October 13, 2006

Haunted

To get everyone in the mood for Halloween, I'm reposting the four ghost stories I have experience with over the next couple of weeks. These are all true stories, so far as I know. Several of them I have personal experience with; one happened to a guy I worked with as he and I discussed whether or not there was really, truly, a ghost where we worked.

Enjoy!

My cousin used to tell me terrifying ghost tales. I loved watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In second or third grade, I checked out every book in the public library on ghost stories and hauntings.

I'm not some wishy-washy, new-age, granola-eating hippy who thinks ghosts are real.

But I do think ghosts are real even though I've never seen one.

I have been around a few ... as the meme the other day reminded me.

In college I worked for a sub shop in Texas -- Gino's Subs, a properly New York-Italian sub shop. The shop out at the mall was in an outlying building rather than the mall proper, right next door to the movie theatre. I don't know a whole lot about the building's history, but I know it was haunted.

The first few run-ins with the ghost were just odd little things. I couldn't quite explain the things that happened, but I was prepared to think it could have just been a fluke. During a really busy lunch one day, I saw the soda fountain do something bizarre. There's a sticker where you can label what pop should come out of that spigot and over the sticker is a piece of clear plastic to help keep that sticker legible longer. The clear plastic piece over the Sprite suddenly shot off the machine and landed about ten feet away. Not too odd, there's got to be some pressure on the plastic to get it to pop into place. But that pressure should have made it pop forward more than it did. It was more like it moved out about an inch forward and then moved ten feet sideways, not diagonal. Weird, but these things happen.

Another lunch rush the lid to the toothpick dispenser shoots straight up in the air, nearly hits the ceiling and then lands on the counter. Lined up perfectly with the toothpick dispenser. And somehow, tucked neatly under the little "arms" that hold the dispensed toothpick.

Okay that was really freaky, but still, could have just been a fluke.

What sealed it was the night that John and I were working the shop alone. We'd closed the store at 11 p.m. as usual and were working on cleaning up. I went over to the old Wurlitzer juke box and perused the 45s (yeah, this was the late 80s). I popped in a quarter and picked "Mandolin Rain" and "Our House." John calls from behind the counter, "What'd you pick?"

I tell him and he likes "Our House," but violently hates "Mandolin Rain."

"Our House" plays first. Cool. John has me call out the name of every song on the machine so he can pick some out. "Ooooh, I love 'West End Boys.'"

The next song to play? "West End Boys."

Hmmm. Maybe the jukebox shares John's taste in music. Maybe it's not wired right. Whatever.

A third song plays. Huh? Two songs for a quarter ... and a bonus song. Okay, the jukebox is a bit eccentric. Must be the wiring.

But the third song is some old fifties tune. I think it's Elvis, but I can't read the label on the spinning 45. John pops his head out "What song is that?"

"I have no idea."

"But you picked it."

"I didn't pick it. I think it's Elvis." Whatever it is, it's a sappy 50s love song and we're both glad when it's over.

The radio still doesn't come back on as we're treated to an encore performance of "West End Boys."

Very odd, but we figure the wiring on this juke is just old and goofy. I leave a note for the manager to tell her the jukebox guy ought to take a look at the thing.

Over the course of the next few weeks, any time John and I are working alone together, we're treated to "West End Boys" a couple of times a night. After the store has closed. Never when there's customers and we can safely assume that someone is messing with us. And when we close at night, I usually do the front -- near the juke -- and John does behind the counter. There's no way he can be doing it or I'd see him near the juke.

When the jukebox man finally comes in, I happen to be there. "Hey, make sure to take that Elvis record out of there, okay?"

"I don't think there's one in here." He runs through his list. "No, there's no Elvis in here."

"Yeah there is, I saw the thing." And I run through the whole story for him. He literally takes every single 45 out of the juke box. I watch him.

No Elvis 45 is in there. No funky 50s 45 is in there.

In fact, there's no 45 in there with the funky color of blue that I saw that night. You know, that old funky blue with the silver writing that used to be on a lot of records from the 50s and 60s. Nothing like that is in the machine.

WEIRD.

But the really weird thing doesn't happen until John quits. I mean, come on, it's a sub shop and college kids can do better, even in 1989, than $3.85 an hour.

So, I'm closing the store one night with a new kid. She's cleaning out front and I'm cleaning behind the counter. She's barely started sweeping the floor and hasn't made it anywhere near the juke box yet. John's been gone for about a week.

"West End Boys" starts up.

The new kid's head pops up. "When'd you put money in the juke box?"

"I didn't." I don't bother to explain at first. I mean, it sounds crazy to say that a ghost just likes that song. Actually, John and I had a running joke that the ghost had a crush on John and that's why it played the Elvis love song and John's favorite song.

"West End Boys" plays again. And now, I get this weird feeling of query and sadness. I don't know how else to explain it other than I could feel the question in the air. Umm, I'm kinda thinking that the ghost really did have a crush on John.

The song begins a third time. A fourth time.

Finally, the new kid is kinda freaking out. Especially when I explain the whole ghost thing.

When the song starts for the fifth time, and that sense of question and sadness has just gotten more and more intense with every iteration of the song, I finally say out loud, "I'm sorry. John doesn't work here anymore. He quit. I'm sorry."

This time the radio comes on after the 45 finishes.

I never saw the ghost, but me, John and the new kid knew it was there. The manager of the store knew about it, too.

I always felt sorry for that ghost. It was so obvious that it liked John and it was terribly sad when he left.

But that was a nice ghost. Later I'll tell you about the one I lived with who was definitely NOT a nice ghost.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:28 AM | Comments (7) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

October 3, 2006

The Cleaning Book

My mother liked to keep a clean house. She didn't work until after I was in high school and my sister was in junior high, so she chose keeping a sparkling-clean house as her job. However, like most people, she really really really hated cleaning house.

So, she had plenty of books to help her figure out how to best manage her time ... Do I Dust or Vacuum First? ... Clutter's Last Stand ... I am not making these up ... I wish i were!

She went on a kick. Organized everything in the house. Threw away all of the boxes to all of our board games. Used a stencil (yes, she went out and bought an alphabet stencil for this little endeavor) and used a magic marker to STENCIL the name of the game and its number onto the back of the board. The number corresponded to a folder wherein she either cut up the game box to "rescue" the directions for the game ... or she photocopied the directions. All directions were encased in a nice plastic paper protector. All game pieces were ensconced in a crappy metal box of drawers which she apparently bought wholesale because she used several of them to also organize Dad's garage workbench, spending a week sorting out different kinds of nails and screws and nuts and bolts.

She instituted The Box ... duhnduhnDUUUUUUUHN.

If you left something out in the living room or dining room ... really, anywhere she didn't want to see it ... it was taken to The Box ... duhnduhnDUUUUUUUHN ... and you couldn't get anything out of said box until Saturday from ten until noon.

There was also the dusting "game" wherein Mom hid pennies in little nooks she thought we would probably not dust. Supposedly this made dusting a nice "scavenger hunt" for us.

Perhaps if you're FIVE, this might work. I was 15. So, I let my 11 year old sister do all the dusting ... which ticked Mom off, because all of the books said that children just LOVED this game. I once spent an idle Saturday afternoon attempting to explain to her all the subtle differences between teenagers and children, sadly, this advanced parenting lesson was quite lost on her. I even pulled out the "How to Deal with Your Unruly Adolescent" books that she had purchased and "hidden" in her bathroom cabinet, helpfully highlighted. (Presumably while she was using the ... ahhh, facility.) I pointed out some of her highlighted passages and insisted that there were large differences in handling teens and children. I then attempted to point out that I was actually a very well-behaved teenager and she need to quit treating me like a little daemon.

This didn't go over well, logic not being my mother's strong point.

Oh, and actually ... I really was a great teenager. I never once snuck out of the house, I never got detention at school, was always home in time for curfew, never tried drugs ...
wait ... if I continue talking about what a hideous goody-two-shoes I was, everyone will leave.
Umm, and I got sent once to the Group W bench.

At any rate, Mom's solution to my lack of interest in the scavenger hunt dusting was to fold up dollar bills for my sister to find and for me to get ticked off over. That worked. I got 25 pennies in my room and she got $3.62??

However, her stunning cleaning/OCD achievement was The Cleaning Book.

This was a notebook of epic proportions. A D-ring 3-inch binder filled with the thickest page protectors I'd ever seen. She whipped out this tome of terror one Saturday morning and informed us both that there would be NO fun to be had until we had done our Saturday Chores.

Umm. What Saturday Chores, I asked. We'd had plenty of chores before. But no Saturday Chores.

Mom then places The Cleaning Book on the kitchen table. With an ominous thud. She opens The Cleaning Book.

Safely ensconced in these sheet protectors with teeny tiny pockets were bits of notecards. Approximately 3 inches wide by 2 inches high, there was a highlighter-width colour swath across the top of each one. Colour coding? She cut apart all these notecards to get to this size and then COLOUR CODED THEM????

What to clean daily.
Twice a week.
Every two weeks.
Every month.
Every three months.
Once a year.

Down to when to dust the tops of the baseboards and doorframes. When to take off the grills on the air exchange and dust them off. When to wipe clean the lightswitch plates. And the lightswitch plate COVERS! (Oddly enough, we never did have plastic over the coucn and recliners ... I always wondered why her obsession didn't go that far.)

So my mother has an extra page in the front of this book for me and one for my sister. She shows us our pages. She hands us all the little-bitty notecards from our pages.

These are our Saturday chores. This confetti that she is handing out is what we are suppposed to do before we can play, read, go outside, call a friend, whatever. When we finish each notecard-chore, we are to put it back on our page and she will put them back in the proper places later on.

But the crazy thing was, she could NOT comprehend why we both squawked about this.

As I said, we had chores we were supposed to do. But we'd never had a list sprung on us in such a short time and told we couldn't do ANYTHING else until this confetti was finished. Very disconcerting, particularly when you've got your whole day planned out already.

I think we complained so bitterly that The Cleaning Book only lasted a few weeks. But, OH, what weeks they were!

I still hate dusting.

Though I did one time find a nice envelope filled with 3 $20s when dusting my first apartment. Of course, I had LOST that envelope about 3 months before ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:06 AM | Comments (4) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

September 23, 2006

Lay My Head Down,

There are some days, particularly as the summer begins to tire and weaken and give way to fall and cold and slumber ... when lyrics seem to hold more sway than conversation. Times when my thoughts all turn to music ... written by others.

Of course, those days seem more frequent when I get new and thought-provoking music. Such is the new Indigo Girls CD, Despite Our Differences. On the first listen of the CD, I thought ... yeah, it's them ... more of the same. Then I listened to it instead of having it on as background for work ... and I'm instantly thrown back into introspection and being "lost in the moment." (Yeah, I'm tossing Eminem into a post about Indigo Girls, what about it?)

Lay My Head Down ... Emily Saliers

Oh the party's kicked up a few notches
Look at us getting loose
She leans back against the wall and she watches
Tugging her collar like it might be a noose
And everyone's tied to their thing
To their past or their drink or the date that they bring
I just get tired all of a sudden taking it in
And I want to lay my head down on you
Because you're the only solid thing in this room
A roomful of changes, strangers, illusion, confusion
I speak from my heart but I'm not really sure if it's true
I want to lay my head down on you
Oh they say don't waste too much time planning
Or you'll get the rug ripped out
And the only way you'll be satisfied
Is learning to live without
But some plan for the kingdom of heaven
And some take their chances and bet lucky seven
I don't know what to believe I just show up and breathe anymore
And I wanna lay my head down on you
Because you're the only solid thing in this room
A roomful of dressers, professors, lookers, hookers
If I don't get out I'll do something I don't wanna do
And I wanna lay my head down on you
Was it so long ago
That we sat and talked in your car
Your things were all packed
And the place you were headed was not really that far
Years later I think
That I would've been much more alive
To have taken you up on your offer and taken that drive
Well everything that's come before us leads to where we are now
And that's simply, I know, so why can't I let go of the feeling
That I'm lost somehow
Just a ghost looking in
Out of my own life just visiting
In search of a body to have and to hold and to keep and to sleep
I wanna lay my head down on you
Because you're the only solid thing in this room
A room full of missed chance, slow dance, cold fate, heartache
I showed up for a party and saw my life story full view
And I wanna lay my head down on you.

I love the whole song ... but the lyrics that immediately capture my attention every time:

A roomful of dressers, professors, lookers, hookers
If I don't get out I'll do something I don't wanna do

Yeah. Exactly.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:34 PM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

September 18, 2006

El Condor Pasa

Thinking of Simon & Garfunkel and the spaces in between word and action and thought, I had to remember the summer that Simon & Garfunkel held their renunion tour. It was the same summer that I spent with my aunt and uncle. I absolutely idolized them. They loved Tolkien, they loved history, they loved exploring the area around them ... and while there were certainly rules of behaviour, they were reasonable rules ... rules I could understand.

My aunt and uncle got me a book for my birthday every year, a tradition that I thought was the absolute coolest thing ever. I still have the copy of The Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl that they got me for my birthday one year ... and I can remember my aunt worrying that perhaps I didn't want a book every year. Geek-in-training that I was, I hastened to reassure her that not only did I enjoy getting a book from them every year, I looked forward to it! In fact, eventually, my aunt got so busy with her own kids, her career and the mundanities of life that I didn't get a book any more and I was terribly sad to see the tradition fade away and be forgotten.

Yeah, it was a magical summer all the way around, so far as I was concerned. I was about 14 and I had been "hired" to watch my cousin Matthew and the newborn Chris while my aunt finished up her dissertation and began preparing to search for a job as a professor of theology.

Umm, yeah. These were probably not the best circumstances to have an idyllic summer, but I didn't know that at 14. I thought I would babysit Matt during the day, my aunt said she'd mostly take care of the infant and I'd get to earn some cash and have a great summer all in one fell swoop. I had no idea how much stress a dissertation caused. I had no idea how difficult it was to "babysit" a kid while mommy was still home. So, I both love that summer and it was something of a nightmare as well.

I re-discovered Tolkien that summer in my aunt and uncle's giant one volume copy of The Lord of the Rings. I mean, that sucker had the coolest typeface ... great illustrations ... and the smell ... sorry, got carried away. I guess I caught the bibliophilia that summer. I attempted to read A Tale of Two Cities that summer in preparation for my English class in the coming school year. I say attempted because more often than not, I fell asleep while trying to learn how to be an industrious little English geek. (This was, actually, a "skill" I would simply hone further during my undergraduate studies ... wonder if it's the ADHD ... hmmm.)

One of the most memorable events of that summer, however, was when we all heard that Simon & Garfunkel were coming to Milwaukee. This was HUGE. I mean HUGE. I'd never been so anxious to go to a concert in my life. (And I'd not been to any concerts at all yet.)

The tickets were insanely expensive for the time. Not that I'm surprised. Concerts are far more expensive to hold than most people think ... and given that they were touring only a few select cities, the price per concert was going to be high. My aunt, uncle and I got very excited, but in the end, we were all disappointed and wound up not going. After all, they were living with the debts caused by going to graduate school and having two kids ... and I sure didn't have a lot of money. Naturally I was more than willing to give up my entire summer's salary to pay for us all to go. However, we all knew that the instant my mom heard I'd done that, we'd ALL be in trouble.

It was also the summer that I learned how to do research in a university library. My aunt had finally enrolled my cousin in a montessori preschool as we ALL got stressed out by the attempts to keep my young cousin occupied, the youngest cousin quiet, and allow my poor graduate student aunt to finish working on that albatross of a dissertation. (Not that she was struggling ... just that ALL dissertations are albatrosses!) A few times my aunt seemed to feel bad for dragging me to the library so often, but put me in a big building with a bunch of books and trust me, even at 14, I'll keep myself occupied and then some.

The first project I gave myself was to research the Civil War in the U. S. a bit more. I headed over to the rows and rows and rows and rows of catalog cards. Found the batch of cabinets marked Subject. Wandered down to the Cs. Nothing!

There were NO cards in that catalog marked "Civil War"!!! Could Marquette University truly have no books on the Civil War? There's no way! And so, I learned that summer that up north, them weird yankees called it "The War Between the States" instead of the "Civil War" because it wasn't until I began looking at "War" instead of "Civil War" that I found anything at all.

I discovered books so old I was afraid to take them out of the stacks. I relished the smell of the seemingly "ancient" texts.

I became convinced that summer that I had been born into the wrong family somehow. I'd been convinced for years and years that I didn't belong in the family I was born into ... but I was sure that summer that I'd been meant to be my aunt's child instead of my mother's daughter. We seemed to share so many things in common. Books, history, learning ... a love of exploration and discussion. Both my aunt and my uncle seemed eager to teach me, to learn with me, to engage with me.

I was poised on the brink of asking them if I could live with them ... a serious discussion that terrified me as I knew what kind of turmoil it would create. And then a small series of incidents, all of them mild in and of themselves, made me re-think it all.

First, I asked my uncle to play chess with me one evening (having just discovered chess, I was still trying to learn the game). If I remember correctly, this was one of the few times that my uncle was a bit busy and my aunt had some free time. With all the tact of a young teen, I insisted that I wanted to play with my uncle and not my aunt ... the reason being ... and I caught myself before I could actually utter this "reason" aloud, was that I thought my uncle might actually ratchet his level of play down to keep me "in the game" while not totally throwing the game to me. My aunt, however, I assumed would play at her top ability ... and I didn't think I'd learn as much from a fast killing. They both insisted that I tell them why I thought I should play my uncle and not my aunt and I was at a complete loss for words. It would be rude for me to say that my uncle might let me win or at least let me keep up a bit, whereas I was certain my aunt would show me no quarter at all. I sat there, mute, looking from one face to the other. Stuck. And in that moment, I stopped reacting to them and instead reacted to how I often felt trapped at home with my parents. I couldn't speak. I finally just ducked my head, shook my head, and put the chess set away despite their attempts to re-engage me.

The second incident was a pivotal one to me, but it may be hard for anyone else to really understand. My smallest cousin was in his little automatic swing. My toddler cousin was not supposed to touch the swing which was not the world's sturdiest and most stable contraption ever. However, naturally, little Matthew wanted to push his brother on the swing. He wanted to play with his brother and teach him to enjoy the swings. So, one early evening before dinner, young Matt kept pushing his brother on the swing and making the whole machine move. My aunt was trying to finish something up before making dinner and before her husband came home. I was trying to earn my keep, afraid that now that Matt was going to preschool, my aunt would send me back home for the rest of the summer, unneeded. So, I tried to get the toddler to stop.

You know what happens when you tell a toddler who really wants to play that he can't do something? They scream. They yell. They do it anyway, more clumsily than if you'd left them alone.

Naturally, I told my cousin to not touch the swing machine. He screeched and pushed his brother. His brother squealed as he'd been more asleep than awake.

And, predictably, my aunt flew away from her nasty Xerox computer and her dissertation and came bellowing into the dining room area where the three children were supposed to be staying out of her hair and she yelled at me. Something about sending me to my room if I didn't leave Matt alone.

All she knew was that here she was, trying to get this damn dissertation done and that I had made the older boy holler which in turn made the younger boy holler. All I knew was that I was trying to watch the boys and keep the older one from doing stuff he wasn't supposed to and my aunt suddenly went ballistic on me. On me!

I was shocked. I was certain in that moment that both my mom and my aunt were given to irrational behaviour. And, obviously, my aunt didn't want me living there anymore. I was simply in the way, not helping out at all.

Now, I don't know that my aunt was thinking any of that. With adult eyes I can certainly see why my aunt reacted the way that she did. And, of course, she also didn't know about the irrational chaos that I'd been exposed to for the last 14 years, so she had no idea how an innocent and natural explosion like that might affect me.

For the rest of the summer I simply tried to stay out of everyone's way. I tried to keep the boys relatively quiet, but I no longer pushed them when they argued, letting Matt run to his mom when he didn't like what I had to say. It didn't stop my aunt's frustrations since she was interrupted almost as much as if I hadn't been there at all.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:07 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

September 17, 2006

Crayon Rosary

The first time I saw a "real" Simon & Garfunkel album ... an "original" album from one of the first printings, I was babysitting for the Hamptons, a family I'd just started sitting for and loved to pieces. The album I first played on their stereo system was Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme and I was utterly hooked. I had the stereo on so softly, I could barely hear "Homeward Bound," "The Dangling Conversation" and the rest of the songs. But I utterly panicked when "Silent Night" came on. Somehow, the television was bleeding sound through to the stereo! I could hear a news announcer over the song. Obviously, I had done something wrong with the stereo. Had I broken their stereo system?

Panicking that I had somehow touched a wrong button somewhere, I began systematically looking through the whole stereo, looking at the back of the machines trying to figure out how the television could possibly be connected and "bleeding through" to the stereo.

Eventually, I looked at the album cover and discovered the name of the song was actually "Silent Night / 7 o'clock News."

Oh. So, you mean I didn't break the stereo. The song was supposed to do that?

I was enthralled. What a freaking cool concept!

Despite the fact that I grew up in the time of Air Supply, Duran Duran, Twisted Sister, Guns N Roses and WhiteSnake, I found that I usually was more fascinated by Simon & Garfunkel; Peter, Paul & Mary; the Kingston Trio; the Monkees and the Kinks than I was the music that my friends were interested in. (Except perhaps, U2 from Rattle and Hum and earlier ... and R.E.M. ... I think those were the height of my "cool" musical interests.) Don't get me wrong, I had a copy of Purple Rain and several Air Supply albums, but the music that really shaped who I was, was much older.

So I'm not really sure why I didn't rip my collected Simon & Garfunkel collection to my computer before today. But in the last week, I've realized that I really wanted to go back to that mental space that I occupied so often as a teenager, listening to Simon & Garfunkel with my huge headphones on ... watching the lights on my stereo flicker, up and down the equalizer, green and red dancing in time to the music, watching the needle bob and weave on the record.

More often than not, I'd turn the light off in my room and watch the stereo deliver the music and think about the lyrics, losing myself in the music, the moment, owning it, feeling like I could exist in that space forever, never letting it go.

"Bleeker Street" ... "Sounds of Silence" ... "Blessed" ... "Kathy's Song" ... "Richard Corey" ... "I Am A Rock" ... my own list goes on and on.

Songs that defined me and helped me learn to stand on my own. To learn that rebellion could also encompass responsibility and not simply pointlessness.

"I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail ... I'd rather be a hammer than a nail ... I'd rather be a forest than a street ... I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet ..."

"And the train is gone suddenly / On wheels clicking silently / Like a gently tapping litany,
And he holds his crayon rosary / Tighter in his hand."

"Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit.
Blessed is the lamb whose blood flows.
Blessed are the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on,
O lord, why have you forsaken me?
I got no place to go,
Ive walked around soho for the last night or so.
Ah, but it doesnt matter, no.

Blessed is the land and the kingdom.
Blessed is the man whose soul belongs to.
Blessed are the meth drinkers, pot sellers, illusion dwellers.
O lord, why have you forsaken me?
My words trickle down, like a wound
That I have no intention to heal.

Blessed are the stained glass, window pane glass.
Blessed is the church service makes me nervous
Blessed are the penny rookers, cheap hookers, groovy lookers.
O lord, why have you forsaken me?
I have tended my own garden
Much too long."

I think, ultimately, I was drawn to everything in Simon & Garfunkel which is encapsulated in this single song. Concern for others. The differences between religion, spirituality, action and belief. The spaces between what we say, what we do and what we believe.

Songs like this always made me think about the spaces in between, where we live. And how what we do and say affects others in ways that we may never know.

I think I'll be listening to this stuff for a while again. And contemplating those spaces in between ... those spaces that we don't always want to think about.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:22 AM | Comments (3) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble

September 8, 2006

SF/F

Top 50 SF/F (Science Fiction/ Fantasy) Books from some random list somewhere.
Bold = read it ...
Italics = I made a comment about it

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
3. Dune, Frank Herbert ... started it ... got bored
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe ... started it ... got bored
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. ... read it ... hated it ... poor writing ... good ideas ... i'm picky
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett ... for some really unknown reason Pratchett drives me straight up the wall ... my other half loves him and we own everything he's ever written, I think ... but I can't stand him.
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey ... got bored ... also, I think these are the books that have some of the same names as Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series ... which just made reading these too freaking weird
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson ... got bored (i'm seeing a pattern here)
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock ... got bored
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks ... got bored
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer
(list from Epic-Fantasy.com)

Eh, this list is okay. There are, in my opinion, some big deals left off of here and some crap left on.

In no particular order, I would recommend:
The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land, Starship Troopers, and for sentimental reasons both Rolling Stones and Space Cadet ... all by Robert Heinlein. Also, Citizen of the Galaxy.
Melissa Scott's Jazz, Trouble and Her Friends and also Night Sky Mine
Elizabeth Moon ... haven't come across a bad book yet ... but I hear her earliest stuff is a bit odd.
Neuromancer, Count Zero, MonaLisa Overdrive ... William Gibson
Snowcrash, Cryptonomicon ... Neal Stephenson
All of the Deryni books by Katherine Kurtz... it's fun to read them in historical order instead of i order of publication.
The Last Herald-Mage series by Mercedes Lackey ... she quickly became a formula writer, but this trilogy is excellent. (Except you can *almost* skip book two.)
Lord of the Rings, of course ... goes without saying.
Chronicles of Narnia as well.
Dark is Rising series by Susan Cooper.
Clarke always seemed a bit over-rated to me. Asimov was all right ... but I think I read him too early ... I was in third grade at the time ... seemed a bit dull.
Bradbury is another one ... great ideas, crummy follow-through ... I slept through most of Dandilon wine and Farenheit 451 ... even though I liked the concepts and ideas.
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle ... actually that whole series is quite good.
Bard Morgan Llewellyn.

And, of course ... I've Heard Coyote Howl. By me. Yeah, I know. I'll sell you the PDF for $5.00 if you email me and have a PayPal account. About 300 pages of computer science fiction (not really cyberpunk, but not space sci-fi either), southwestern American Indian Coyote myths, the life and times of James Matthew Barrie, Peter Pan all rolled up into one novel. Try it, you'll like it.

And that's my Sci-Fi/Fantasy rundown.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:31 AM | Comments (6) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | TrackBack | Stumble