#Memoire 63

[themaeve]

AHHHHHH! NEW CASE STUDY OF VANITAS CHAPTER! ITS BACK!

Oh yeah that's right we were in the midst of this Dham arc.

Well time for some all too relatable pain as Dante and Johann have to deal with being questioned and assaulted by THE LITERAL CHURCH

The chapter was really good. Like, it fucking hurt to read, but it was so good. Having dealt with mostly just Roland the human Golden Retriever and Olivier his dog-handler, and of course everyone's favorite traumatized murder baby Astolfo, it was different to see these Chaseurs as the cold and calculating killers they are. It wasn't over the top, it was simple "We are gonna hurt you and maybe kill you cause we can, whether you tell us what we want to know is irrelevant. No one here will stop us, and as long as no one knows, we won't get in any trouble for it."

Like, "Oh yeah, these guys ARE terrifying assholes, I forgot."

But the dialogue about the Dhams really hits this chapter.

"They're a real eyesore"

"They dress like they're advertising themselves as Dhams"

"Dhams should make like Dhams and live in the shadows, holding their breath"

And then Dante's internal thoughts, the fleeting hope that someone will come to help,

"Who exactly is someone"

"Who'd show up for us?"

"This world treats us like it can't even see us."

And he goes for the gun in his jacket... God it fucking hits. I say it every time, but so much dialogue in this manga can just have the names of things and people swapped out and you could believe it applies to so many marginalized groups. It feels more authentic than a lot of manga and stories I read. Don't know why. That's just probably my queer ass reading too much into these chapters as my own experiences, but fuck. I won't lie that I felt the connection with Dante keeping his gun in the same inner jacket pocket I keep my knife in my jacket. The same jacket with pins that people say I'm "advertising as queer" with. Johann fucking pleading for Dante not to draw his gun cause he knows his partner is gonna die if he tries. That these church goons are looking for an excuse to pin them as the aggressors so they can execute them.

And right as shit is about to happen, Domi shows up. DOMI!!!!!!!

Perfect way for Domi to start making up for her casual prejudice against Dante and Johann earlier. Domi sticks her neck out for them, against 2 FUCKING CHASSEUR PALADINS OF THE CHURCH! Like, yeah Domi is fucking awesome and powerful and an influential vampire noble, but 2 Paladins? They could kill her if things go wrong. But my girl is still here sticking her neck out for Dante and Johann. Congrats Domi, you have a chance to use your Vampire noble privilege to finally be the Dham ally you thought you were.

I love it. I love this manga so much.

[tetitous]

Domi made a run for it didn't she?

[briebysabs]

Ngl Johann mad sus in this chapter.

Johann you a little chill rn. “Oh he’s just trying to be rational.” He wasn’t rational when Vanitas held Dante at knifepoint.

This situation is even worse than that imo so what we doing?

If Johann is Spider does Gano even know? I doubt the mask had ever come off and I think it’ll be hilarious if when they meet again with Ruthven, Johann nearly chokes him to death for hurting Dante. And Gano is flabbergasted he’s been working with a dham this whole time.

Btw am I the only one that think Ogier’s worse than Gano? I mean I don’t hate either of them with passion, mochijun can write an asshole.

But Ogier is the one who snuck scissors to a 9-year old who lost his whole family, smiling while suggesting to off himself.

That’s worse than anything Gano can do imo.

[liesweliveby]

going to scream

[mindblowingscience]

The first female space commander will be featured in a new documentary. The story of retired NASA astronaut Eileen Collins will be retold in "Spacewoman," a documentary coming in 2025 based on Collins' memoir "Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars" (Arcade, 2021) co-written with space historian Jonathan Ward. Collins, who flew four times in space, served as pilot on two space shuttle missions (STS-63 and STS-84 in February 1995 and May 1997, respectively) and commander of crew on another two spaceflights (STS-93 in July 1999, and STS-114 in July to August 2005).

Continue Reading.

[bobbiesquares]

Marisha wore the Autumn Memoir Skater Dress by Rogue + Wolf at The Legend of Vox Machina Fantastic Fest event on 9/23/2024! The dress is available in sizes XS-3XL for $55 - $63 and is available through the brand’s website.

Links to original photo and dress website will be added in the reblog!

[seeinganewlight]

2024 books read

2024 goal: 150 books

january: 1 - heartstopper vol. 1 → alice oseman (reread) 2 - heartstopper vol. 2 → alice oseman (reread) 3 - heartstopper vol. 3 → alice oseman (reread) 4 - heartstopper vol. 4 → alice oseman (reread) 5 - heartstopper vol. 5 → alice oseman 6 - a fragile enchantment → allison saft 7 - some shall break → ellie marney (audiobook) 8 - only if you're lucky → stacy willingham (arc) 9 - over my dead body: a witchy graphic novel → sweeney boo 10 - notes on an execution → danya kukafka (physical & audiobook) 11 - murder on the orient express → agatha christie (reread) 12 - our wives under the sea → julia armfield (physical & audiobook) 13 - the invocations → krystal sutherland (arc) 14 - red string theory → lauren kung jessen 15 - the breakup tour → emily wibberley & austin siegemund-broka (arc) 16 - the name drop → susan lee 17 - the secret of the old clock → carolyn keene (reread) 18 - bright young women → jessica knoll (audiobook) 19 - last call at the local → sarah grunder ruiz (audiobook) 20 - no one can know → kate alice marshall

february: 21 - worst wingman ever → abby jimenez 22 - drop, cover, and hold on → jasmine guillory 23 - with any luck → ashley poston 24 - the atlas six → olivie blake (reread, audiobook) 25 - that's not my name → megan lally 26 - not here to stay friends → kaitlyn hill 27 - this golden state → marit weisenberg 28 - today tonight tomorrow → rachel lynn solomon (reread, annotation) 29 - past present future → rachel lynn solomon (arc, annotation) 30 - the atlas paradox → olivie blake (reread, audiobook) 31 - the guest list → lucy foley (audiobook) 32 - in the market for murder → t.e. kinsey (audiobook) 33 - the neighbor favor → kristina forest 34 - in the mix → mandy gonzalez 35 - everyone in my family has killed someone → benjamin stevenson 36 - the seven year slip → ashley poston 37 - veronica ruiz breaks the bank → elle cosimano (audiobook) 38 - finlay donovan rolls the dice → elle cosimano (audiobook) 39 - the simmonds house kills → meaghan dwyer (arc)

march: 40 - the mysterious case of the alperton angels → janice hallett 41 - the book of cold cases → simone st. james 42 - what the river knows → isabel ibañez (audiobook) 43 - cut loose! → ali stroker & stacy davidowitz 44 - how i'll kill you → ren destefano 45 - the reappearance of rachel price → holly jackson (arc) 46 - when no one is watching → alyssa cole (audiobook) 47 - outofshapeworthlessloser: a memoir of figure skating, f*cking up, and figuring it out → gracie gold (audiobook) 48 - julius caesar → william shakespeare (rerad, audiobook) 49 - the family plot → megan collins (audiobook) 50 - if we were villains → m.l. rio (reread) 51 - alone with you in the ether → olivie blake (physical & audiobook) 52 - disappearance at devil's rock → paul tremblay (audiobook)

april: 53 - shakespeare: romeo and juliet graphic novel → martin powell & eva cabrera 54 - shakespeare: macbeth graphic novel → martin powell & f. daniel perez 55 - shakespeare: julius caesar graphic novel → carl bown & eduardo garcia 56 - shakespeare: a midsummer night's dream graphic novel → nel yomtov & berenice muniz 57 - twelfth knight → alexene farol follmuth (arc) 58 - kill for me, kill for you → steve cavanagh 59 - murder road → simone st. james 60 - everyone on this train is a suspect → benjamin stevenson 61 - listen for the lie → amy tintera 62 - king cheer → molly horton booth, stephanie kate strohm, jamie green 63 - twelfth night (musical adaptation) → kwame kwei-armah & shaina taub 64 - in juliet's garden → judy elliot mcdonald 65 - fat ham → james ijames 66 - death by shakespeare → philip l. nicholas, jr 67 - a good girl's guide to murder → holly jackson (reread) 68 - good girl, bad blood → holly jackson (reread) 69 - as good as dead → holly jackson (reread) 70 - dark corners → megan goldin (audiobook) 71 - the one that got away with murder → trish lundy (audiobook) 72 - funny story → emily henry 73 - imogen says nothing → aditi brennan kapil 74 - people we meet on vacation → emily henry (audiobook, reread)

may: 75 - episode thirteen → craig dilouie 76 - the girls i've been → tess sharpe (reread) 77 - the girl in question → tess sharpe (arc) 78 - wild about you → kaitlyn hill (arc) 79 - just for the summer → abby jimenez 80 - my best friend's exorcism → grady hendrix 81 - second first date → rachel lynn solomon 82 - the ballad of darcy & russell → morgan matson 83 - the good, the bad, and the aunties → jesse q. sutanto (audiobook) 84 - truly, madly, deeply → alexandria bellefleur 85 - your blood, my bones → kelly andrew 86 - amy & roger's epic detour → morgan matson (reread) 87 - romancing mister bridgerton → julia quinn (reread) 88 - the viscount who loved me → julia quinn (reread) 89 - bittersweet in the hollow → kate pearsall 90 - to sir phillip, with love → julia quinn (reread) 91 - when he was wicked → julia quinn (reread) 92 - it's in his kiss → julia quinn (reread) 93 - on the way to the wedding → julia quinn (audiobook, reread) 94 - emma → jane austen (audiobook, reread)

june: 95 - first lie wins → ashley elston 96 - we got the beat → jenna miller 97 - firekeeper's daughter → angeline boulley 98 - chlorine → jade song (audiobook) 99 - what stalks among us → sarah hollowell 100 - hollow fires → samira ahmed (audiobook) 101 - part of your world → abby jimenez 102 - the road trip → beth o'leary 103 - yours truly → abby jimenez 104 - finally fitz → marisa kanter 105 - the last love song → kalie holford

july: 106 - dead girls walking → sami ellis (audiobook) 107 - home is where the bodies are → jeneva rose 108 - we used to live here → marcus kliewer 109 - the children on the hill → jennifer mcmahon (audiobook) 110 - what moves the dead → t. kingfisher 111 - my throat an open grave → tori bovalino 112 - dashed → amanda quain (arc) 113 - asking for a friend → kara h.l. chen (arc) 114 - beach read → emily henry (reread, audiobook) 115 - book lovers → emily henry (reread, audiobook) 116 - happy place → emily henry (reread, audiobook) 117 - you have a match → emma lord (reread, annotation) 118 - bonnie & clyde musical script → ivan menchell (reread) 119 - such charming liars → karen m. mcmanus (arc) 120 - she left → stacie grey (audiobook) 121 - let the games begin → rufaro faith mazarura (audiobook) 122 - death at morning house → maureen johnson (arc)

august: 123 - cleat cute → meryl wilsner (audiobook) 124 - i wish you would → eva des lauriers 125 - the break-up pact → emma lord (arc) 126 - water for elephants → sara gruen 127 - when you get the chance → emma lord (reread, annotation) 128 - come out, come out → natalie c. parker (arc) 129 - my lady jane → cynthia hand, brodi ashton, jodi meadows 130 - the lies of alma blackwell → amanda glaze (arc)

september: 131 - the spare room → andra bartz 132 - late bloomer → mazey eddings (audiobook) 133 - savor it → tarah dewitt (audiobook) 134 - triple sec → t.j. alexander (audiobook) 135 - the skeleton key → erin kelly 136 - the examiner → janice hallett (arc) 137 - the dark we know → wen-yi lee (audiobook) 138 - pretty girls → karin slaughter 139 - a good girl's guide to murder → holly jackson (reread, annotation) 140 - lady macbeth → ava reid 141 - the pumpkin spice café → laurie gilmore 142 - the main character → jaclyn goldis (audiobook) 143 - queen macbeth → val mcdermid (arc) 144 - the cinnamon bun bookstore → laurie gilmore (audiobook)

october: 145 - midnight on beacon street → emily ruth verona (audiobook) 146 - make me a mixtape → jennifer whiteford (arc) 147 - haunt sweet home → sarah pinsker 148 - graveyard shift → m.l. rio 149 - the bitter end → alexa donne (arc) 150 - morbidly yours → ivy fairbanks 151 - someone in the attic → andrea mara 152 - a new lease on death → olivia blacke (arc) 153 - the christmas tree farm → laurie gilmore 154 - staged → elle cosimano 155 - the reunion dinner → jesse q. sutanto 156 - a crime of fashion → emma rosenblum 157 - the nosy neighbor → nita prose 158 - one lucky subscriber → kellye garrett 159 - a classic case → alicia thompson 160 - interview with the vampire → anne rice (audiobook) 161 - horror movie → paul tremblay (audiobook) 162 - everything is poison → joy mccullough (arc) 163 - romeo and juliet → william shakespeare (reread) 164 - no place left to hide → megan lally (arc) 165 - macbeth → william shakespeare (reread)

november: 166 - dinner for vampires → bethany joy lenz (audiobook) 167 - make the season bright → ashley herring blake 168 - a bánh mì for two → trinity nguyen (audiobook) 169 - merriment and mayhem → alexandria bellefleur 170 - a novel love story → ashley poston

[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.

[deadpresidents]

I stopped procrastinating and am finally reading Grant's autobiography. A few chapters in, I'm surprised by how readable and relatable they are. Having been raised on Mark Twain, how much influence did he have over the final version? Or are we reading most of Grant's original words?

The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (BOOK | KINDLE) really is a great book. It's not always easy to read things written in the 19th Century because the rhythm of the writing is usually so much more formal than we are used to now. But Grant's Memoirs flow really well, and I think anybody interested in the era should have Grant's book at the top of their reading list. I'd especially recommend checking out the annotated edition released in 2017 by Belknap Press/Harvard University Press (that's the version I linked at the beginning of the paragraph). But the beauty of Grant's book is that you don't need annotations because the prose is so clear and easy to read.

As for the authorship, there have been rumors about the part that Mark Twain played in the writing of the book ever since the book was finished literally a few days before Grant died in 1885. And the flames were also fanned by Grant's former military aide Adam Badeau who helped Grant in the early stages of the writing process and was bitter about not getting paid more money, so he also claimed to be Grant's ghostwriter. But while Twain did help with some editing, his major role was in getting the book published in the best way to ensure that Grant's family would benefit financially from its publication. Grant wrote the book because he was broke and dying, and he wanted to make sure his family was going to be okay. Twain didn't think the contract that Grant was about to sign with a publisher to write the book was fair and felt that Grant could make significantly more money selling the book via a subscription service (the original deal was supposed to net Grant 10% of the royalties; Twain's deal guaranteed Grant 70% of the royalties). So the most significant part that Twain played was in regard to the finances, which again was the reason why Grant was writing the book in the first place.

Twain definitely helped Grant with proofreading and literary advice throughout the writing process, but Grant had started writing the book before Twain was involved and had already been writing articles about his Civil War experiences for magazines and serials for a few years. There is a unique voice to Grant's writing style and I think it is clearly recognizable, especially in comparison to how other public figures wrote at the time. So, it's definitely Grant's book. Plus, the Library of Congress still has the original manuscript of Grant's Memoirs (alongside all of his other papers and correspondence) and every page of the book was handwritten by Grant.

•One of my favorite photos in Presidential history is this one of a gravely ill Ulysses S. Grant, who by this point could no longer speak because of the throat cancer that was killing him (he had to write notes to communicate with his family and his doctors), feverishly writing to finish his book at his cottage on Mount McGregor in the Adirondacks of New York:

The photo was taken on June 27, 1885. Grant finished writing his Memoirs on July 19, 1885. Four days later, on July 23, 1885, he died at the age of 63.

[retracexcviii]

vnc chapter day

GG joker posted this wonderful cover of the chapter on Twitter, I love it.

[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

[greensparty]

Remembering Jon Landau and Judy Belushi Pisano

Here is my combined remembrance of two entertainment figures we lost:

Remembering Jon Landau 1960-2024

Film producer Jon Landau has died at 63. Please note he is not the same Jon Landau who is a music producer and music manager for Bruce Springsteen. This Landau was known for his frequent collaborations with James Cameron. He won an Oscar for Best Picture winner Titanic. He was nominated for both Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water (read my movie review here).

Landau and Cameron at the 1998 Academy Awards

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

Remembering Judith Belushi Pisano 1951-2024

Author, producer, actress Judith Belushi Pisano has died at 73. She was married to SNL great John Belushi from 1976 to his death in 1982. She was later married to producer Victor Pisano from 1990 to 2010.

Judith Belushi Pisano (center) at the 2004 star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, Dan Aykroyd, and Jim Belushi

She got her start in the art department at National Lampoon and then became a producer of their radio hour. She had small roles in John Belushi films like National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers. She was the producer of the 1985 video The Best of John Belushi (I watched that VHS with friends quite often as a kid). She also wrote the 1990 memoir Samurai Widow. She was an interviewee in various documentaries including Live from New York: The First 5 Years of Saturday Night Live, Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead  and Belushi (read my review here).

The link above is the obit from Hollywood Reporter.

[heyho-simonrussellbeale]

A Piece of Work — Simon Russell Beale on a career spent playing Shakespearean roles

Simon Russell Beale’s memoir of a career spent playing some of the great (and many of the minor) Shakespearean roles, is as much a work of criticism as of autobiography. It is a better read for that.

By Cordelia Jenkins August 30 2024

“It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue,” says William Shakespeare’s heroine Rosalind, breaking character to speak to the audience at the end of As You Like It, written in 1599. Neither has it been the fashion, since then, to see the actor play the critic. In fact, the whole idea of character analysis in Shakespeare studies was out of fashion until relatively recently. But Simon Russell Beale’s memoir of a career spent playing some of the great (and many of the minor) Shakespearean roles, is as much a work of criticism as of autobiography. It is a better read for that.

At the age of 63, Beale can claim to be one of Britain’s most prolific and revered stage actors. The book is a patchwork of episodes from his life and sketches of the characters he has played over the years, starting with the lonely Roman, Cassius, and moving through some of the great comic and tragic heroes, Benedick, Richard III, Macbeth, Leontes and Lear.

While Beale is careful to avoid making claims to be “an academic, or even a genuine amateur specialist”, he confesses that he finds it impossible not to think of the characters he plays “as less than living, breathing men and women”. And when he breaks off from telling the story of his own life to deliver his observations on a particular role, the insights feel truer for being born of emotional, rather than purely intellectual, labour.

Beale is honest about the pitfalls of this approach. His interpretations are partial and deeply subjective. His chosen characters are typically loners or outsiders in some sense, looking for acceptance and, above all, redemption. And the themes he draws out from them are reflected in the telling of his own life story. It is easy, for example, to see what the appeal of joining a company of actors might have been to the son of an army doctor who had a peripatetic and often isolated boyhood.

His meditation on the crippling grief of Leontes, the jealous king who is responsible for the death of a beloved child, turns upon Beale’s memories of the death of his younger sister, Lucy, who suffered from a congenital heart defect and died at the age of four.

Readers may flag at the level of detail with which Beale describes his early career at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. But 30 years working in British theatre have given him an unusually acute understanding of the relationship between what he describes as the “work in the study and the work on the stage”.

He interrogates the centuries-long scepticism that actors have had for scholars, and vice versa. “I have met scholars who believe that Macbeth and King Lear should never be performed, because any attempt to do those plays justice will fail,” he writes, gearing up to dismantle that argument in his account of his own performance of Lear in Sam Mendes’ production of 2014.

In an interview with the FT this year about playing the part, Beale remembered a game with a fellow actor in which they habitually ranked “our top five favourites and our bottom five” of Shakespeare’s plays. “The bottom five were always the same. And the top five used to change, but Lear was always in them,” he said. It’s a revealing anecdote that hints at how consistent a presence Shakespeare’s plays have been through his career. A life’s work in fact — irrespective of the changing fashions.

Cordelia Jenkins is deputy editor of FT Weekend Magazine

A Piece of Work: Playing Shakespeare and Other Stories by Simon Russell Beale Abacus £25, 288 pages

[orthodoxydaily]

Saints&Reading: Thursday, August 22, 2024

august 9_august 22

THE HOLY APOSTLE MATTHIAS (63)

The Holy Apostle Matthias was born at Bethlehem of the Tribe of Judah. From his early childhood he studied the Law of God under the guidance of Saint Simeon the God-Receiver (February 3).

When the Lord Jesus Christ revealed Himself to the world, Saint Matthias believed in Him as the Messiah, followed constantly after Him and was numbered among the Seventy Apostles, whom the Lord “sent them two by two before His face” (Luke 10:1).

After the Ascension of the Savior, Saint Matthias was chosen by lot to replace Judas Iscariot as one of the Twelve Apostles (Acts 1:15-26). After the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the Apostle Matthias preached the Gospel at Jerusalem and in Judea together with the other Apostles (Acts 6:2, 8:14). From Jerusalem he went with the Apostles Peter and Andrew to Syrian Antioch, and was in the Cappadocian city of Tianum and Sinope. Here the Apostle Matthias was locked into prison, from which he was miraculously freed by Saint Andrew the First-Called.

The Apostle Matthias journeyed after this to Amasea, a city on the shore of the sea. During a three year journey of the Apostle Andrew, Saint Matthias was with him at Edessa and Sebaste. According to Church Tradition, he was preaching at Pontine Ethiopia (presently Western Georgia) and Macedonia. He was frequently subjected to deadly peril, but the Lord preserved him to preach the Gospel.

Once, pagans forced the saint to drink a poison potion. He drank it, and not only did he himself remain unharmed, but he also healed other prisoners who had been blinded by the potion. When Saint Matthias left the prison, the pagans searched for him in vain, for he had become invisible to them. Another time, when the pagans had become enraged intending to kill the Apostle, the earth opened up and engulfed them.

The Apostle Matthias returned to Judea and did not cease to enlighten his countrymen with the light of Christ’s teachings. He worked great miracles in the Name of the Lord Jesus and he converted a great many to faith in Christ.

The Jewish High Priest Ananias hated Christ and earlier had commanded the Apostle James, Brother of the Lord, to be flung down from the heights of the Temple, and now he ordered that the Apostle Matthias be arrested and brought for judgment before the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem.

The impious Ananias uttered a speech in which he blasphemously slandered the Lord. Using the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Apostle Matthias demonstrated that Jesus Christ is the True God, the promised Messiah, the Son of God, Consubstantial and Coeternal with God the Father. After these words the Apostle Matthias was sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin and stoned.

When Saint Matthias was already dead, the Jews, to hide their malefaction, cut off his head as an enemy of Caesar. (According to several historians, the Apostle Matthias was crucified, and indicate that he instead died at Colchis.) The Apostle Matthias received the martyr’s crown of glory in the year 63.

Source: Orthodox Church in America_OCA

NEW MARTYR MARGARET (1918)

Abbess Margaret, in the world Maria Mikhailovna Gunarodnoulo, was born in 1865 or 1866 in a family of Greek origin. Before becoming a nun she lived in Kiev. Her spiritual father was Protopriest Alexander Korsakovsky, the rector of the St. George church, in whose parish she lived. In his memoirs Prince N.D. Zhevakov, who knew matushka long before she became a nun, writes: “I saw in Maria Mikhailovna the incarnation of fiery faith and ardent love for God. Small, frail, almost an old woman, she burned like a candle before God: everyone who knew her knew that she had been born precisely in order to warm others with her love.” Shortly after receiving the monastic tonsure with the name Margaret, she went to live in the “Joy and Consolation” community of the Orlov-Davydovs near Moscow, where the abbess was the very elderly Countess Orlova-Davydova. This period in her life was a heavy trial that demanded great courage, patience and humility.

     On January 18, 1917 the Holy Synod appointed her superior of the Menzelinsk women’s monastery of the Prophet Elijah in Ufa province with elevation to the rank of abbess. This appointment took place thanks to the efforts of Prince N.D. Zhevakov, the assistant over-procurator of the Holy Synod. And her ordination as abbess took place in the presence of Great Princess Elizabeth Fyodorovna, who was exceptionally fond of Matushka Margaret.

     The move to Menzelinsk was long and difficult. At the end of 1917 she arrived in the monastery, which was one of the biggest women’s communities in the Ufa diocese. It had three churches, a church-parish school, a monastic economy with fruit trees, kitchen-gardens and apiaries. The nuns worked in the guest-house for pilgrims, in workshops devoted to iconography, gold-weaving, carpentry, dress-making and book-binding, and also baking bread and prosphoras and preparing food. The monastery even had its own photographic studio – an extreme rarity at that time. In 1917 there were fifty nuns and 248 novices. The intelligent and educated abbess was renowned for her strict ascetic life and the good order she introduced into the monastery in the old Russian spirit.

     In April, 1917 the revolutionary wave also hit the Prophet Elijah monastery. By decree of the Provisional Government, the church-parish schools had to be transferred into the administration of the Ministry of popular enlightenment, but the abbess tried to defend the monastery’s school from this transfer on the grounds that the property and buildings of the school belonged to the monastery and that the pupils were its novices. She declared that the upkeep of the school would from now on be the responsibility of the monastery (under the Tsars the State had paid the teachers). The unshakeable will of the abbess to keep the school’s education in the Orthodox faith had an unexpected result: the city left the school in her hands. Moreover, since city girls were studying in it, the city decided to pay the teachers and provide the necessary equipment.

     On April 18, 1918 Abbess Margaret was elected a member of the diocesan council.

     In May, 1918 the Czech legion rebelled, and by July the whole province had been liberated from the Bolsheviks. However, battles still continued on the western boundaries of the province, and Menzelinsk changed hands between the combatants several times. In the late summer the Whites abandoned Kazan; and according to Nun Alevtina, a previous inhabitant of the monastery, Abbess Margaret at one time decided to leave with the Whites and not remain under the authority of the Bolsheviks. She was at the wharf preparing to leave when St. Nicholas appeared to her and said:

     “Why are you running from your crown?”

     Stunned by the vision, Abbess Margaret returned to the monastery and told the monastery priest about what had happened. And sensing that she would soon have to suffer for the faith, she asked for her coffin to be prepared in advance, and that she should be buried on the very day of her death, after the burial service.

     During the night of August 11–12 the Bolsheviks suddenly left Menzelinsk. The citizens created a voluntary unit to guard the city and established links with units of the White army. On August 21 the Bolsheviks renewed their attack on Menzelinsk. The Whites held out for four hours, but finally the Bolsheviks burst into the city and began to take revenge… On August 21 and 22, they shot 150-200 people in the city. Mother Margaret was one of their victims. Another was Priest Vozdvizhensky of the Trinity church.

     According to the witness of the Red Army soldier Ya.F. Ostroumov, the excuse for killing the abbess was the fact that the nuns were trying to defend some White officers (probably wounded) in the monastery. “Several White officers who had been left in the monastery were hidden in the cells of the women’s monastery and were… shot in the monastery courtyard. The abbess of the monastery was also shot… for hiding White officers in the cells of the monastery.”

     According to another account that reached Prince Zhevakov across the front line, the Bolsheviks, having burst into the territory of the monastery, wanted to defile the church, but the abbess did not let them in there. Matushka fearlessly went out to the crowd of drunk and heavily armed Bolsheviks and meekly said to them: ‘I do not fear death, for only after death will I appear before the Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom I have striven all my life. You will only bring forward my meeting with the Lord… But I wish to suffer and endure endlessly in this life if only you would save your souls… In killing my body, you kill your own souls… Think about that.”

     In reply to this they hurled insults and curses at her and demanded that she open the church. The abbess refused outright, and the Bolsheviks said to her: “Look to it: early tomorrow we will kill you…” With these words they left.

     After their departure, having locked the monastery gates, Abbess Margaret went together with the sisters into the church, where they spent the whole night in prayer and communed at the early liturgy. The abbess had not succeeded in leaving the church when the Bolsheviks, seeing her coming down from the ambon, took aim at her and fired point-blank. “Glory to Thee, O God!” cried the abbess loudly when she saw the Bolsheviks taking aim at her, and… fell dead to the floor.

     Nun Alevtina has a slightly different account: “The following day [after the Whites left Menzelinsk], Abbess Margaret was arrested as a supposed ‘counter-revolutionary’ during a service. She was taken out onto the porch, and having refused her request to partake of the Holy Mysteries, shot her.”

     Immediately after the burial service, the sisters of the monastery buried her behind the altar of the Ascension church where she had been shot.

     It was only the next day that the abbess’s request to be buried on the very day of her death, which had at first seemed strange to the priest, became comprehensible. For the same chekists who had shot Abbess Margaret brought out a Muslim mullah to be shot, wishing to bury him in one grave with the Orthodox superior of the monastery. However, since she was already buried, they could not do this and took the mullah somewhere else.

     According to M.V. Mikhailova, the daughter of a priest of Menzelinsk, in the 1970s, near the main church of the Menzelinsk monastery, which was closed at that time, they decided to dig a hole behind the very altar. Suddenly they came on a coffin. In it were the incorrupt relics of Abbess Margaret with a cross on her breast. They did not disturb the coffin, but filled in the grave and found another place for the hole…

     A great Russian elder – St. Ambrose of Optina, it seems – prophesied about this monastery that under one superior they would build a church, another would be a martyr, and under a third – the bells would fall. The prophecy was fulfilled. Abbess Margaret became a martyr, and under the last superior they removed the bells from the church and closed the monastery.

ACTS 1:12-17, 21-26

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey. 13 And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying: Peter, James, John, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas; Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot; and Judas the son of James. 14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.15 And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples (altogether the number of names was about a hundred and twenty), and said, 16 Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus; 17 for he was numbered with us and obtained a part in this ministry.

21 Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, 22 beginning from the baptism of John to that day when He was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of His resurrection. 23 And they proposed two: Joseph called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. 24 And they prayed and said, "You, O Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which of these two You have chosen 25 to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place 26 And they cast their lots, and the lot fell on Matthias. And he was numbered with the eleven apostles.

LUKE 9:1-6

1 Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. 2 He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 3 And He said to them, "Take nothing for the journey, neither staffs nor bag nor bread nor money; and do not have two tunics apiece. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there, and from there depart. 5 And whoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them. 6 So they departed and went through the towns, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere.

[ayakashibackstreet]

Ensemble Stars!! MV Tournament - Round 1 statistics

Two days ago, the first round polls came to a close. Before we get to the Second Chance Round (which, spoilers, will consist of 37 polls running over the course of a week), here are some statistics I compiled in regards to the round 1 results.

Round 1 consisted of 91 polls. The polls were published over the course of 18 days.

Part 1: Voting numbers.

As expected, the number of votes started out relatively low and increased over the course of the tournament.

The average poll had about 57 votes (rounding up).

Top 5 polls with the most votes:

5. Match 34: Fight for Judge vs Crush of Judgement / Match 69: Or the Beautiful Golden Drop vs FALLIN LOVE=IT'S WONDERLAND (104 votes each) 4. Match 46: Le temps des fleurs vs Memoire Antique (105 votes) 3. Match 48: Believe 4 leaves vs Crazy Anthem (110 votes) 2. Match 25: U.S.A. vs Tell Your World (123 votes) 1. Match 71: Mystic Fragrance vs Yubisaki no Ariadne (130 votes)

Top 5 polls with the least votes:

5. Match 9: Crazy Roulette vs Kiss of Life (28 votes) 4. Match 8: Miwaku Geki vs Voice of Sword (27 votes) 3. Match 7: Be The Party Bee! vs LEMON SQUASH CHEERS! (25 votes) 2. Match 10: Rainbow Stairway vs Yukai Tsuukai That's alright! (24 votes) 1. Match 1: BRAND NEW STARS!! vs ONLY YOUR STARS! (22 votes)

Part 2: Voting results.

Obviously, some matches were more even, while in others, one MV absolutely dominated the others.

This chart presents how the votes stacked up, how even the results were - I called this proportion the sweep factor because it sounded funny. The higher the number, the more uneven the result of any given poll - with 1 being a 50/50 split.

The average poll had a sweep factor of 2,94 (rounded up). That means the average poll had a result roughly equivalent to 74,5%/25,5%.

Top 5 SWEEEEEEEEEEPS:

5. Match 27: Ruler's Truth (12,3%) vs Trap For You (87,7%) 4. Match 30: Tsujikaze ni Fukarete (9,6%) vs HELLO, NEW YEAR! (90,4%) 3. Match 51: Love×me⇄monsteR (90,9%) vs Love it Love it (9,1%) 2. Match 90: Yoru ni Kakeru (93%) vs Living on the edge (7%) 1. Match 63: Holy Angel's Carol (5,4%) vs Gaisenka (94,6%)

Top 5 head-to-head matches:

5. Match 61: Crossing x Heart (48,9%) vs Unlimited Power!!!!! (51,1%) 4. Match 69: Or the Beautiful Golden Drop (51%) vs FALLIN LOVE=IT'S WONDERLAND (49%) 3. Match 82: Meteor Scramble☆RYUSEITAI! (50,8%) vs Welcome to the Trickstar Night☆ (49,2%) 2. Match 29: Brilliant Smile (49,3%) vs EXCEED (50,7%) 1. Match 41: Hamtaro Tottokouta vs RELAX PARADISE (it was a tie! both pass to round 2)

Additionally, one can look at the votes each individual MV received.

Top 5 MVs with the most votes:

5. Eccentric Party Night!! (62 votes) 4. Believe 4 leaves (61 votes) 3. U.S.A. (73 votes) 2. Mystic Fragrance (80 votes) 1. Les temps des fleurs (93 votes)

Top 5 MVs with the least votes:

5. Zan ~Ketsui no Yaiba~ / Rainbow Stairway / Ruler's Truth (8 votes each) 4. I "Witch" You A Happy Halloween / CHERRY HAPPY STREAM / Nebula / Be The Party Bee! / Love Ra*bits Party!! (7 votes each) 3. ONLY YOUR STARS! / Play "Tag" (6 votes each) 2. DESTRUCTION ROAD / Voice of Sword / Love it Love it / Tsujikaze ni Fukarete (5 votes each) 1. Living on the edge / Holy Angel's Carol (3 votes each)

Part 3: Unit statistics

Producers of specific units may be curious as to how their favourite little guys did. Well...

These stats exclude Fusion Unit songs towards the ranking of the units (ex. Artistic Partisan does not count towards neither ALKALOID's, nor Valkyrie's song count). It also excludes ex-fine songs from fine's results.

Additionally, that chart combines the results of Adam and Eve towards Eden's results. If one were to count them seperately, the results would be as follows:

Anyways, that'd be it for now! Again, the Second Chance Round will start soon, so keep an eye out for that!

[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

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