Jimmy Buffett’s Desert Island Books

In A Pirate Looks at Fifty, Jimmy Buffet wrote:

Following the Equator is one of a baker’s dozen of books I would have to take to a desert island. I can pick it up, turn to any page, and get lost in the story.

Mark Twain’s book is available free in numerous formats at Project Gutenberg. The other twelve books on Jimmy’s list are:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Don’t Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk
Winds from the Carolinas by Robert Wilder
One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
The Fables of La Fontaine by Jean de la Fontaine
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
A Collection of Poems by Pablo Neruda
The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
No One Writes to the Colonel and Other Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have about a half dozen titles which would remain on my Baker’s Dozen of Desert Island Books permanently, but the rest always seem to change over time. My must haves, in no particular order, are Pere Goriot, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Atlas Shrugged, The House of Mirth and The Count of Monte Cristo.
How about you? What are your Desert Island Books?

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Free Time Fridays – September 26, 2014

Free Time Fridays is a weekly meme created and hosted by Shannon at eatupmyfreetime.

If you’re new to Free Time Fridays, the details are at eatupmyfreetime here.

 

The past week I finished two non-fiction books I’ve been reading for a while: Letters from Africa by Karen Blixen and Balzac’s Omelette by Anka Muhlstein. I also started A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction so this is an unusual number of non-fiction books for me to have going at once.

I finished two fictions works this week. The first was a short story by Jack Finney, Of Missing Persons. Finney is the author of Time and Again which is a masterpiece of time travel. He’s also the author of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the basis for several movies. The other book I finished was Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris, the first book of the Sookie Stackhouse series.

On the tv front, I watched the season premieres of Person of Interest and Survivor. Of the new series I sampled, Gotham and Forever were my favorites.

Did I actually ever leave the house? Oh yes, the highlight of my week was getting my flu shot, lol.

That pretty much sums up my free time for this past week. It’s your turn now. How did you spend your free time this week or what are you looking forward to this weekend?

 

Teaser Tuesdays – September 23, 2014

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can participate.

If you’re new to Teaser Tuesdays, the details are at MizB’s Should Be Reading or on my Teaser Tuesdays Page.

A Pirate Looks at Fifty

by Jimmy Buffett

To make matters worse, the first thing the nuns would make us all do on the first day back was to write about what we had done that summer. Having to recall it all while sitting in the antiseptic atmosphere of a classroom was like staring at the goodies in a bakery window with no money in your pocket.

Including a couple of album covers featuring Jimmy.

Are you feeling nostalgic for the song Margaritaville? Watch Jimmy singing it last year on Ellen. Missing long hair? Go back over thirty years to an appearance on The Tonight Show. Jimmy’s Margaritaville website.

I had to do the same thing umpteen years ago in school! Does this bring back any memories for you? What are you reading now? Do you have a TT to share with us?

Please leave a comment with your link on MizB’s Teaser Tuesday post or below. If you don’t have a blog, you can share your Teaser here in the comment section instead.

Friday Finds – September 12, 2014

Friday Finds is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading to showcase books you recently found and added to your TBR (to be read) list. It doesn’t matter whether you found them free online, borrowed them from a library or purchased them. Anything and everything works.

I have two this week and, luckily for my budget, both are library books.

A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett is a no-brainer for me since I’ve long been a fan of his music.

I am more ambivalent about Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1) by Charlaine Harris. These are the books on which the HBO series True Blood is based. I overdosed on vampire stories during the 90s and so many of the newer ones simply don’t catch my interest. When Hannah featured the tenth book, Dead in the Family, in one of her Teaser Tuesdays earlier this month, I noticed the author’s name. I had enjoyed Harris’ Aurora Teagarden series earlier, so it wouldn’t be like trying a new author. Then I discovered my local library has them and decided to start with the first one and see how it goes.

Are you a fan of Jimmy Buffett and his music? Have you read any of the Sookie Stackhouse series? Please share your Friday Finds with us! Just leave a comment with the link to your own Friday Finds post on MizB’s blog or here. Or you may share your finds in a comment here anyway. We’d love to know what you found this week.

Teaser Tuesdays – June 24, 2014

 

 

 

 

 

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

Anyone can participate.

If you’re new to Teaser Tuesdays, the details are at MizB’s blog or on my Teaser Tuesday Page.

 

 

 

 

Being a fan of Jimmy Buffett and his music, I was aware that he had written several books, but hadn’t yet read one. I was unable to resist Swine Not? when I saw the engaging cover.

 

Swine Not? A Novel Pig Tale

by Jimmy Buffett, illustrations by Helen Bransford

I think there comes a time in everyone’s life when the werewolf-like winds of misdirection and the beasts of bad timing put us in an impossible situation. In my case, the question was this: How did a 151-pound pet pig manage to live undetected in a four-star hotel in New York up until this very moment?

 

From the Margaritaville website:

Come along as master storyteller Jimmy Buffett presents a gumbo of captivating characters and outrageous events in this wonderfully entertaining pig tale—proving once again that stretching the truth is a lot of fun, and laughing is the best vacation of all.

It was serendipitous when longtime friend Helen Bransford showed Jimmy a short manuscript and photo-illustrations based on her pet pig, Forkie. For years Helen’s friends had been entertained by her funny stories about her adventures in New York City, hiding the family pig in an upscale hotel. Now Bransford, an author and artist, presents readers with an unforgettable pig accompanied by a tale that only Jimmy Buffett could invent.

 

What are you reading now? Do you have a Tuesday Teaser to share with us?

Please leave a comment with your link on MizB’s Teaser Tuesday post or below. If you don’t have a blog, you can share your Teaser here in the comment section instead.