More Books I've read in 2007

ALL ACCESS: BIG & RICH

Maybe you can help me figure out something.

First, you probably need to know a couple of things about my taste in music.

1.) I love country and western music -- real C&W, not the drummed-up, dumbed-down crap they play on Clear-Channel. I love old-style, crying-in-your-beer, honky-tonk, drinking and cheating and sinning and repenting country music. I guess you could call me a traditionalist.

2.) I love rock and roll, but I think rap ruined it. I believe that Guns and Roses were the last real rock and roll band.

3.) All I wanted to be when I was a kid was a hippie, but when I grew up everybody had abandoned tie-dye for polyester disco suits. My belief in the hippie philosophy runs deep, probably because I never got a chance to become disillusioned with it.

Got all that? Old hippie, loves traditional country music, hates rap for ruining rock (among other reasons) -- but I love Big and Rich, who brought rap and rap-tinged rock into country.

How Is This Possible?

Part of it is because I've been waiting for someone to come along and give the "Love Everybody" message like Big Kenny does. (See #3 above.) But that doesn't explain it all.

(BTW, this book came with a DVD which I haven't watched yet. I'm saving that a night when my son Zan is over at the house.)

RUN by Ann Patchett

I picked this book up as soon as it came out because I loved her previous novel "Bel Canto" so much. I liked "Run" but I didn't love it. It was smaller and more personal. In "Bel Canto" several people are taken hostage and the situation lasts for several months, long enough for hostages and terrorists to become friends, lovers and family. "Run" basically takes place over 24 hours -- not counting flashbacks and epilogue, and not that much happens.

I wouldn't call "Run" a failure. It was engrossing and thought-provoking. "Bel Canto" changed the way I see the world. There aren't many books that can do that.