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My Top 10 Favorite Guitar Riffs

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In no particular order, here are the songs containing my top 10 favorite guitar riffs:

  • Day Tripper (The Beatles)
  • I Feel Fine (The Beatles)
  • Can’t Explain (The Who)
  • Paperback Writer (The Beatles)
  • Rebel Rebel (David Bowie)
  • Couldn’t I Just Tell You (Todd Rundgren)
  • Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
  • Ticket to Ride (The Beatles)
  • Last Train to Clarksville (The Monkees)
  • Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry)

My Favorite Plays by William Shakespeare

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William Shakespeare

I’ve read all of Shakespeare’s plays at least once, and I’ve read many of them numerous times. Here are my top 10 favorites:

  • Hamlet
  • Henry IV, Part 1
  • Henry IV, Part 2
  • Henry V
  • Henry VI, Part 1
  • Henry VI, Part 2
  • Henry VI, Part 3
  • Macbeth
  • The Merchant of Venice
  • Romeo and Juliet

It wasn’t easy getting the list down to ten, but each time I tried, the Henry plays made the list. They are so underrated—I hope to read them again someday.

My Top 10 Favorite Novels

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Here are my top 10 favorite novels. Admittedly, language limitations have prevented me from reading several of these in the language in which they were originally written, but I list them here nevertheless, as I am no less in love with them as the result of having read translated versions. The list:

  • Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce)
  • The Way of All Flesh (Samuel Butler)
  • The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (Laurence Sterne)
  • Ulysses (James Joyce)
  • Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
  • Malone Dies (Samuel Beckett)
  • Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
  • Confessions of Zeno (Italo Svevo)
  • On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
  • Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe)

My Top 10 Favorite Poems

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I don’t get the chance to read much poetry these days, but I used to read poetry a lot, and over the years, certain poems have resonated with me time and time again (I even created a song from one of them). Here are my top 10 favorite poems:

  • The Darkling Thrush (Thomas Hardy)
  • Fire and Ice (Robert Frost)
  • Howl (Allen Ginsberg)
  • Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now (A. E. Housman)
  • My Love in Her Attire (Anonymous)
  • The Owls (Charles Baudelaire; translated by Edna St. Vincent Millay)
  • Sometime during eternity (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
  • Terrible (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)
  • This Is Just to Say (William Carlos Williams)
  • The world is a beautiful place (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)