Favorites

I have lots of favorites of all kinds of things. Here are a few—

Food

• Chocolate
• Really good salads
• Chocolate
• Steak, medium rare
• Chocolate
• Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings
• Chocolate

Activities

• Riding my motorcycle
• Flying small planes, but I gave that up in favor of buying my motorcycle
• Traveling, by car, plane, train, or on my motorcycle
• Staying in nice hotels or motels with spas and pools
• Reading, reading, reading
• Writing, when it’s fun and not work
• Swimming in pools or in warm ocean or lake water
• Snorkeling in warm water
• Painting with oils or watercolor
• Crafts
• Cooking
• Playing with my grandchildren
• Cuddling my dog
• Napping

Music
I like everything from classical to blue grass, from new age to alternative rock, to golden oldies to jazz, from country western to whatever comes along. I don’t like heavy metal or music that is painful.

Movies
I love movies almost as much as I love my family and my motorcycle. Here are a few classics in no particular order. If you haven’t seen them, you are culturally deprived.

• The Princess Bride
• What’s Up, Doc?
• Gaslight
• Court Jester, and practically anything with Danny Kaye
• Dan in Real Life (a practically perfect chiasmus)
• The Importance of Being Ernest, latest version
• Pride and Prejudice, any version, except maybe the early BBC 1970s
• Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow, not the early BBC 1970s
• Anything with Cary Grant
• IQ
• What about Bob?
• Ladyhawk
• Silverado
• Somewhere in Time
• Star Wars series
• Star Trek series
• Beauty and the Beast, Disney animated version
• Anything done by Pixar
• Hairspray (OK, I know I’m the only one who likes it)
• High School Musical (Hey, it was pretty good)

Books
My reading favorites are as eclectic as my music and movie favorites, but I have to admit that I did so much heavy reading in getting my master’s and my Ph.D. that I’m burned out on the heavy stuff. If you must know, my favorite theoretical author is Stuart Hall—he has cool ideas and he’s a Marxist, among other things, and he writes very clearly. Try to balance that with the list that follows:

For Young-at-Heart Readers

• Anything by Mary Stewart
• Anything by Georgette Heyer
• Anything by P.G. Wodehouse
• Anything by Dorothy Sayers
• Anything by Connie Willis (humor, pathos, and chaos theory—what more could you ask for?)
• Anything by Isaac Asimov (600+ works, last time I heard)
• Practically anything by Tony Hillerman

For Young Readers

• Anne of Green Gables series by L.M. Montgomery
• King of the Wind by
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
• Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card

For Much Younger Readers

• Frog and Toad series
• Anything by Rick Walton