Books, Dogs and Cats, Folklore, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Language, the Sea, the 17th and 18th Centuries, Moral Philosophy, City Parks, Radio, Sport Jackets, Old Photos, Scandinavia, Wine, Lighthouses, Museums, Beer Gardens
Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts
The New Garde: Ryan Adams, Cat Power, Ed Harcourt, Feist, Lambchop, The Smiths, Morrissey, Kings Of Convenience, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Moonbabies, Josh Ritter, Mojave 3, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Sparklehorse, Badly Drawn Boy, The Concretes, Wissam Dow, The Stars, The Strokes, Broken Social Scene, Neko Case, Newer Nick Cave, M. Ward, Clem Snide, Teenage Fanclub, Rufus Wainwright, Iron and Wine, The White Stripes, Turin Brakes, Brendan Benson, Voxtrot, Moloko (anytime), The Doves, Pela, The Brittle Stars, hollAnd, Jenny Lewis, Sondre Lerche, Sarah Harmer, John Wesley Harding/ Wesley Stace, Jolie Holland, Jessica Sligter, Vashti Bunyan, Artisan, Calexico, Whiskeytown, Andrew Bird, Arnold, Little Massive, The Reverie Sound Revue, Regina Spektor, Josh Rouse, Chris Bathgate////////////// The Old Garde: Randy Newman, Loudon Wainwright, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Buddy Holly, Beach Boys, The Kinks, The Byrds, Elvis Costello, Gram Parsons, Willie Nelson, my Dad's Merle Haggard and Jerry Jeff Walker albums, my mom's Kris Kristofferson records, Harry Nilsson, John Cale, Nick Drake, Fairport Convention, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, Blue-era Joni Mitchell, Richard Thompson, Cat Stevens, Van the Man, Carole King, Nina Simone, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, Django Reinhardt, Maxine Sullivan, Blossom Dearie, Yves Montand, Chet Baker, Mose Allison, Louis Armstrong, Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Dvorak, and The Clash
Some favourites: Bringing Up Baby, Wild Strawberries, Rear Window, The Lady From Shanghai. Nearly Anything with Woody Allen, Grace Kelly, Bill Murray, Anthony Hopkins, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Kate Winslet, Alan Bates, Gwyneth Paltrow, Albert Finney, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Peter O'Toole, Glenda Jackson, Sam Waterston, Jeremy Irons, Angelica Huston, Kelly McDonald, Gabriel Byrne, Peter Krause, Mathieu Almaric, Om Puri, Julie Christie, Alan Alda, Peter McDonald, or Scarlett Johansson. Director-wise, it's Woody Allen, Ingmar Bergman, David Lean, Carol Reed, Clint Eastwood, Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, those first two Wes Anderson movies, some Kubrick (mainly Barry Lyndon) and anything that's good without being too quirky or off-beat.
Six Feet Under, The West Wing, Black Books
William Trevor, Ian McEwan, Graham Swift, Margaret Drabble, Martin Amis, David Lodge, Jonathan Coe, Paul Auster, Vladimir Nabokov, James Joyce, Saul Bellow, Jonathan Raban, Dylan Thomas, Philip Roth, Ciaran Carson, John Updike, Dickens, JD Salinger, Ernest Hemingway, Edna O'Brien, Harold Pinter, Henrik Ibsen, Roald Dahl, Amanda Vail