Taking up a challenge

{I like Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose.}

Ed at the Dizzies has thrown down a challenge, based on a bit from Roland Barthes about likes and dislikes. So, with the full understanding that, to steal a line from the financial services industry, past likes and dislikes do not guarantee future &etc., etc., etc. . . .


{I like anniveraries.}

I like

Rocketlass, baseball, distance running, Anthony Powell, cooking, gin martinis, Wodehouse, well-written history, Don Knotts, Jimmy Edmonds, J'onn J'onzz--the Martian Manhunter, film noir, crime novels, pizza, my bicycle, vintage suits, penguins, Chicago, New York, London, Murakami, public transit, steaming bowls of chunky vegetable soup, fake-meat bratwursts, sudden downpours on city streets, Barbara Pym, birds, Emmylou Harris, Melville, singing along at the top of my range to Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, Johnny Mercer songs, chili, James Kochalka, Iris Murdoch, Spider-man, Peter O'Toole, Yi Yi, Dickens, Borges, The Rules of the Game, peanut butter and jelly, Tolstoy, Chicago's lakefront bike path, the Pre-Raphaelites, vegetarian biscuits and gravy, Watership Down, Ben Grimm, Evelyn Waugh, Wrigley Field, the whole month of October, Pedro Martinez, Jack Benny, Sinatra, Wendell Berry, horchata, the word "quondam", the King James version, thunderstorms, Thomas Hardy, Luc Sante, swearing, my job, Calvino, Plato, bunny rabbits, mornings, fedoras, Tivo, Stevie Wonder, Nick Lowe, having guests, Proust, playing catch, Sherlock Holmes, Ian McShane, writing letters, receiving letters, Maborosi, Edward Lear, books as objects.

{I do not like the Giambi Zombie.}

I do not like

Telephones, pre-packaged food, gardening, The Old Man and the Sea, Sting, the Olympics, The Corrections, the Yankees, the Green Goblin, Bush, Cheney, sophistry, cars, anise, absinthe, tattered used books, The Science of Sleep, non-gin martinis, the fact that Idaho and Illinois have the same number of senators, Finnegans Wake, prog rock, smoky bars, mass-market paperbacks, The Fortress of Solitude, that moment in novels when the characters decamp to Mexico, Ravelstein, Billy Joel, unreliability, the movie of The Chocolate War, the Punisher, the concept of an afterlife, every Wilco album after Being There, Aristotle, The Plot against America, advertising, On the Road, The Royal Tenenbaums, Babel Tower, basil, commercial radio, sleeping late.

{I do not like Rudy Giuliani.}

Since this is an unusual sort of post, I'll also take it as an occasion to point out that I've Been Reading Lately is likely to be a bit quieter than usual this month. With lots of deadlines at work, the end of marathon training, and our annual baseball open house, October is by far my busiest month. Last October I dealt with that by posting irregularly. This October I aim to post regularly, but the posts are likely to be less substantial--much more, "Hey, check this out!" and much less, "Here's what I learned when I checked this out!" Regardless, I hope there'll be some stuff here that you'll enjoy, and everything should be back to normal soon after the last out of the World Series.