One Summer is excellent. I've been pestering people with unwanted anecdotes from that book for months. Mostly about Calvin Coolidge and his cowboy pants.

Cabaret? I mean, we already know that Nazis are a big draw. And isn't the stage version (which I've never seen) much different than the film?

I've been listening to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on my walk to work each morning and evening. I would guess I'm a third of the way through right now. It's my first Michael Chabon, and I am completely and utterly enchanted. I can't believe I've been missing out until now. The best part of the…

Every year I tell myself that this is the year I will reread His Dark Materials. What a great, great series. I remember many people were disappointed by The Amber Spyglass, but I didn't feel that way at all. It's certainly spottier than the earlier books, but I found the various descriptions of the afterlife to be…

I'm slightly over halfway in The Name of the Rose, and it has picked up considerably in the past 100 pages. Now I'm trying not to stay up late to read it instead of nosediving into the book every night. Would you recommend any other Eco beyond those two?

The whole performance was so movingly real that I, like Geoffrey, thought Charles died at the end of the play for a second there.

The Velveteen Rabbit was the first book to have a true emotional impact on me.  Just thinking about it now makes me tear up (much the same as watching the end of Toy Story 3.

A Christmas Carol is my favorite book.  My dad read it to us every December and did funny voices for Jacob Marley and Mr. Fezziwig.  When we were done, we'd watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.  If you started any sentence from that book, I could probably finish it from memory.  It's just a lovely story, no matter how…

Absolutely yes to A Voyage Long and Strange but I couldn't get into Confederates in the Attic.  I read a few chapters and was just so put off by the whole "noble cause" bullshit that so many people Horwitz interviewed were spewing.

In March, I read Patrick Rothfuss' "The Name of the Wind" and Scott Lynch's "The Lies of Locke Lamora."  I thought both were excellent (I'm coming back to fantasy after a long hiatus).  I've heard pretty mixed reviews of the sequels. Worth reading?

Just finished "The Sworn Sword" last month and enjoyed it.  I'm saving the last Dunk and Egg until Martin sets a release date for Book 6.  I don't want to finish the last Dunk and Egg and realize that there's nothing else out there I can read about Westeros.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is my favorite Herzog by a country mile.

Does the Stratford Shakespeare Festival count?  Because I saw Christopher Plummer play Prospero in the Tempest, and it was mind-blowingly awesome.

My favorite Anna moment of the episode is when she's elbow deep in ink from the broken printer and looks like she's about to burst into tears of happiness when Geoffrey agrees to go to the school play.  At least once every episode, I just want to give her a hug.

I'm disappointed to hear that!  A third of the way through Wolf Hall right now, and I am really digging the style.  It's equally attributable to the "he" stuff and the use of present tense, I think.

Lonesome Dove is entirely amazing and perfect in both book and miniseries form.  I am glad, however, that the miniseries left out the part where (SPOILER that has haunted me ever since even though I don't have a penis) Blue Duck's people cut off a man's testicles and shove them in his mouth.

I read "The Fault in Our Stars" a few months ago and was alternately charmed and irritated by it.  Which is generally how I feel about teenagers, so I guess the author really nailed that.

So many great Wallace Stevens poems, it's hard to pick a favorite.  I've always found The Idea of Order at Key West kind of impenetrable though.  I prefer Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, The Palm at the End of the Mind, and Sunday Morning.