Books, movies, music, design, art and artists, far places, slightly radical sports, my family, my dog, great minds, good food and wine, yoga, stretching, running, sitting at a cafe. Ah, naturally: a better world.
Anybody who makes me laugh and think and feel comfortable, good friends who live far away, Pedro Almodovar, Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, Jose Saramago, Kurt Vonnegut, Gabriel Garcie Marquez, Paul Auster, Margaret Atwood, Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, Peter Hoeg, Haruki Murakami, Milan Kundera, Stephen Elliot, George Saunders, Meryl Streep, the editors with whom I exchanged emails and that were so nice-to thank them. Also, quite a few great dead people (but not too soon.)
Eric Clapton, Marisa Monte, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Billy Holiday, Nay Mottogrosso, The songs of George Gershwin, Cat Power, Beatles, 10,000 Maniacs, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Maryanne Faithful, Elvis Costello, Chico Buarque, Maria Betanha, U2, Tom Jobin, Emma Shaplin, Madredeus, Yehuda Poliker, Micha Shitrit, Grieg, Bach, Motzart, Bethoveen, Placebo, Radiohead, and others.
The Barbarian invasions, Dogville, Broken Flowers, The Bride's Son, Elsa and Fred, The Piano Teacher, The Vertical Ray of the Sun (Anh Hung Tran), The Hours, Fucking Amal, Hotel Rwanda, Sunset Blvd. Dear Frankie, The Sea Within,My Little Shop of Horrors, Suddenly Last Summer, The Graduate, The Godfather, Separate Tables, The Servant, I capture the Castle, Talk to Her, Amores Perros, Being John Malkovich, Drugstore Cowboy, City of God, Memento, Sex, Lies, And Videotape, The Great Dictator, Vertigo, Almodovar's, Woody Allen's, Billy Wilder's, Bunuel's, Monty Python's, Marx Brothers, other great directors.
Films, biographies, The Actor Studio, Soprano, some E, Two and a Half Men, Curb your Enthusiasm, Everybody Hates Chris, re-runs of Frasier, Seinfeld and Mad About You.
Mikhail Bulgakov-The Master and Margarita, Heart of a Dog Gabriel Garcie Marquez-A 100 Years of Solitude, The Innovcent Arandira and her cruel Grandmother, My Melancholic Whores, Love in years of Cholera Borges-Labyrinth, Sabato-Tombs and Heroes, Alice Munro-Friends of my Youth, TC Boyle-Water Music, Banana Yoshimoto-Kitchen, Joseph Heller-Catch-22, Jean Genet's books, Amos Oz-Masa Dabiel, David Grossman-Runner, Yesh Yeladim Zigzag, Haruki Murakami-The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood Michael Cunningham-The Hours Stephen Elliot-Happy Baby Margaret Atwood-Cat's Eye, Alias Grace John Cheever-Collected Stories John Steinbeck-The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden John Irving-The World According to Garp Mark Twain-Stories Paul Auster-The New York Trilogy, Leviathan Denis Johnson-Jesus' Son Peter Hoeg-Miss Smila Snow Sense, Borderlines Charles Bukowski-The Most Beautiful Woman in Town Doris Lessing-The Golden Notebook Milan Kundera-The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Joke, Immortality Bertold Brecht-A Penny worth Romance Scott Fitzgerald-The Great Gatsby Oscar Wilde-Collected Stories Marcel Proust-Albertine Disappeared Anton Chekov-Selected Stories, Luis Ferdinand Céline-The Journey to The End of the Night Sulman Rushdie-The Satanic Verses Larence Durrel-Balthazar (The Alexandrian Quartet) Graham Greene-My Travels with my Aunt, England Made Me, Kurt Vonnegut-Cat's Cradle, Breakfast of Champions, Slaughterhouse 5 Romain Gary-Kites Stephen Elliot-Happy Baby J.D. Salinger's-9 Stories