#Hitch 22: A Memoir

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

George Rinhart. The street of David, Jerusalem. Undated. :: [Mikhail Iossel]

* * * *

“One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because the goyim were jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After the Shoah or Endlösung or Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.

I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Andrew Doyle

Published: May 16, 2024

In his memoir Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens considered “why it is that anti-Semitism is so tenacious and so protean and so enduring”. Many of us in the west have grown complacent, assuming that the horrors of the Holocaust would prevent this ancient prejudice from re-emerging. But as the conflict between Israel and Hamas escalates, few of us can be in any doubt that antisemitism has once again goose-stepped into the spotlight.

Of course, criticism of the Israeli government and its military strategy is entirely legitimate. So too is our profound concern for the innocents of Gaza and the many thousands of non-combatants who are losing their lives. But there is no denying the explicit anti-Jewish hatred that has accompanied these discussions in certain quarters. Criticise Israel all you like, but don’t try to tell me that Monday night’s daubing of the Shoah memorial in Paris with handprints of red paint was anything other than antisemitic.

Social media has opened our eyes to the prevalence of such sentiments. The other day I posted a link to my Substack piece about the Eurovision Song Contest on that hellsite now known as X. My focus in the article was on the narcissism of the “non-binary” performers, but one feminist activist decided to make it all about Israel. Underneath my post, she added an image of Eden Golan, the Israeli entry to the competition, with bloodstains photoshopped onto her dress. She went on to dismiss the victims of the October 7 pogrom as “silly ravers” and to blame the massacre on the IDF. Whatever else one might say about such views, it is clearly evidence of a complete absence of basic humanity.

This is sadly not uncommon. Recently we have seen protesters openly supporting Hamas, or even praising its acts of barbarism. A new poll has found that 63% of students currently protesting at US universities have at least some sympathy for Hamas. There have been overtly antisemitic statements, and Jews have been harassed on campus. It has been reported that at Columbia University, one protester cried out “We are Hamas” while another shouted at a group of Jewish students: “The 7 October is about to be every fucking day for you. You ready?” These are the very people who have spent the last few years calling anyone who dissents even slightly from their worldview a “fascist”, and yet they are blind to actual fascism when it emerges within their own ranks.

All of this has taken me by surprise, which perhaps reveals the extent of my naivety. Antisemitism is nothing new, and has assumed myriad and outlandish forms over the centuries. Our own country has not been immune; Jews were deported from England in 1290, only to be readmitted in 1656. Before then, only those who had converted to Christianity were allowed to remain; specially, they were able to reside at the Domus Conversorum in London, established by Henry III in 1232. Anti-Jewish sentiments were reignited by a plot to poison Elizabeth I in 1594, which was blamed on her physician Roderigo Lopes, a Portuguese man of Jewish ancestry who was executed for treason. This is the context in which the forced conversion of Shylock at the end of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice ought to be understood.

Unpleasant myths about Jews have abounded throughout history, some of which still linger in Islamic regimes and the darker crannies of the internet where neo-Nazis gather to wallow in their bile. The poisoning of wells by Jews was thought to have initiated the Black Death epidemic in 1348. This notion was still pervasive by the time Christopher Marlowe wrote his play The Jew of Malta in 1589 (consider Barabas’s mass extermination of an entire convent of nuns by means of “a precious powder”, or his boastful claim: “Sometimes I go about and poison wells”).

The hate-filled fantasies didn’t end there. The seventeenth-century preacher Thomas Calvert speculated that male Jews menstruated and murdered Christian infants to replenish their blood. In a 1656 pamphlet addressing the question of readmission, the puritan polemicist William Prynne stated that “Jews almost every year crucify one child, to the injury and contumely of Jesus”.

Those who have been paying attention will have noticed new forms of these blood libels recurring online in recent months, with many activists claiming that Israel is specifically targeting children in the conflict. For whatever reason, many opponents of the war cannot resist veering into antisemitic tropes. Most examples are coming from those who identify as “left-wing” and “progressive”, which just goes to show how antisemitism is not specific to any one political mindset. Its tendency to rematerialise in unexpected guises means that we ought to be eternally vigilant. I had never been able to grasp how Holocaust denial could be so widespread in the face of such unequivocal evidence. But having heard so many denials of the October 7 massacre, including scepticism from prominent left-wing commentators over whether rapes actually took place, I can see that such revisionism is more common than I assumed.

The unique horror of the Holocaust shows us that human civilisation might at any point collapse into the abyss. In Anthony Burgess’s novel Earthly Powers, the narrator Ken Toomey witnesses the immediate aftermath at Buchenwald, what he describes at the “lowest point in human history”. His newfound sense of humankind’s capacity for evil leads him to conclude that we cannot possibly have been created by God. This is the essence of despair.

The novelist Mervyn Peake was one of the first to see Bergen-Belsen after its liberation by allied forces. He visited the camp in the role of a war artist, and what he saw there haunted him forever. His final novel Titus Alone is a fragmentary and bleak affair, a consequence partly of his degenerative illness, but also of his psychological need to reckon with the evil he had glimpsed. It appears in the novel in the form of the “factory”, a chilling place of shadows and death, where identical faces stare out of countless windows and macabre scientific experiments are conducted within its walls.

One of Peake’s sketches from Belsen depicts a young girl, looking directly at the artist as she lies dying from consumption.

As he drew the girl, Peake was overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness and self-reproach. In the final stanza of his poem “The Consumptive. Belsen, 1945”, he tried to make sense of his feelings:

Her agony slides through me: am I glass That grief can find no grip Save for a moment when the quivering lip And the coughing weaker than the broken wing That, fluttering, shakes the life from a small bird Caught me as in a nightmare? Nightmares pass; The image blurs and the quick razor-edge Of anger dulls, and pity dulls. O God, That grief so glibly slides! The little badge On either cheek was gathered from her blood: Those coughs were her last words. They had no weight Save that through them was made articulate Earth’s desolation on the alien bed. Though I be glass, it shall not be betrayed, That last weak cough of her small, trembling head.

As Peake sketches the girl he struggles with the sheer futility of it all. He is troubled that his pity is fleeting, that even in the moment he is too focused on his task and not on the human being who lies dying before him. But is this really a lack of empathy, or a natural human reaction to the knowledge that there is nothing he can do to remedy the cruelties of the world?

The evil of the Holocaust serves as a reminder of what can happen when fascism prevails. We cannot afford to be complacent while antisemitism is on the rise and supposed progressives are cheering on those who openly wish to eliminate an entire race of people. If nothing else, we should do our utmost to ensure that the lessons of history are not forgotten.

[magicaltear]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

As found in the original post I saw by @macrolit

My total: 43/100

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Martin is your best friend, isn't he?' a sweet and well-intentioned girl once said when both of us were present: it was the only time I ever felt awkward about this precious idea, which seemed somehow to risk diminishment if it were uttered aloud.

- Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

Martin Amis and Christopher Hitchens. Together at last.

RIP Martin Amis.

[liminalweirdo]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa May Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan 51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

34 in completion, 47 if you count the ones I started and didn't finish

original post

[elijah-loyal]

(reposting from original bc it sounds fun)

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[esperata]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[eaglesnick]

“One of my first reservations about Zionism was and is that, semiconsciously at least, it grants the anti-Semite's first premise about the abnormality of the Jew.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

Day after day, week after week, the dreadful plight of the Palestinians in Gaza has filled the airwaves. Almost every hour our main media outlets send us pictures and give commentary concerning the death of civilians -  particularly children - within Gaza. As I write this Hamas claim over 10,000 Gazan citizens have been killed by Israeli bombings.

The condemnation of the Hamas massacre of innocent Israeli families, and the kidnapping of men, women and children to be held hostage and used as pawns in the Hamas war against Israel, has now been drowned out by the condemnation of the Israeli response to this deliberate, face-to-face terrorist massacre of its civilian citizens.

 The question I am asking is why are people so exercised by this particular war? Why are thousands of people on the streets demonstrating against this particular conflict in the Middle East when other conflicts have exacted an equally, and in many cases more horrific death toll of children and civilians?

The civil war in Yemen was between the Houthi Shia Muslims and the Shiite Muslim led government. The Saudi’s, backed by Britain, the US and France, began air strikes against the Houthis in 2015 fearing the Houthis would give Iran, a Shia Muslim State and a political rival, a foothold in the region.

What resulted was a major escalation in hostilities leading to:

“8.4 million people at risk of starvation and 22.2 million people - 75% of the population - in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN. Severe acute malnutrition is threatening the lives of almost 400,000 children under the age of five.”  (BBC NEWS: 13/06/18)

Where were the mass protests and daily news coverage of this humanitarian crisis? There were protests, but nowhere on the scale of the pro-Palestinian marches we are witnessing today, despite the vastly greater number of casualties:

“Yemen war deaths will reach 377,000 by end of the year: UN.”  (Aljazeera: 23/11/21)

The civil war in Syria has been raging for the last 12 years. Although there were demonstrations against the war initially these slowly petered out, and over recent years the continuing conflict in Syria hardly gets a mention. Yet, the UN calculates that 306,887 civilians were killed between 2011 and 2021, and by March 2023 this figure had risen to over half a million dead civilians.

Where are the protestors concerning these deaths? Nowhere to be seen! There have been more deaths in this conflict than in Gaza, yet “righteous indignation” seems to have dried up for the victims of President Assad’s genocide of his own people

The point I am making is that our media and the protesters are being very selective when it comes to  deaths of innocent civilians killed in conflict areas. What is it that makes one conflict more “news worthy” than another? What is it about the Hamas - Israeli conflict that grabs the attention of the protesters more than Middle-eastern  conflicts with far greater civilian death tolls?

 Accompanying the intensive media coverage and protests concerning Hamas and Israel has    been a massive increase in anti-Semitism  in the UK:

“Anti-Semitic hate crimes in London up 1,350%, Met police say.”  (Guardian: 20/10/23)

Such a massive rise in hate crimes against our Jewish population raises the question of a GENERAL anti-Semitic culture within sections of our society. (Anti-Islamic incidents have also increased but to a lesser extent) How many in the media and how many on the pro-Palestinian marches are giving vent to conscious or unconscious anti-Semitic feelings rather than having genuine humanitarian concerns for the people of Gaza? I would like to think none of them but  I fear I would be wrong.

[howieabel]

“Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago—and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no,' but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom'—one of Yvonne's stock phrases—makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Israelites eating the passover lamb :: Marc Chagall :: 1931

* * * *

“Alcohol makes other people less tedious, and food less bland, and can help provide what the Greeks called entheos, or the slight buzz of inspiration when reading or writing. The only worthwhile miracle in the New Testament—the transmutation of water into wine during the wedding at Cana—is a tribute to the persistence of Hellenism in an otherwise austere Judaea. The same applies to the seder at Passover, which is obviously modeled on the Platonic symposium: questions are asked (especially of the young) while wine is circulated. No better form of sodality has ever been devised: at Oxford one was positively expected to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied. It's not a coincidence that Omar Khayyam, rebuking and ridiculing the stone-faced Iranian mullahs of his time, pointed to the value of the grape as a mockery of their joyless and sterile regime. Visiting today's Iran, I was delighted to find that citizens made a point of defying the clerical ban on booze, keeping it in their homes for visitors even if they didn't particularly take to it themselves, and bootlegging it with great brio and ingenuity. These small revolutions affirm the human.” ― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

[mariacallous]

That Time Margaret Thatcher Spanked Christopher Hitchens

Margaret Thatcher was a mighty woman. The daughter of a grocer, she entered politics at the age of 25, drawing a surge of media attention as the youngest and only female candidate in the general election. She lost three times and birthed twins before finally winning the Conservative seat in Finchley in 1958 (with two toddlers in tow). While I hesitate to employ the jargon of a certain Ms. Sandberg, it cannot go without saying that Baroness Thatcher is a paradigm for the kind of character Lean In asks of the yet-to-be-wrought women of today.

Thatcher ascended the wooden ranks of a historically androcentric and vastly disillusioned institution by defying her own doubts ("I don't think there will be a female prime minister in my lifetime," as she once said) and pulverized her opponents through the strength of her own preponderant will ("To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say. You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning"). And yet, iron-fisted as she was, she managed to maintain that special brand of feminine sass all the way through. As Christopher Hitchens quickly learned upon meeting the lady leader, if you stepped on her toes, with a bend of the hip and a flick of the wrist, she just might have spanked you. Here's an excerpt from his memoir, Hitch-22:

"Care to meet the new leader?" Who could refuse? Within moments, Margaret Thatcher and I were face to face.

Within moments, too, I had turned away and was showing her my buttocks. I suppose that I must give some sort of explanation for this. Almost as soon as we shook hands on immediate introduction, I felt that she knew my name and had perhaps connected it to the socialist weekly that had recently called her rather sexy. While she struggled adorably with this moment of pretty confusion, I felt obliged to seek controversy and picked a fight with her on a detail of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe policy. She took me up on it. I was (as it chances) right on the small point of fact, and she was wrong. But she maintained her wrongness with such adamantine strength that I eventually conceded the point and bowed slightly to emphasize my acknowledgement. "No," she said. "Bow lower!" Smiling agreeably, I bent forward a bit farther. "No, no," she trilled. "Much lower!" By this time a little group of interested bystanders was gathering. I again bent forward, this time much more self-consciously. Stepping around behind me, she unmasked her batteries and smote me on the rear with the parliamentary order-paper that she had been rolling into a cylinder behind her back. I regained the vertical with some awkwardness. As she walked away, she looked back over her shoulder and gave an almost imperceptibly slight roll of the hip while mouthing the words: "Naughty boy!" ....

I had and have eyewitness to this. At the time, though, I hardly believed it myself. It is only from a later perspective, looking back on the manner in which she slaughtered and cowed all the former male leadership of her party and replaced them with pliant tools, that I appreciate the premonitory glimpse—of what someone in another context once called "the smack of firm government"—that I had once been afforded. Even at the time, as I left that party, I knew I had met someone rather impressive. And the worst of "Thatcherism," as I was beginning by degrees to discover, was the rodent slowly stirring in my viscera: the uneasy but unbanishable feeling that on some essential matters she might be right."

There is so much to unpack in all of this.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"The right to critique supersedes the right to take offense, especially when the offense can be easily avoided by not reading the critique." -- Saahil

https://www.atheistrepublic.com/blog/sacharya/what-atheism-not

What Atheism Is Not

A copy of Christopher Hitchens’ “Hitch 22” lies within grabbing distance, and I long to reach for it and make this another book review. The Hitch “left the party,” as he liked to refer to it, almost two years ago. Hundreds of questions about religion and atheism were posed to him in his apparently brief career as a polemicist on the side of the non-believers. He wantonly spurned the tag of agnostic, and very painstakingly built a coherent definition of atheism and protected it with his honour. I will be content to just give you a brief introduction to the man, and allow him and youtube to provoke and regale you. Christopher ‘The Hitch’ Hitchens was a journalist, polemicist and orator, and in the last leg of his life, a fervent critic of religion. His bestsellers include “God is Not Great” and “Hitch-22: A Memoir.” His arguments and polemics fueled the ‘New Atheism’ movement, and it chugs along ever speedily today as a result of the vociferous voices of him and other notable primates.

An essential task confronting the atheist, before he can begin ideological propagation, is the clearing away of all prejudices and misconceptions, thick as cobwebs, clinging in the minds of all in the grasp of religion.

Atheism is not a Religion

One dangerous notion harbored by religious apologists and censor-prone secularists is that atheism is a kind of anti-religion. In a different definition, this is true—atheism does maintain that orthodox religion is both hogwash and one of the main causes of a lot of misery and pain in today’s world. However, atheism offers you no alternative view to the world that can be as satisfactory or comforting. Atheism is no alternative religion, and it does not tell you where you must put your faith if not in God, Allah, Yahweh, Bhagwan. It is, in a sense, a sense of non-conformity. It is true that most atheists do believe in science as the only way to answer all questions relating to cosmology and genesis. However, in the more contentious arena of morality, atheists, most of the time, are content to personally explore the infinitely interesting answers of philosophy. An atheist is not, for example, a believer in what is now popularly, and ridiculously I might add, known as “the quantum.” This ambiguous piece of physics jargon is what people sometimes think atheists “believe” in. An atheist confesses (usually) that he knows no more than those who say they do. That is perhaps the most vital difference. An atheist may be a physicist, in which case he probably does know more, but the fact remains that atheists, being almost by definition rationalists, don’t think they know the answer. We are resolved to be unresolved, as the Hitch himself so eloquently put it.

Atheism Does not Seek to Abolish Religion

Though abolishment of religion may be a private wish for some atheists, most of them confirm that they don’t mind religion as long as it is kept inside the house, or a place of voluntary worship. Do not, however, bring it to our schools and our children.

Atheism is not Religious Intolerance

Inherent in the idea of democracy is freedom of religion. That much is apparent to anybody. But what is not so easily apparent, but just as implied by this is freedom from religion. This very important corollary is abhorrently violated in most democracies. It is just as important for atheists to provide reasons why they don’t believe in religion. The right to take offense is stretched to its very limits by many religious groups even in Western liberal democracies. It should be held, in my opinion, that the right to critique supersedes the right to take offense, especially when the offense can be easily avoided by not reading the critique. The essential right to constructive or even ironic criticism is something that we should fight for.

Atheism is not Political, except that it Opposes the Politics of Religion.

The atheist argument somehow carries with it the threat of radicalism, even anarchism. An obvious perversion of the atheism concept is that it is somehow political. There is no doubt that several political aims that most atheists harbor can only be accomplished with enfranchisement of the general non-believer community, especially those in the war-torn, religion-prone regions of the Middle East. However, the essential atheist view is purely philosophical. This is one of the reasons why atheists have so far been content to be mute with regard to their belief, or disbelief.

Atheism is not Immorality

It is obvious that morality stems from the human condition, just as religion does. Religion has no right to assert that morality originated from it. In fact, most believers don’t even assert that the moral principles of religions should be strictly, or rather, literally observed. This essential anti-atheism argument, that a man who doesn’t believe is somehow immoral, carries no merit whatsoever, but somehow surfaces first in the minds of even the tamest theists. Sinister truth lies behind this—theism, modern religions, have usurped concepts of good and evil, right and wrong.

The atheist argument is a very logical, rational one. However, if you approach it with preconceived or indoctrinated prejudices, you might as well not approach it at all. There is merit in speaking out for it. This has cost us the valuable support of much of the academic and philosophical community. Many very distinguished atheist scholars have refused to come out and argue, chiefly because they feel propagation is very much against the principles of atheism. But there are many who are “on the fence,” or perched on the precipice of emancipation, and there is much to be gained, and little lost, in helping them. After all, religions do it by right. We offer logic, and not a ticket to heaven. It is fundamental that these misconceptions be set right, for only then can we be set off on our quest for justice, human rights and peace. The argument must be made, the agenda must be announced. We must hawk our disbelief, and do it well.

The ‘New Atheism’ movement gains momentum every day among secularists, and increasingly, a great number of distinguished scholars, including the likes of Professors Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Laurence Krauss, have come out to join the argument. In memory of one of their cohorts, I urge everyone who is ever exposed to the atheist argument to listen carefully, and not faithfully. It makes all the difference.

[redowlkitchen]

Cross out what you’ve already read. Six is the average.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Harry Potter series - JK Rowling To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee The Bible - Council of Nicea (Not the whole thing, but a lot at church and all of Genesis for my Bible as Literature class) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Little Women - Louisa M Alcott Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger Middlemarch - George Eliot Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Bleak House - Charles Dickens War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy David Copperfield - Charles Dickens Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Emma - Jane Austen Persuasion - Jane Austen (currently reading!) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Animal Farm - George Orwell The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Lord of the Flies - William Golding Atonement - Ian McEwan Life of Pi - Yann Martel Dune - Frank Herbert Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens Brave New World - Aldous Huxley The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov The Secret History - Donna Tartt The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas On The Road - Jack Kerouac Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie Moby Dick - Herman Melville Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens Dracula - Bram Stoker The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson Ulysses - James Joyce The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Germinal - Emile Zola Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray Possession - AS Byatt A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Color Purple - Alice Walker The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Charlotte’s Web - EB White The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Watership Down - Richard Adams A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas Hamlet - William Shakespeare Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl Frankenstein - Mary Shelley The Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer Paradise Lost - John Milton The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain White Fang - Jack London The Portrait of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde Queen of the Damned - Anne Rice Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson The Call of the Wild - Jack London The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — L. Frank Baum Don Quixote — Miguel De Cervantes Where the Wild Things Are — Maurice Sendak The Cat in the Hat — Dr Seuss The Giver — Lois Lowry Inkheart — Cornelia Funke Divine Comedy — Dante Alighieri Macbeth — William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare The Child Called ‘It’ — Dave Pelzer The Hunger Games — Suzanne Collins The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank Night — Elie Wiesel Les Misérables — Victor Hugo The Odyssey — Homer The Scarlet Letter — Nathaniel Hawthorne The Brothers Karamasov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky Eragon — Christopher Paolini

[not-your-pussikat]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

26/100. I still have a lot of reading to do. 😊

Out of the ones that I have read, Lord of the Flies, Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time are my favorites.

[53rdcenturyhero]

Couldn't bold but put a q at end of title read (mobile app & tny keyboard) of That Booklist of stuff I have read. Genuine confession here.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austenq

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkeinq

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronteq

4 Harry Potter series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Leeq

6 The Bibleq

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronteq

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwellq

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullmanq

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickensq

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcottq

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardyq

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Hellerq

14 Complete Works of Shakespeareq

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurierq

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkienq

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulksq

18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salingerq

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegerq

20 Middlemarch – George Eliotq

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchellq

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgeraldq

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickensq

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoyq

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adamsq

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waughq

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeckq

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carrollq

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahameq

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoyq

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickensq

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewisq

34 Emma – Jane Austenq

35 Persuasion – Jane Austenq

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewisq

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseiniq

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Goldenq

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milneq

41 Animal Farm – George Orwellq

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brownq

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collinsq

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomeryq

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardyq

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwoodq

49 Lord of the Flies – William Goldingq

50 Atonement – Ian McEwanq

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martelq

52 Dune – Frank Herbertq

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbonsq

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austenq

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxleyq

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddonq

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeckq

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokovq

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickensq

72 Dracula – Bram Stokerq

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnettq

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransomeq

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackerayq

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchelq

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walkerq

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguroq

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubertq

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistryq

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB Whiteq

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyleq

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blytonq

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conradq

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exuperyq

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banksq

94 Watership Down – Richard Adamsq

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shuteq

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeareq

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahlq

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugoq

Asimov? Heinlein? LeGuin? Clarke? PRATCHETT... Monty Python Papperbok... Molesworth . Ah!

I have concluded that the gaps of reading coincide with ill-health and child-rearing!

[slowsweetlove]

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen

35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel

83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo