THE ASTRO LOUNGE PLAYS TED'S FAVORITES!

Side One:

Ted’s Favorite Books

(By request)

I get asked lots and lots about what I like to read. For those who are interested, here’s my top five. Please take note, though, that I don’t think these are necessarily the greatest or most important books I’ve ever read (or that I think YOU should read). Just the ones that I like to keep reading over and over again. Because of that reason (and that alone) they are my favorites. Isn’t that what makes a favorite a favorite and separates them from “important classics” anyhow?

The two, though, aren't necessarily exclusive.

Life’s too short to read lousy, long, boring books. As Mark Twain once said, “A classic is something that everyone wants to have read but that nobody wants to read”. I couldn’t agree more. I’ve read lots of the heavies. And I know that if anyone told me that Moby Dick was their favorite book, they’d either be a masochist or a liar. Maybe both.

Have a cup o’ Ted’s 5¢ coffee, bite the doughnut and spark your Camel…

Here they are, from most loved first...

1. The Razor’s Edge by W. Sommerset Maugham I read this one once every year. Larry Darryl is a man searching for a great truth beyond that of his wealthy, 1920’s Chicago home.
	2. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand Also a yearly read. Howard Roark is an architect trying to live up to the greatest ideal possible: his own.
3. The Time Machine by Orson Wells A Victorian era man, known only as “The Time Traveler”, travels hundreds of years into the future to find his former 1890’s London inhabited by evil “Moorlocks”.
	4. Self Reliance and other Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson America’s preeminent philosopher, Emerson, ponders the importance of being a self-made man. A must read.
5. The Grifters by Jim Thompson Roy Dillon, a 26-year-old “short con” artist in 1950’s Los Angeles, finds he cannot escape his own trickery. Perhaps the greatest post-war dark “pulp” novel ever written.

More soon, Loungers....