THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

I suspect many people my age haven't read this because it came out when we were 5, and it didn't have the hip factor of say, Confederacy of Dunces, which we read in college. Mark Helprin. Winter's Tale. (Another one. I know, I already gave you Dinesen's Winter's Tales. Maybe next it's Shakespeare's. It's my new favorite book. Reimagined industrial age NYC, a flying white horse, a whole lot of magic, violence, and just killer writing. Ahhhhhhhhhhh!

And now for my favorite children's book ever. This book has the most beautiful illustrations I've ever seen. My mom traded a car for a copy of The Rainbow Goblins and a Gibson guitar, a couple years before I was born, and it was worth it.

Ul de Rico's stunning oil paintings still appear in my dreams.

I learned about The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo from Steve Almond, who raved. He was right. Peter Orner's gorgeous language and poetic bits-and-pieces structure works gorgeously to diagram the edges of his tale of love, obsession, teaching, boiling, and loss...and most of all, Africa. This reminded me, oddly, of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Were PAHR equipped with a crackling wit.

Thao Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American girl whose family owned a laundromat outside of DC when she was growing up - hence this album title, Like The Linen. More importantly, Thao Nguyen is a tongue tripping Kill Rock Stars repped songwriter, whose lyrics include things like "You're an 18-wheeler on a highway that can't handle you/ I'd like to barrel on, but I don't want to be a scandal too, take me on a family trip, your girl is good and grown, take me to a scenic lake, I I will skip your heart of stone..."  plus a sexy weird Ricki Lee Jones / Fiona Apple voice, and handclapping-footstomping coolness. Listen here.

Soltero's Defrocked and Kicking the Habit (how could you not love this title?) is a compendium of songs of woe cut with wit. The Tongues that you have Tied (another album) begs to be the soundtrack to some excellent indie film. A little bit Iron & Wineish, a little Wilcoish, rock country waltzing howls. "I'll be a writer, when I finally go deaf...Committing to paper the chances I've missed, the girls I have loved, the dogs I have kissed."

Anne Washburn is a playwright comrade of mine from NYU - and she's still going strong. Better than going strong, actually - she's kicking some serious ass. I always knew she'd be lauded for her fantabulous ability with both language and a definite skill with articulating those eerie, drastic moments in life and in story. She's incredible, and I hope her fame grows and grows and grows, because she's like no one else in the theater. Anne is totally her own thing, and that is what the theater needs in order to survive.

Suzanne Rivecca is a friend of mine from Breadloaf, and since that conference a couple years ago (wherein she and I were in a workshop together, and I literally snorted juice out my nose during the reading of her hilarious and traumatic short story "Death is not an Option") she's become a Stegner Fellow at Stanford- utterly deservedly. She reminds me of Lorrie Moore, but more bloodthirsty. Love her. Suzanne is going to make some serious waves any moment now, because I think she's working on a book. Rest assured, the moment it's published, everyone will be jumping on the Suzanne-wagon, but for now, you can be early to the party, by reading her excellent short story, Summer of the Killer Swan, right here.