Shakespeare. Theater & Film. Dance, especially ballet. Big Sky country, wherever I can find it. Wild places. Red wine, sipped at sunset with my husband as we watch the city lights. Book stores. Rare book libraries. Good food shared with good friends.
Music
Rock
U2. Dire Straits. Eric Clapton. Sting. The Police. Beatles. Counting Crows. Melissa Etheridge. Gin Blossoms. The BoDeans. Coldplay. The Eagles. Fleetwood Mac. Goo Goo Dolls. Nickelback. R.E.M. The Stones. The Who.
NEW FINDS FROM SCOTLAND: JULIE FOWLIS & AMY MACDONALD! Joni Mitchell. Jimmy Buffett. Lisa Loeb. Sarah McLachlan. Simon & Garfunkel. Joe Cocker. Van Morrison. Indigo Girls. Aimee Mann. Elton John. Jim Croce. David Gray. Jack Johnson. James Taylor. Peter Gabriel. Belle & Sebastian. Tori Amos.
Classical
Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.
Mozart's Requiem.
Bach's Mass in B minor.
Beethoven's Third. Chopin. Ralph Vaughan Williams. Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.
Movies
SHAKESPEARE
Shakespeare in Love. Romeo and Juliet (Zeffirelli's). Romeo + Juliet (Baz Lurhmann). Hamlet: Olivier's, Branagh's, Zeffirelli's. Henry V: Branagh's, Olivier's. Throne of Blood (Kurosawa's Macbeth).
NOT SHAKESPEARE, BUT STILL GREAT
Elizabeth. Out of Africa. The Shawshank Redemption. Lawrence of Arabia. Gone With the Wind. My Fair Lady. The Godfather. The Usual Suspects. Memento. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Amelie. Big. Shrek. Bull Durham. Chocolat. Gosford Park. Sense & Sensibility. The Big Lebowski. Four Weddings and a Funeral (except for the last execrable 5 minutes).
All About Eve, Now Voyager, Roman Holiday, Philadelphia Story, To Have and Have Not, Casablanca, anything with Fred Astaire.
Television
Lost, Jon Stewart, & The Colbert Report are the only shows I watch regularly. But I also love watching baseball, especially the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Red Sox.
BEST TV EVER MADE
Band of Brothers
Books
If you like these books, you might like INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES:
The Historian. The Da Vinci Code. Name of the Rose. The Thirteenth Tale. Possession. The Dante Club. The Club Dumas. Shadow of the Wind.
Weird double-take: people who hated The Da Vinci Code have also liked my book!
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER! (UK)
"THE LITERARY SENSATION OF THE YEAR!"
--THE BOOKSELLER (UK, 2008)
ONE OF AMAZON.COM'S TOP 100 BOOKS OF 2007!
BOOKS I LOVE
To Kill a Mockingbird. War and Peace. Lonesome Dove. Lord of the Rings. Laxdaela saga. The Shadow of the Wind. Winter's Tale. Possession. The English Patient. Middlemarch. Daughter of Fortune. Anything by Dickens, Shakespeare, Garcia Marquez, Austen, Dinesen, Borges. Favorite mystery writers: currently Arturo Perez-Reverte and Phil Rickman. Dorothy Sayers and Wilkie Collins are perenially wonderful. Favorite childhood books: the Oz stories. The Chronicles of Narnia. Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising" series. Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" series. "Harriet the Spy." "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler." Fairy-tales, and stories of King Arthur.
GOOD BOOKS I'VE READ RECENTLY
The Welsh Girl, by Peter Ho Davies. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks. The Man in the Moss and The Wine of Angels, by Phil Rickman. Volk's Shadow, by Brent Ghelfi. Marco Polo, by Laurence Bergreen.
I like big stories about people who turn out to be extraordinary when they find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. It's why I like epics, and it's why I like Shakespeare. It's also why I have little patience with small, gray stories about people with small, gray souls. They're - well - small and gray.
Heroes
My husband. My brother, who is a firefighter. Abraham Lincoln. Winston Churchill. Atticus Finch. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Zabdiel Boylston (the historical heroes of my first book.) I admire integrity, grace, and wit that refuse to give way under fire.
INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES is now out in paperback in the U.S.
I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Early on, my fallback career choices were ballerina and astronaut. Much later, I thought I'd become a Shakespeare professor. Through some strange twists and turns, I've circled back to writing...
My first novel--....INTERRED WITH THEIR BONES....--is a literary thriller about finding one of Shakespeare's lost plays.
My first book, ....THE SPECKLED MONSTER.... (Dutton, 2003), is a non-fiction thriller about smallpox: about the first two people to force inoculation to the attention of western science, by trying it on their own children in 1721.
Hear news about my books and learn when I'll be speaking in your area...
Jennifer, Thank you for the add. Wow, your bio is great, I'm looking forward to reading your books. Take care and be well. Donna Raye/author www. donnaraye. com
Things that made me happy this holiday season included: That my best friend bought her husband a copy of Interred With Their Bones for because he is swamped with Shakespeare (theatre grad student) and dug it immensely. Hope your new year is going well!
Hello Jennifer, thanks a lot for adding me. It is a great pleasure to be here. I hope you were appreciating my overtone singing compositions and my music therapy path. Keep in touch, I'm planning to live and work there in Arizona. Ciao, Raffaele Schiavo
And, Jennifer, I told people on another blog that you sold three of those books, at least. One of the librarians said she was thinking of buying a copy. I suggested she listen to you first, and then decide. She bought three copies. Thank you again!
Hey Jennifer, thank you for giving me a little space in your space.
Summers almost over, but maybe you can lie out by the pool one more time, you might want to pick up my new book, The Second Virgin Birth. It's a great read.
Regardless of what you do, just remember this: Good friends don't let you do stupid things......alone!
Thank you, again, Jennifer, for speaking at the library yesterday. Posted my blog, and it was picked up by Reuters, http://...com/4bwcu8. And, it was amusing to see an article on the entertainment page of the Arizona Republic today - unusual Shakespeare movies. I checked to see if you wrote it. (grin)
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