Obama under the arch

So somewhere between 15,000 to 25,000 New Yorkers crammed into Washington Square park yesterday to hear Barack Obabama, an especially notable figure given that NYC is supposed to be Hillary territory. As the Times hints at, the rally may mark a shift in the campaign:

Senator Barack Obama implored thousands of admirers who gathered last night in New York City to set aside their distrust in politics and believe in the long-term possibility of his presidential candidacy even though, he conceded, “there are easier choices to make in this election.”

In a giant rally in the backyard of Senator Hillary Rodham, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, drew distinctions between himself and his leading rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, insisting that only a fresh candidate could truly change Washington. Twice, he singled out Mrs. Clinton. ...

Mr. Obama, bathed in bright flood lights as he stood on a stage before a crowd stretching across Washington Square Park, struck a sharper tone than he has through much of his campaign, particularly when he stands alongside his Democratic rivals. The arguments he made, before an audience of supporters, were not articulated during a debate one night earlier.

“There were folks on the stage that said Social Security is just fine, we don’t have to do anything about it,” Mr. Obama said last night. “There are those who will tell you that getting out of Iraq will be painless, we’ll do it in a snap, not acknowledging that there are no good options in Iraq. There are folks who will shift positions and policies on all kinds of things depending on which way the wind is blowing. That’s not the kind of politics that will deliver on the change we are looking for.”

The racially diverse crowd included Obama devotees who said they came specifically to increase attendance; Greenwich Village residents who had heard the commotion and followed it with dogs and yoga mats in tow; and nostalgists who beamed at the sight of thousands of mostly young people filling the park for a liberal, antiwar cause.

Some telling quotes, via Gothamist:

An NYU freshman told the Washington Square News, "Barack Obama is the most gangster politician to ever come to Washington" and that "Hell yeah!" he would vote for him, while a 72-year-old registered Republican told the Columbia Spectator that she would be voting Democrat no matter what, "We’re in a very, very serious time now with our safety and our freedoms."

Talk is cheap, of course, and Obama's challenge is going to be to get these young voters who love nothing better than spouting off to actually drag themselves to the polls come primary or caucus day. As Real Clear Politics puts it,

While polls have Obama running behind [in Iowa], [Campaign manager David] Plouffe argues that the campaign will benefit from a "hidden vote," meaning youth and others who don't typically vote in primaries. Those voters, pollsters know, don't actually vote in most primaries, so the pollsters set up "screens" to weed them out of samples. Plouffe may be right, Obama may have a great deal more support than he shows in public polls. But there's a reason pollsters say youth and others don't vote in primaries: They don't, typically. For any campaign to rely on a population like that to win a primary can be very dangerous.

Clinton's definitely been on a roll as of late--she's running a tight, disciplined campaign, and has been benefiting from the growing sense that she cannot be sense, even if Obama continues to outraise her (which may not happen in the third quarter).

But I still think Obama has a real shot at winning the nomination--he's got the kind of charisma that I think will, in the end, win over voters in the retail politics environment of Iowa and New Hampshire.

You like him when you're exposed to him; he's just got to convince enough voters to vote their hearts. The Times article concludes with the challenge and the opportunity:

Sophie Ragir, 18, a Columbia freshman, said, “It’s a social thing. Everyone on my floor was, like, are you going to the Obama thing?”

Leyla Biltsted, 60, who is retired and lives in Manhattan, said, “I’ve never heard such a wonderful visionary speech as he did at the Democratic convention. That brought me hope.” She added: “Now, I’m waiting to see what’s behind the vision, how he’s going to implement it, who he’s going to surround himself with. We don’t vote for a little while yet; I’m on a fishing trip.”

Obama photo from Obama campaign's Flickr photostream.

Modern love fable

Online couple cheated with each other, Daily Telegraph of Australia:

A married couple who didn't realise they were chatting each other up on the internet are divorcing.

Sana Klaric and husband Adnan, who used the names "Sweetie" and "Prince of Joy" in an online chatroom, spent hours telling each other about their marriage troubles, Metro.co.uk reported.

The truth emerged when the two turned up for a date. Now the pair, from Zenica in central Bosnia, are divorcing after accusing each other of being unfaithful.

"I was suddenly in love. It was amazing. We seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriage. How right that turned out to be," Sana, 27, said.

Adnan, 32, said: "I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years".

Picking away

Some great works for classical guitar, inspired by Virginia Heffernan's (ugh!) blog post on meeting "Funtwo", aka Jeong-Hyun Lim, aka YouTube guitar legend.

The funniest part of her post, incidentally, was this:

But most importantly, to me:

3. He asked me why, in Auckland, New Zealand, the only people interested in neoclassical shred solo guitar work–as he is–were other Koreans? The Europeans, he said, only seemed to want to listen to Green Day and post-punk. Why not the complex digital stuff, like Dream Theater (his example)?

I ventured a couple of answers, and then he blew me out of the water with a reply that seemed to explain the earth, the universe and everything.

At the very least, it explained Asian attention to technique versus European expressionism. Wow.

Uh, okay; she leaves it at that, I guess like she says we'll have to read her piece Monday to find out what his reply was, and read more about Virginia's reduction of cultures to: Europe creative, Asia methodical.

(Even as we live in a video game age dominated by designers from Asia).

Pachelbel's Canon in D


Funtwo's version is absolutely amazing; it has 28,245,680 views, 5th all-time on YouTube. it's funny reading comments from the kids who have no idea what piece this is. Like Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and 10 Things I Hate About You, I'm all for modern updates of classics--which themselves were often contemporary takes on the ancients.

Vivaldi's Four Seasons

Funtwo again, playing the Summer movement. I think he should join forces with the East Village Opera Company and tour the country on a twin bill playing the classics.

Asturias movement from Isaac Albéniz's Suite Española


Played by Andrés Segovia, considered the father of the modern classical guitar.

Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez




Rodrigo's a blind Spanish composer who died in 1999; his piece, as Wikipedia notes, sounds older than it is, like something out of the Moorish 15th century. The lyric, soaring second movement is so unlike the first, which is pleasing in its own right. This version is played by John Williams with the Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

Paganini's Caprice no. 24


Su Meng plays the piece generally heard on a violin.

Not fun and games

It's hard to underestimate the impact on people's views of the blaring headlines and media frenzy that accompanies a 'scandal'. Things get seared into the collective psyche--Wen Ho Lee was a spy, Richard Jewell the Olympic bomber, Iraq behind 9/11--that defy future developments or corrections, which never get the level of saturation of the original.

It's not just a matter of going with what we know at the time, either; certain people and countries never get the benefit of the doubt, aren't treated as 'us' and therefore prejudices are allowed to run roughshod over the unnatural-feeling task of restraint and the unsexy act of deliberation.

You can blame the media for sensationalism, or going for cheap ratings--but then you're divesting yourself of responsibility for the prejudices that allowed you to swallow the story in the first place.

Why didn't your gut tell you that something was being overhyped? Why didn't you have a sense that something was amiss? Because the story fit all too neatly into your map of the world.

Journalists as simply people; there are formal processes and structures set up so their flaws don't get magnified into print or air, and for the most part these safeguards work.

However, where they fall down is when journalists assume something is so obvious that they don't consciously think to question it--the everybody knows Iraq has WMDs, everybody wants to be patriotic in a time of war, nobody wants to second-guess the military while Americans are dying mentality that didn't get shaken until the horrors of reality became impossible to process within the existing frame.

By then, of course, it's too late; you have a small number of people telling you I told you so, while everybody else is in denial and the media starts looking for villains--if only Dr. Freud were around to indict all of us (or our mothers).

All this comes to mind with an article in today's Times, Mattel Apologizes to China for Recalls .

U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified.

The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel's executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.

''Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls,'' Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li's office at which reporters were allowed to be present.

''And Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys,'' Debrowski said. ...

Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer involving more than 21 million Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint and tiny magnets that could be swallowed.

The recalls have prompted complaints from China that manufacturers were being blamed for design faults introduced by Mattel.

On Friday, Debrowski acknowledged that ''vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel's design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China's manufacturers.''

Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: ''We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers.''

In a statement issued by the company, Mattel said its lead-related recalls were ''overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards.

''The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled toys complied with the U.S. standards,'' the statement said, without giving specific figures.

The co-owner of the company that supplied the lead-tainted toys to Mattel, Lee Der Industrial Co. Ltd., committed suicide in August shortly after the recall was announced.

It's the third item on the Times' website; and buried among headlines everywhere else.

It seemed obvious to me when it all broke a few weeks ago that Mattel's campaign blaming China was ridiculous. The problems were so widespread and the recall so big it clearly wasn't the result of some rogue factory--Mattel, thus, was guilty of a systematic failure to properly oversee its own products.

But it fed so well into the China-bashing that's become part of our culture that everyone ate it up. We already all think of China as the Wild West; there's already a significant part of Americans who are bigoted against the Chinese, a racism with hundreds of years of formal and de facto roots in the U.S.

Stir that in with an all-American company like Mattel's motivation to deflect blame, and our underriding fear of being overtaken by the Chinese juggernaut, and you have a scapegoat.

Notice that the retraction was made in China, by the way--if Mattel were serious about it, they should take out full-page ads and buy airtime in the American media, because left to its own whims this isn't nearly as sexy a story for 'free media' as the original charges.

This isn't to say China doesn't have serious, 'The Jungle'-type problems. But let's not use that as a whitewash for the very-American problems of corporate malfeasance and lack of oversight that Mattel should become the poster child for.

Of course, this being China, you also have this:

Li reminded Debrowski that ''a large part of your annual profit ... comes from your factories in China.

''This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents,'' Li said, adding that Mattel should ''improve their control measures.''

Maybe Mattel can write some self-criticisms.

Or maybe we, as the American people, should examine why we find it so easy to see Muslims as terrorists, curse Indians for bad tech support, demean the Japanese (did you miss the profound racism in Lost in Translation?), ignore Africa, look down on illegal immigrants.

These things shouldn't come so easy to us, shouldn't be such a familiar narrative frame; they shouldn't go unquestioned, seeped up in the air around us--and we shouldn't blame the media for tapping into our national neuroses.

Jim Young photo from Reuters via MSNBC

Our face to the world

I was struck today by how invisible the post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has become.

I couldn't even remember who the current ambassador is; ah, yes, Zalmay Khalilzad, of course--you'd think the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration would have a higher media profile, but then again, how many people can name the two Muslims who won Nobel prizes this year?

It really is odd that the Bushies aren't putting Khalilzad out there more, given the amount of discussion of Islam and the level of ignorance and bigotry regularly paraded by politicians, pundits and officials. You'd think the one-eyed man would be king in the land of the blind.

And he does have some interesting thoughts; George Packer posted on his New Yorker blog some excerpts from an interview he did with Khalilzad:

Khalilzad sees the Iranian regime as ambitious, insecure, and, above all, divided among “multiple players.” But there are two basic points on which Iran’s leaders agree:

"One is that Iraq should not return to be a rival in the balance of power in the Gulf, that it shouldn’t play that role. A Shia preëminence in Iraq, or a Shia dominance with a not-so-centralized government, gives Iran that. Iraq will be more internally preoccupied, more friendly, so it helps your regionally preëminent role. This is something the Iranians, regardless of whether you’re a monarch or a religious fellow, share: the belief that Iran is a great civilization.
Second is the Iranians’ great fear of us, but they see an opportunity at the same time. Great fear because if we have it easy in Iraq they could be next, and sometimes the rhetoric from some people here gives them that impression. There is no substance to it, but the rhetoric gives that impression. That concern would lead them to make it difficult for us, and get us out ultimately. The other part is the opportunity: that they would get a broader understanding with us, a kind of recognition of Iran, of the preëminence of Iran. Iran’s role in the region would be accepted by us and legitimated. It’s Iran and the U.S. that decide what happens in the region, which reinforces the impression of preëminence. Iran and the U.S. are sitting and discussing Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon. On the one hand, Iran is very self-assured, but on the other it’s very insecure. That’s a Shia psychology, unfortunately.

They don’t believe that we will leave. Maybe they are beginning to. But they do mirror-imaging rather than reading our politics correctly. What they think is: Would we want to leave an oil-rich country? My god, Baghdad, this is one of the seats of one of the great world empires, right in the middle of the Gulf."

I don't agree with all of Khalilzad's thoughts on Iran--as an ethnic Pashtun he's likely prone to an (understandable) inferiority complex when it comes to Persians--but I do agree that the Iranians see our invasion of Iraq as driven by a desire to control oil, and threaten Iran (and help Israel).

Thus they filter our actions there as the timeless acts of an imperial power, which they have thousands of years of experience dealing with and acting as.

My general view when foreigners or myopic liberals decry the American empire is that we are nothing like an empire--otherwise, where are the tributes, the taxes, the fawning, the begging, from our subject states?

Wikipedia has rankings of world empires by various measures that includes America--it's interesting to see how highly we rank historically, without even trying. I think that's what drives Europeans, in particular, crazy about us--their ancestors scrapped, fought and cheated to get their hands on as much land and wealth as possible. I'm not sure they understand a people who are inherently so powerful that we feel no need to do the same.

But in the vein of our invisible UN ambassador, the Bush administration does seem to have adopted the mindset of an empire, without accruing to us any of its 'benefits'.

Whereas once the post of UN ambassador was the province of lions of American thought and politics like Henry Cabot Lodge, Adlai Stevenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Andrew Young, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and even Madeleine Albright, under Bush et al it's become a revolving door of misfits.

So far, Bush Jr., whose own father represented the U.S. at the UN, has had as many ambassadors as years he's been in office:

-James B. Cunningham (acting)
-John D. Negroponte
-John Danforth
-Anne W. Patterson (acting)
-John R. Bolton
-Alejandro Daniel Wolff (acting)
-Zalmay Khalilzad

Given that the U.S. has had a total of 26 ambassadors since the UN was founded in San Francisco in 1945, more than 25% of them have served under GWB!

It's an astonishing stat; and is a pretty strong indicator of how little the present administration values the views of the rest of the world, even as our percentage of the world's economy continues to drop (from an inconceivable 46% after WWII to a still amazing 25-30% now).

We're going to pay a price for this. Simple statistics tell you that when the U.S. makes up just 5% of the world population, everything else being equal we're likely to not know everything. And things are becoming more equal even as we veer more unilateral.

The UN may not necessarily be the best forum for the U.S. to interface with the rest of the world--NATO and APEC have some pretty significant advantages in efficiency and efficacy.

But the idea of the UN is unique; given our founding role in a post-war world where nations willingly negotiate away congenital advantages in exchange for systemic stability, it'd be a tragedy if through arrogance and xenophobia we found ourselves midwives of a world where norms and predictability are replaced by the force of ideology and individuals.

That, after all, is what Al-Qaeda seeks.

Uncredited photo of Khalilzad and Bush from the U.S. State Department.

Bad headline writing

The headline and summary sentence on the homepage of the Washington Post (at the moment):

Warner Seeks Senate Seat in '08

Former Va. governor to announce Thursday that he plans to run for seat vacated by John Warner.

What, it'd have killed them to include a 'Mark' in the headline?!

Good music

At some point, Kate Nash is gonna become big; Maz Azria used one of her songs, Merry Happy, for his show at fashion week, it was totally infectious and was stuck in my head all day.

It's hard finding a non-mushy version of her song online, but try this (the funny lyrics are here):



There's a slower, not as great version but cleaner audio on her Myspace page; which also has her catchy song Foundation. The rest of her music is good, too.

NYC: Comedy capital of the world

From Overheard in New York, we learn kids (and vendors) say the craziest things....

Mom: I need a size 'Small.'
Little girl, loudly: Mommy, aren't you a Large?

Ice cream vendor: Why don't you go for it? You are eating for two!
Woman: I am not eating for two.

Rude famous guy: Do you know who I am?!
Waitress: No... But I know your type...

Bimbette: Look, it's not like I mind tall, dark, and handsome, but it's like, 'Look at me -- I'm hot... I should be able to nab a nerd.'
Friend: Nerds aren't like shoes -- you can't just try them on for size. They have feelings, too.
Bimbette: And glasses.

Hefty guy: Excuse me, I really need to go to the bathroom. Can I go in front of you?
Woman in front of him in line: I'm in a rush, too.
Hefty guy, to no one: Can you believe this city? Everyone is in a rush. Everyone is rude. I just need to go to the bathroom... No one will ever help you out.
Woman in front of him: Sir, you are the one that is being rude.
Hefty guy, yelling: I am not a sir, I am a ma'am! [Silence ensues.]

Man: Excuse me, miss, do you have the time?
Girl with headphones: No thanks, I have a boyfriend.

Seven-year-old girl: I'm going to see a movie this weekend. Can anyone guess what I'm going to see?
Seven-year-old boy: Ratatouille! I already saw it.
Seven-year-old girl: Yeah, I'm going to go see Ratatouille this weekend.
Seven-year-old boy: Yeah, I already saw it. And there's this one part -- yuck -- you don't want to see it. It's bad, you really don't want to see that part -- it's gross. [Whispers it to another kid.]
Seven-year-old girl: What? Is there kissing? I can see kissing... If you think I've never seen kissing before, there's kissing in every other movie I have ever seen in my life!

Suit, embarrassed after tapping man on shoulder: ... Sorry, I thought I knew you [starts to walk away].
Man he tapped: I'm your cousin!

Guy: So, when did you guys get married?
Husband: March.
Wife, at same time: May.
Husband: Uh-oh.

High school kid #1: I've never been to Staten Island.
High school kid #2: It's weird -- there are random delis in between houses.

Hot dog vendor: How you like it?
Tourist: Just ketchup, please.
Hot dog vendor: You not like New York style?
Tourist: Sure, but not today.
Hot dog vendor, reluctantly handing over dog: I think you make very big mistake today, sir, and every day, too.

List of best fiction series

There's nothing like the thrill of discovering an amazing novel that's the first in a series, knowing thousands of pages of an alternate world lie ahead of you.

It's interesting seeing how characters grow as authors themselves mature through years and sometimes decades; it gives you an almost personal connection to the author, especially if read in real time. Plus there's a real sense of comfort dipping into a familiar world at will, which lends itself to rereading.

Not to mention a good series gives you something to hunt bookstores for.

Below is the beginning of a list of my favorite fiction series; it's weighed toward science fiction, because the genre tends to spawn series and because I seem to have read a lot of it in recent years.

I'm generally defining series as any multiple books by one author containing commmon characters, and/or internal references to previous works. (Number in parentheses is how many times I've read the series).

-Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin historical fiction series (once)
Nominally about a British captain and ship's doctor during the Napoleonic wars, as I've written before these twenty books are like a male version of Jane Austen's novels, with all the insights into character and humor that her works contain. They're among the best contemporary writing of any kind I've read; it's a shame O'Brian died recently, just as the books were gaining a significant mainstream following (with the likes of a Times reviewer tagging it the best historical novels, ever). This is my standard suggestion for friends looking to get some guy (especially) in their life a gift. The first chapter of the first book speaks for itself.

-J.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings fantasy series (four/five times)
Britain may have long lost its status as a world power, but it's still dominant when it comes to creating alternate worlds--and Tolkien's three LOTR novels (plus the Hobbit) have long been the gold standard. His Middle Earth is so detailed it feels as if the novels are just one path through it; now if they could only make a decent movie out of it.

-Issac Asimov's Foundation science fiction series (twice)
This trilogy turned heptalogy (plus there are an additional eight novels roughly set in the same universe) follows a series of heroes as they meddle with the politics of man, robots and empires 50,000 years in the future. They can be a bit comic-booky, but are by far the most influential of science fiction works--everything goes back to Asimov. It's even spawned the name for at leastone real world tech company .

-Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children/Shame/Satanic Verses fiction series (twice, once, once)
I habitually cite Rushdie as among my favorite contemporary writers, on the basis of the three books above (which may not technically be a series, but to me their magical realism exploration of religion, identity and India are strongly interdependant) and his "children's" book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories. He's startingly yet casually insightful--I always feel like any one of many of his seemingly-throw-away lines would be the basis for an entire story by a lesser writer. Rushdie's overflowing in every sense of the word; nobody belongs in Shakespeare's category, but when I read Rushdie I have a similar sense of multiple thoughts dancing on the head of a pin.

-Orson Scott Card's Ender science fiction series (twice for Ender's Game, once for rest)
These eight novels (and counting) have grown in ambition and scope along with the boy that first appeared in Ender's Game, set at a training school for child soldiers around 2165. Card, in my view, is our leading science fiction thinker (along with Neal Stephenson). He explores honestly and without blinders what we call multiculturalism, which is simply the universe in his books. Ender's Game is in a class of its own because of its inventive plot, but the themes explored in Speaker for the Dead is more representative of the author Card has become.

-Naguib Mahfouz's Palace Walk fiction series (once)
Until his death almost exactly a year ago, Nobel prize winner Mahfouz was considered the leading writer of the Arab world; in my estimation, he's also one of the (necessarily) few writers who will be read generations from now--the way he captures character and evokes emotion is usually compared to Dickens. His Palace Walk trilogy, set in 1950s Cario, is pre-Islamic in the sense that although the specifics of that religion plays a role in the series, the themes are broadly universal ones of love, family and man's place in society. It's unfortunate the trilogy isn't required reading in American schools, instead of some of the token multicultural works that are notable only for their clumsiness.

-Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea fantasy series (twice for original trilogy, once for rest)
I think LeGuin's the most literate of science fiction writers, a field traditionally known for interesting ideas embodied by wooden characters via clunky prose. I don't think it's a coincidence that she's one of the few female sci fi writers; her grasp of character and nuance is poetic. She reminds me of Georgia O'Keefe in how varied her works are in their greatness, from the stark exploration of ideas in the Left Hand of Darkness to the charming world of dragons and people spun in the five Earthsea novels and a collection of short stories. As is typical in series, she wrote the initial trilogy in six years, then after they found acclaim wrote the final three works after a 16-year gap. Incidentally, LeGuin wrote an interesting article about her unhappiness with the Sci Fi Channel's decision to whitewash Earthsea in their television miniseries.

-Frank Herbert's Dune science fiction series (twice for first book, once for rest)
I've only read the first three of the six ecologically-themed Dune books Herbert wrote, all set in the distant future and centering around the species-altering 'spice' of a desert planet (with, I think, aspects of Islam/Christianity). The drop-off between the amazing first and very good second book is noticeable, and becomes severe by the end of the not-bad third book.

-J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter genre-busting series (three or two times for most, once for last)
I'm curious as to whether this becomes a series all kids grow up with, perhaps alongside (or muscling out) the likes of Narnia. I definitely plan on reading it to my kids... well, at least the first few of the seven.

-Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials fantasy series (twice)
Compared most often to his arch-nemesis forebearer C.S. Lewis, Pullman can stand on his own--and for an adult, at least, I think his Paradise Lost-inspired trilogy about teens, their daemons and their souls is more rewarding, if less traditional. Like many of the authors on this list, Pullman follows in the footsteps of H.G. Wells in asking you to suspend disbelief about one thing; once you accept his conception of a world in which people's partner animals embody a literal second half to their selves, everything else flows with internal logic. Plus, his kids are neither annoying mini-adults nor infantile vessels for cloying set pieces.

-John LeCarre's George Smiley thriller novels (twice for some, none others)
I've often said LeCarre is the most literate writer of thrillers (more so than Graham Greeene even), especially once you get past the first two hundred establishing pages. He's best known for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (which is the one book I'd recommend to a space alien who wants to understand the Cold War), but since this is a list of series he's here for the five spy novels that center around Smiley (only three of which I knew about).

-Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective series (twice)
As I've written before, I don't think the four novels that make up the Holmes series quite live up to their reputation. But the stories are so inventive and the sense of 19th century Britain so exact that I still put Holmes at the top of the detective genre.

-Christopher Paolini's Inheritance fantasy series(twice)
I guess Paolini's 24 by now; he was just 19 when Eragon, the first of a planned trilogy about a boy/then young adult and his dragon, came out. As I wrote before, there are traces of his age in his at-times clunky writing, but he's got a first-rate imagination. The last book in his series is due out sometime soon (hopefully).

-John Fitzgerald's Great Brain historical fiction series (few times, as a kid)
These eight (! I only thought there were three!) books set in frontier Utah about a boy and his active brother may have been my favorite growing up. They had an irresistible mix of humor and classic action, and lots of interesting scheming.

-Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr detective series (once for most)
I read most of Block's ten books about a suave Manhattan-based burglar as a kid; they convey pretty well what a certain strata of people are like in NYC, with the sense of skimming lightly through life, conversant with culture and the arts even if not drinking deeply of them. These are a fun read; they're on the list mainly for nostalgic reasons, not great literature but about the best of what's become a horrific detective genre.

-C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series (twice)
As I've mentioned before, I reread these books recently and was a bit disappointed that, in contrast with my glowing childhood memories, the Oxford prof's seven books about kids whisked into a fairytale land weren't that good, and were perhaps actively harmful. It's on the list anyway because I think they're worth reading, maybe as a kid and in conjunction with Pullman's works.

-Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern fantasy series (twice some, none most)
I thought about not putting this series on the list, because McCaffrey (and now her son) has essentially taken a great first few novels and spun them into dross, at 18 works and counting. But I loved reading Dragonflight/quest/song as a kid, and all three held up upon more recent rereading. (It's interesting, by the way, how Wikipedia's entry on Pern is barely distinguishable from its entries on real countries/planets; it's like a dry run for the discovery of alien civilizations).

-Other series that I've liked, but would put below the 'classics' tier:

-Roger Zelzany's Amber sci fi series
-Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever fantasy series
-James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small veterinary series
-Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan thriller series
-Ian Fleming's James Bond thriller series
-Larry Niven's Ringworld sci fi series (I've read just the first two of four, the original novel's first half was great, rest wasn't bad)
-Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars sci fi series
-And a whole host of other childhood favorites, like Tom Swift, Encylopedia Brown, Beverly Cleary's, works, etc.

On a related note, there's a running users-generated list of the top 100 Sci-Fi Books; it includes ever sci fi series I've listed, although not in the order which I rank them.

I've read all of the top twenty save two (#4 Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and #19 Hyperion), all of the top fifty but ten others... odd, especially since I never read any science fiction as a kid.