Favorite Book/CD Blog Challenge

Joan posted this blog challenge:
Imagine that you have just joined a club. It is a FAVORITES book/cd club. When it is your time to make a suggestion you should suggest a book and cd that is your favorite –the one that you really connect with.Your goal is not to please the group but to convey something about yourself with your selection. Select the one book that you really connect with for whatever reason. Select the album/cd that you would keep if you were only allowed one for the rest of your life.Along with your selection please explain why.

I am a romantic at heart. By that, I mean that I love stories with heroes, with quests, with good fighting evil, with the common person who rises up and accomplishes great deeds, with characters who come to a tragic end, with characters who are willing to sacrifice for the greater good and at least a somewhat happy ending. Those who know me at all would have no problem with guessing that, for me, that is embodied in my favorite book The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I first read The Hobbit by the same author when I was 11 years old and enjoyed it immensely. Then I started LOTR and was enthralled. Over the next 40 years, I have read the book countless times and it still captivates me as much as the first time. In fact, I think it's time to pull my copy out again to enjoy it once more.

(But seriously, making me choose one book is liking asking me to choose just one of my children. Don't make me do it!)

It's very difficult to pick only one CD as well. My listening likes span such a large number of genres - from Luciano Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma to Tom Lehrer's The Vatican Rag, from the popular music and musicians I had a crush on i.e. The Beatles and The Monkees to more contemporary music that I have to Google the lyrics or quiz my daughter to find out the artist, from Cole Porter & Fred Astaire & 30's musicals to the current Broadway hits. But if I had to pick one, for today at least, I would pick the soundtrack to Man of La Mancha, preferably the Broadway cast but better yet if it could include Cervantes' soliloquy as done by Peter O'Toole in the movie version.

Cervantes: "Life as it is. I've lived for over forty years and I've seen life as it is... I've been a soldier and a slave. I've seen my comrades fall in battle or die more slowly under the lash in Africa. I've held them in my arms at the final moment. These were men who saw life as it is, yet they died despairing. No glory, no brave last words, only their eyes, filled with confusion, questioning "Why?" I don't think they were wondering why they were dying, but why they had ever lived. When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams - -this may be madness; to seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! But maddest of all - -to see life as it is and not as it should be."

The bolding is mine and states eloquently one of my fundamental beliefs and perhaps it is my Impossible Dream, that we imagine a life that is better for all and then work toward making that life come true.