman
"The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand
"Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand
"The Devil and the White City" by Eric Larsen
"Isaac's Storm" by Eric Larsen
"Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak
"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
"The Call of the Wild" by Jack London
"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
"The Mayor of Casterbridge" by Thomas Hardy
"Far from the Maddening Crowd" by Thomas Hardy
"100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy
"Bridget Jones' Diary" by Helen Fielding
"The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy
"White Noise" by Don Delilio
"On Walden Pond" by Thoreau
"I Know This Much Is True" by Wally Lamb
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
--F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby"
"And however one might sentimentalise it, this sex business was one of the most ancient, sordid connections and subjections. Poets who glorified it were mostly men. Women had always known there was something better, something higher. And now they knew it more definitely than ever. The beautiful pure freedom of a woman was infinitely more wonderful than any sexual love. The only unfortunate thing was that men lagged so far behind women in the matter. They insisted on the sex thing like dogs."
- D.H. Lawrence, "Lady Chatterly's Lover"
"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"
"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."
-- Jack London, The Call of the Wild
"I bequeath myself to the dirt and grow
from the grass I love.
If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean.
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless.
And filtre and fiber your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged.
Missing me one place search another
I stop some where waiting for you.
= Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
"To him she seemed so beautiful, so seductive, so different from ordinary people, that he could not understand why no one was as disturbed as he by the clicking of her heels on the paving stones, why no one else's heart was wild with the breeze stirred by the sighs of her veils, why everyone did not go mad with the movements of her braid, the flight of her hands, the gold of her laughter. He had not missed a single one of her gestures, not one of the indications of her character, but he did not dare approach her for fear of destroying the spell."
- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
(Gosh there are so many. I own hundreds of books. I was an English major. I LOVE to read. I don't do it enough. I'm a geek)
"However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names."
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
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"I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge."
- Willa Cather, My Antonia
My mom and my grandma.