#nathaniel-doyle

[onedegreeofsoniccomics]

Riding Shotgun Vol. 1

Cover Credits

Pencils/Inks: Tracy Yardley

Colors: Gary Shum

Story Credits

Writer: Nate Bowden

Pencils/Inks: Tracy Yardley

Gray Tones: Nate Bowden & Tracy Yardley

Letters: Bowen Park

[carica-ficus]

Review: "Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic"

Authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lucy H. Hooper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H. G. Wells, Edmond Nolcini, M. R. James, Ambrose Bierce, Howard R. Garis, William Hope Hodgson, Edith Nesbit, H. C. McNeile, Abraham Meritt, Emma Vane

Editor: Daisy Butcher

Date: 03/01/2023

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

________________________________________________________

I think I ordered this book some time during summer, after I accidentally stumbled upon it on an online bookstore. I love anthologies and I love plants, so this title definitely intrigued me enough to order it. I finally decided to read it around Christmas and finished it during a recent trip, so it's officially my first finished book of the year.

"Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic" is an interesting anthology of short horror stories by quite a few well-known authors. From the creator of Sherlock Holmes, to the acclaimed writer of "The Yellow Wallpaper", all the way to the legendary H. G. Wells, this collections features some hidden gems of the late 19th and early 20th century. While the stories are certainly old-school, they could still be regarded as timeless classics and masterful creations.

Most stories revolve around the fascination of the exotic - of unknown plants that are in some way dangerous to humans (or other organisms) and which originate from far away places, like South America. There's mentions of exquisite poisonous flowers, murderous liana, mysterious wisteria, and the weirdest of them all - carnivorous plants.

It is interesting just how much the writers and, by default, the general public were fascinated by exotic flora which, in one way or another, transcended the known laws of nature. Plants were considered sedentary, passive, and at the bottom of the food chain, but as new discoveries were being presented and as more people, professionals and amateurs alike, from the western civilization started their expeditions in new places, society was being introduced with oddities that seemingly didn't follow any established rules. So while the horror in this collection is displayed through various flora, the true horror is derived from the simple fact that humans fear what they cannot understand. One of the most frightening things a person, especially a scientist, can experience is realizing that they will never be able to fully predict nature's capability to adapt and to evolve.

Of course, this theme goes hand in hand with the understanding that it is dangerous altering the natural order of things. While this could also be understood as criticism to the human tendency to play god, there isn't much religious commentary throughout the collection. The stories are centered around ecology, evolution, and biology, highlighting how humans shouldn't meddle with something as powerful as nature - which they will never fully understand, let alone be able to control. Even though the writers do create a feeling of dread through the fear of nature, the horror is actually realized through characters that underestimate its abilities and that have the need to disfigure nature in order to measure their own capabilities.

Furthermore, this collection highlights the uncomfortable fascination western civilization had with other cultures. The urge to study new exotic phenomena on their own accord, to test the limits of human science on something they don't fully understand with little to no regard of the laws of nature and the test subject's true needs, is somewhat perverse. These scientists are conducting experiments in uncontrolled environments, and playing with their test-subjects in order to test their own abilities and knowledge. It is a portrayal of poor research. They're acting out of curiosity with little to no regard of the consequences. It is not their subjects that are evil, for they have been brought up and mistreated in an environment completely unnatural to their habitat, but their tormentor, who butchers them through extreme studies. This is usually evident through a secondary character, most often a colleague, who tries to stop the scientist in their mad experiment before it's too late. The horror is, therefore, found in the abuse executed by the brazen oppressor, not in their vicious, abnormal creations.

The fact that the aforementioned themes barely scratch the surface of all the ideas featured in this collection, prove how layered and compelling all the featured stories are. The editor also did a marvelous job with a lovely foreword and an intriguing introduction to each of the authors and their respective work. Of course, as with every short story collection, not all works are equally strong, but "Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic" is still a gorgeous anthology and a noteworthy testament to a relatively overlooked category of horror.

[mylittledarkag3]

How many have you read out of the hundred?

Me: 64/100

Reblog & share your results

1. "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

2. "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

3. "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

4. "1984" by George Orwell

5. "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

6. "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez

7. "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë

8. "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger

9. "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

10. "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

11. "Moby-Dick" by Herman Melville

12. "The Odyssey" by Homer

13. "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë

14. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy

15. "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

16. "The Iliad" by Homer

17. "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley

18. "Les Misérables" by Victor Hugo

19. "Don Quixote" by Miguel de Cervantes

20. "Middlemarch" by George Eliot

21. "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde

22. "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

23. "Dracula" by Bram Stoker

24. "Sense and Sensibility" by Jane Austen

25. "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" by Victor Hugo

26. "The War of the Worlds" by H.G. Wells

27. "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck

28. "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer

29. "The Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James

30. "The Jungle Book" by Rudyard Kipling

31. "Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse

32. "The Divine Comedy" by Dante Alighieri

33. "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

34. "The Trial" by Franz Kafka

35. "Mansfield Park" by Jane Austen

36. "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas

37. "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury

38. "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift

39. "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner

40. "Emma" by Jane Austen

41. "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe

42. "Tess of the d'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy

43. "The Republic" by Plato

44. "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

45. "The Hound of the Baskervilles" by Arthur Conan Doyle

46. "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson

47. "The Prince" by Niccolò Machiavelli

48. "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka

49. "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway

50. "Bleak House" by Charles Dickens

51. "Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

52. "The Plague" by Albert Camus

53. "The Joy Luck Club" by Amy Tan

54. "The Master and Margarita" by Mikhail Bulgakov

55. "The Red and the Black" by Stendhal

56. "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway

57. "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

58. "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath

59. "The Idiot" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

60. "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

61. "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" by Arthur Conan Doyle

62. "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins

63. "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe

64. "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson

65. "Ulysses" by James Joyce

66. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Harriet Beecher Stowe

67. "Vanity Fair" by William Makepeace Thackeray

68. "Waiting for Godot" by Samuel Beckett

69. "Walden Two" by B.F. Skinner

70. "Watership Down" by Richard Adams

71. "White Fang" by Jack London

72. "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys

73. "Winnie-the-Pooh" by A.A. Milne

74. "Wise Blood" by Flannery O'Connor

75. "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" by Margaret Fuller

76. "Women in Love" by D.H. Lawrence

77. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" by Robert M. Pirsig

78. "The Aeneid" by Virgil

79. "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton

80. "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho

81. "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu

82. "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin" by Benjamin Franklin

83. "The Awakening" by Kate Chopin

84. "The Big Sleep" by Raymond Chandler

85. "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison

86. "The Caine Mutiny" by Herman Wouk

87. "The Cherry Orchard" by Anton Chekhov

88. "The Chosen" by Chaim Potok

89. "The Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens

90. "The City of Ember" by Jeanne DuPrau

91. "The Clue in the Crumbling Wall" by Carolyn Keene

92. "The Code of the Woosters" by P.G. Wodehouse

93. "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker

94. "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas

95. "The Crucible" by Arthur Miller

96. "The Crying of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon

97. "The Da Vinci Code" by Dan Brown

98. "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" by Leo Tolstoy

99. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon

100. "The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" by Rebecca Wells

[sugar-phoenix]

I wrote that one tumblr post

so I've already reblogged the original but now i'm posting it by itself here:

"Euclid! Euclid," Doyle squawked as he spotted the black feline familiar, lazing away in a circle of auburn leaves. "Euclid, there's been an emergency."

"That's Euclid Nathaniel Grey to you, raven," the cat said, eyeing Doyle distastefully. “And don’t bother me, I have more important things to attend to.”

“What, like sleeping? This is serious, Euclid.” Doyle pecked at Euclid’s tail, earning him a hiss. 

“Yes, and I distinctly remember seeing you the last time you said something was serious, and it was because you had a particularly bad piece of fish. You were pestering your witch the whole time, I saw you. Now go bother her instead of me.” Euclid flicked his tail at Doyle, but the raven dodged.

“That’s just the thing, Euclid. My witch is gone.”

“Surely you’re exaggerating. She must’ve dipped out somewhere while you weren’t looking.”

“Euclid, she was taken away. I don’t feel the familiar bond with her anymore, and there were signs of a struggle. In the house. A struggle, Euclid!”

“So what could you possibly want me to do about it? I don’t owe you any favors, and on top of that, I’m just a cat.”

“I want you to tell your witch she’s gone! Surely your witch will be able to do something about it.”

Euclid stared at Doyle for a moment, then flopped back down.

“Euclid! This is actually serious! I’m not lying!”

“I know.”

“Then why aren’t you doing anything about it?”

“Because I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because my witch has disappeared as well.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Then what are you lazing around here for?” Doyle asked. 

“I just told you, Doyle. I’m a cat. I can’t do anything about it. I’ve looked all around for her and I haven’t been able to find her. On top of that, like you said, my bond with her is also weak.”

“So you’ve just given up?” Doyle asked. Euclid flicked his tail, and Doyle could see the look of disgust on his face.

“I haven’t given up. I’m simply waiting for her to come back.”

“That sounds like giving up to me.”

Euclid sat up. “Then what do you propose we do? You’re a raven. I’m a cat. We have absolutely no idea where in the world our witches could be.”

“We’ll go see Ryr. And ask him to tell his warlock.”

“No thanks. You do that, I’m staying here.” Euclid laid back down on the tiles.

“Alright. I will, and when we rescue Morgana and Luella, they’ll know it was I who went to save them, and not you. Perhaps Luella will feed you half your daily ration then.”

Euclid glared at Doyle, his irises turning to slits. “Very well, raven. I’ll go with you.” 

“Good. I knew you’d come to your senses.” Doyle turned towards the gate and hopped along, looking back to check if Euclid was following. And to his relief, he was.

much later on in the story...

"I've found a lead, Euclid." Doyle descended from the smoky skies down into the dank alleyway. "I know who we're talking to next."

"Who?" Euclid asked.

"Felicia Baranov."

"Absolutely not," Euclid said, without missing a beat.

"Euclid, you can't be serious," Doyle said. "I don't care what kind of rivalry you have with this cat, we need to talk to her in order to save our witches."

"I absolutely cannot. See her." Euclid said. His tail thrashed back and forth. "You go and speak to her, and when you get the necessary information simply come back to me and we shall proceed."

"Euclid, she'll tear me to shreds. You can't possibly -- What do you have against her anyway?"

"It's none of your business."

"You like her."

The ensuing hiss that came after that told Doyle he was very much correct.

"You're wrong," Euclid said.

"Euclid, you're a coward of a cat if a crush is stopping you from gaining critical knowledge to save your witch."

They stared at each other, raven and cat, in the dark and dank alleyway of downtown London.

"Fine," Euclid gritted out.

"Don't worry. I'll try not to ruin your chances," Doyle teased.

[poppletonink]

25 Christmas Short Stories To Read This December

The Gift Of The Magi by O. Henry

A Christmas Dream by Louisa May Alcott

The Adventure Of The Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

How The Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg

Christmas At Red Butte by L.M. Montgomery

The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson

The Christmas Banquet by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote

The Tailor of Gloucester by Beatrix Potter

At Christmas Time by Anton Chekhov

A Merry Christmas by Louisa May Alcott

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

The Dead by James Joyce

The Elves and The Shoemaker by The Brothers Grimm

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

A Hint for Next Christmas by A.A. Milne

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann

The Adventure Of The Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie

The Burglar’s Christmas by Willa Cather

A Letter From Santa Claus by Mark Twain

The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Anderson

The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern

The Legend Of The Christmas Tree by Lucy Wheelock

Papa Panov’s Special Christmas by Leo Tolstoy

[rooksbooks]

Books currently on my Bookshelf

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

The Complete Sherlock Holmes vol. 1 by Arthur Conan Doyle

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Montgomery

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

The Lost World by Michael Crichton

The Guest List by Lucy Foley

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Scarlett by Alexandra Ridley

Finlay Donovan is Killing It by Elle Cosimano

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

One Day by David Nicholls

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Duff by Kody Keplings

Beastly by Alex Flynn

A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

The Book Of Awesome by Neil Pasricha

The Best of Dorothy Parker by...Dorothy Parker (?)

The Boyfriend List 1-4 (aka Ruby Oliver) by E. Lockhart

The Hunger Games 1-3 + Prequel by Suzanne Collins

The Lunar Chronicles 1-4 by Marissa Meyers

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse by Charles Mackesy

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*These are only my physical books. I downsized several years ago and that left me with a majority of books i hadn't read yet. I want to try to make an earnest effort to flip that ratio. Most are second hand or gifts, but all happily accepted with the intention of reading. The exceptions are the YA series, which were bought and read when I was a young adult.

Color System:

💙 TBR

💚 Read, but could be up for a reread soon

🧡 DNF accidentally but will continue

🖤 Read, but no current need to reread

♥️ Read but will most likely (definitely) not reread in the future

Not sure where I'm going to start but I'm super excited to start getting through this list, in no particular order.

-Rook

[scrappedpieces]

╭──────────.★..─╮

ALLISON GRAY INTRODUCTION

��─..★.──────────╯

𝗧𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗢𝗙 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦

𝖺𝗎𝗍𝗁𝗈𝗋𝗌 𝗇𝗈𝗍𝖾     

𝖻𝖺𝗌𝗂𝖼 𝗂𝗇𝖿𝗈    

𝖺𝗉𝗉𝖾𝖺𝗋𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾     

𝖼𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗁𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝗌𝗍𝗒𝗅𝖾     

𝗉𝖾𝗋𝗌𝗈𝗇𝖺𝗅𝗂𝗍𝗒   

𝗋𝖾𝗅𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗈𝗇𝗌𝗁𝗂𝗉𝗌     

𝗁𝗂𝗌𝗍𝗈𝗋𝗒

𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲

Do not use my ocs without my permission or I will find thou :)

Template from @fallenisb4bylon

TRIGGER WARNING

Severe childhood abuse, sexual abuse, swearing, scarring, a fuck ton of shit honestly

S|27/01/24 16:05 PM

F| 04/02/24 21:45 PM

𝗙𝗨𝗟𝗟 𝗡𝗔𝗠𝗘

Allison Ophelia Gray Doyle

━ ɴ��ᴄᴋɴᴀᴍᴇ/ᴀʟɪᴀs

Ally , All, little wolf

Allison {all-uh-shon}

Meaning: truthful or noble

Gray

Origin is French

Gray is Allison her biological last name, she no longer uses this

Ally—mainly used

Al—another nickname, doeant use it a lot

𝗕𝗜𝗥𝗧𝗛𝗗𝗔𝗬 31st of October  

𝗭𝗢𝗗𝗜𝗔𝗖 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡    Scorpio Sun, Leo Moon, Pisces Rising 

𝗔𝗚𝗘 19 as written

𝗕𝗜𝗢𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗦𝗘𝗫      female

𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗘𝗥      genderfluid

𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗡𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗦 she/her, he/him, they/them

𝗦𝗘𝗫𝗨𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬     bisexual

𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗜𝗘𝗦   tribrid...technically   

𝗢𝗖𝗖𝗨𝗣𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡

𝗔𝗣𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘

Allison is extremely slender. She is 163 cm (I refuse to do inches) and weighs no more than around the 50 kgs. She has extremely curly and frizzy hair that she dyes pink. Naturally it is red. Allison has a lot of scars, the most prominent one being around her throat. Allison has a prosthetic leg and a prosthetic eye. The prosthetic eye being her right eye and the prosthetic leg being her left leg.

𝗖𝗟𝗢𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗦𝗧𝗬𝗟𝗘

Black clothing—mainly in some alternative sense

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗦𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗬

Let me write this in bullet points before I rattle on too long:

Stubborn

Caring

Loudmouth

Hothead

Often swears

𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘀: ciggies, her families,          

𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝘀: nathaniel gray, small spaces

𝗵𝗼𝗯𝗯𝗶𝗲𝘀: 𝗍hrowing knives, arson   

𝗵𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁𝘀: smoking, biting nails, tearing flesh

𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗛𝗜𝗣𝗦

Nathaniel Gray• "father"• abusive so not close

Althea Gray•mother, deceased•close

Charlotte Tatcher•Grand mother• close

Carter Whitlock•bio father• close• written by @theroyalkraken

Logan Reed •step father• close• written by @fallenisb4bylon

Alaric Doyle•adoptive father• close• written by @theroyalkraken

Madeline Goode•adoptive mother• close

Jacob Carver•father figure #3 • close• written by @fallenisb4bylon

Evelyn Garcia • mother figure #3 •not close yet

Lilith Carver • little sister • unknown • written by @theroyalkraken

Damon Grimwood•lover• close• written by @theroyalkraken

There are more but aint yeeting them now

𝗛𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗬

HEAVY TRIGGER WARNING!!!! CHILD ABUSE IN ALL WAYS, JUST..DONT READ IF YOU HAVE TRAUMA

Allison Gray was born to Althea Gray and Nathaniel Gray in the year 2005. She lived quite happily with her mother but her father was always cruel to her. When Allison was four, she was left to her own devices in the library. where she knocked over a candle and started a fire. A fire which killed her mother. After this, Nathaniel saw this as the go to hurting and abusing his daugher. I wont go into detail just know, that it was bad enough for her not to remember anything.

[biboocat]

Vladimir Nabokov’s Brutally Honest Opinions on 63 of the “Greatest” Writers to Ever Write (1973). I got this from a literature FB group; I can’t verify its authenticity. Even if the source is authentic, it seems to me a very subjective exercise, so take it in that spirit.

Auden, W. H. Not familiar with his poetry, but his translations contain deplorable blunders.

Austen, Jane. Great.

Balzac, Honoré de. Mediocre. Fakes realism with easy platitudes.

Barbusse, Henri. Second-rate. A tense-looking but really very loose type of writing.

Beckett, Samuel. Author of lovely novellas and wretched plays.

Bergson, Henri. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter.

Borges, Jorge Luis. A favorite. How freely one breathes in his marvelous labyrinths! Lucidity of thought, purity of poetry. A man of infinite talent.

Brecht, Bertolt. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

Brooke, Rupert. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, but no longer.

Camus, Albert. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me. Awful.

Carroll, Lewis. Have always been fond of him. One would like to have filmed his picnics. The greatest children's story writer of all time.

Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. A cruel and crude old book.

Cheever, John. “The Country Husband.” A particular favorite. Satisfying coherence.

Chekhov, Anton. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. Talent, but not genius. Love him dearly, but cannot rationalize that feeling.

Chesterton, G. K. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Romantic in the large sense.

Conan Doyle, Arthur. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14, but no longer. Essentially a writer for very young people. Romantic in the large sense.

Conrad, Joseph. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Certainly inferior to Hemingway and Wells. Intolerable souvenir-shop style, romanticist clichés. Nothing I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, hopelessly juvenile. Romantic in the large sense. Slightly bogus.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Dislike him. A cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar. A prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. Some of his scenes are extraordinarily amusing. Nobody takes his reactionary journalism seriously.

Dreiser, Theodore. Dislike him. A formidable mediocrity.

Eliot, T. S. Not quite first-rate.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. His poetry is delightful.

Faulkner, William. Dislike him. Writer of corncobby chronicles. To consider them masterpieces is an absurd delusion. A nonentity, means absolutely nothing to me.

Flaubert, Gustave. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. Read complete works between 14 and 15.

Forster, E. M. Only read one of his novels (possibly A Passage to India?) and disliked it.

Freud, Sigmund. A figure of fun. Loathe him. Vile deceit. Freudian interpretation of dreams is charlatanic, and satanic, nonsense.

García Lorca, Federico. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.

Gogol, Nikolai. Nobody takes his mystical didacticism seriously. At his worst, as in his Ukrainian stuff, he is a worthless writer; at his best, he is incomparable and inimitable. Loathe his moralistic slant, am depressed and puzzled by his inability to describe young women, deplore his obsession with religion.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. A splendid writer.

Hemingway, Ernest. A writer of books for boys. Certainly better than Conrad. Has at least a voice of his own. Nothing I would care to have written myself. In mentality and emotion, hopelessly juvenile. Loathe his works about bells, balls, and bulls. The Killers. Delightful, highly artistic. Admirable. The Old Man and the Sea. Wonderful. The description of the iridescent fish and rhythmic urination is superb.

Housman, A. E. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter.

James, Henry. Dislike him rather intensely, but now and then his wording causes a kind of electric tingle. Certainly not a genius.

Joyce, James. Great. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter. Let people compare me to Joyce by all means, but my English is patball to Joyce's champion game. A genius.

I. Ulysses. A divine work of art. Greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose. Towers above the rest of Joyce's writing. Noble originality, unique lucidity of thought and style. Molly's monologue is the weakest chapter in the book. Love it for its lucidity and precision.

II. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Never liked it. A feeble and garrulous book.

III. Finnegans Wake. A formless and dull mass of phony folklore, a cold pudding of a book. Conventional and drab, redeemed from utter insipidity only by infrequent snatches of heavenly intonations. Detest it. A cancerous growth of fancy word-tissue hardly redeems the dreadful joviality of the folklore and the easy, too easy, allegory. Indifferent to it, as to all regional literature written in dialect. A tragic failure and a frightful bore.

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Second-greatest masterpiece of 20th century prose.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.

Keats, John. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter.

Kipling, Rudyard. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Romantic in the large sense.

Lawrence, D. H. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up. Mediocre. Fakes realism with easy platitudes. Execrable.

Lowell, Robert. Not a good translator. A greater offender than Auden.

Mandelshtam, Osip. A wonderful poet, the greatest in Soviet Russia. His poems are admirable specimens of the human mind at its deepest and highest. Not as good as Blok. His tragic fate makes his poetry seem greater than it actually is.

Mann, Thomas. Dislike him. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.

Maupassant, Guy de. Certainly not a genius.

Maugham, W. Somerset. Mediocre. Fakes realism with easy platitudes. Certainly not a genius.

Melville, Herman. Love him. One would like to have filmed him at breakfast, feeding a sardine to his cat.

Marx, Karl. Loathe him.

Milton, John. A genius.

Pasternak, Boris. An excellent poet, but a poor novelist. Doctor Zhivago. Detest it. Melodramatic and vilely written. To consider it a masterpiece is an absurd delusion. Pro-Bolshevist, historically false. A sorry thing, clumsy, trivial, melodramatic, with stock situations and trite coincidences.

Pirandello, Luigi. Never cared for him.

Plato. Not particularly fond of him.

Poe, Edgar Allan. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, but no longer. One would like to have filmed his wedding.

Pound, Ezra. Definitely second-rate. A total fake. A venerable fraud.

Proust, Marcel. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter. In Search of Lost Time. The first half is the fourth-greatest masterpiece of 20th-century prose.

Pushkin, Alexander. A favorite between the ages of 20 and 40, and thereafter. A genius.

Rimbaud, Arthur. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter.

Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Great. A favorite. How freely one breathes in his marvelous labyrinths! Lucidity of thought, purity of poetry. Magnificently poetical and original.

Salinger, J. D. By far one of the finest artists in recent years.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Even more awful than Camus.

Shakespeare, William. Read complete works between 14 and 15. One would like to have filmed him in the role of the King's Ghost. His verbal poetic texture is the greatest the world has ever known, and immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. It is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play. A genius.

Sterne, Laurence. Love him.

Tolstoy, Leo. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. Read complete works between 14 and 15. Nobody takes his utilitarian moralism seriously. A genius.

I. Anna Karenina. Incomparable prose artistry. The supreme masterpiece of 19th-century literature.

II. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. A close second to Anna Karenina.

III. War and Peace. A little too long. A rollicking historical novel written for the general reader, specifically for the young. Artistically unsatisfying. Cumbersome messages, didactic interludes, artificial coincidences. Uncritical of its historical sources.

Turgenev, Ivan. Talent, but not genius.

Updike, John. By far one of the finest artists in recent years. Like so many of his stories that it is difficult to choose one.

Wells, H. G. A favorite between the ages of 10 and 15, and thereafter. A great artist, my favorite writer when I was a boy. His sociological cogitations can be safely ignored, but his romances and fantasies are superb. A far greater artist than Conrad. A writer for whom I have the deepest admiration.

Wilde, Oscar. Rank moralist and didacticist. A favorite between the ages of 8 and 14. Essentially a writer for very young people. Romantic in the large sense.

Wolfe, Thomas. Second-rate, ephemeral, puffed-up.

https://twitter.com/Essayful/status/1729559047102153008?

[hakodate-division]

Kuma no ie - Inspirations

Kotan:

Asirpa - Golden Kamuy

Simba - The Lion King

Talim - Soulcalibur series

Silva - Shaman King

Haku/Oshtar - Utawarerumono

Lyara - The Beastmaster Princess

Ted:

Doyle - Destrega

Marlin - Finding Nemo

James "Jimmy" Howlett - Wolverine/X-Men

Thors Snorresson - The Vinland Saga

Nathaniel William "Rock" Adams - Soulcalibur series

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt

Kokomi:

Langa "Snow" Hasegawa - Sk8 the Infinity

Usui Horokeu - Shaman King

Anastasia - THE iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls

Klara - Girls und Panzer

Yuri Plisetsky - Yuri!!! on Ice

Yukina - Yu Yu Hakusho

[solaris-girl]

100-ish classics and must-reads

solaris girl's list of 100 must-reads :-)

( bold = read. constantly updating!)

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 

1984 - George Orwell 

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

The Hobbit - J.R.R Tolkien

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

The Giver - Lois Lowrey

The Book Thief - Markus Zusack

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Mark Twain

The Stranger - Albert Camus

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Les Miserables -Victor Hugo

The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde

The Call of the Wild - Jack London

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

The Old Man and the Sea - Earnest Hemingway

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Catch - 22 - Joseph Heller

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis

Our Town - Thornton Wilder

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - J.K. Rowling

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Candide - Voltaire

All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate - Naomi Klein

The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe

Emma - Jane Austen

The Republic - Plato

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli 

Beloved - Toni Morrison

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

The Tell Tale Heart and Other Readings - Edgar Allan Poe

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Sidhartha - Hermann Hesse

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco

Their Eyes were Watching God - Zora Neal Hurston

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry

The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien

Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespear

The Hiding Place - Corrie Ten Boom

Moby-Dick - Herman Melville

The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

I, Claudius - Robert Graves

The Pearl - John Steinbeck

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Middlemarch - George Eliot

The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

Angels and Demons - Dan Brown

The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

White Fang - Jack London

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein

The Godfather - Mario Puzo

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall - Anne Bronte

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway

[brightbeautifulthings]

A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton

"'If I've learned anything from my aunt and my father, it's that a leader who is not respected by her people is just a figurehead. I will not be something you fuck and cuddle. I will be queen or I will be nothing to you.'"

Year Read: before 2006, 2024

Rating: 4/5

Thoughts: This does better than the first book in introducing a clear threat early on, so it ends up feeling a little more tightly plotted rather than an extended introduction to every one of Merry's future lovers. I think the major threat could be developed a tad more, especially in the final confrontation. Hamilton has a habit of rushing final boss battles and resolving them with power upgrades, and it's no different here. Trust me to want a little more page-time with the cosmic horror though. It does nicely set up a larger overall threat for the series, however, and I'm interested to see where that goes (since I almost completely forgot about that particular plot thread).

As always, the characters are the real draw of the book. Doyle is still my favorite of Merry's men, which makes sense because Meredith obviously favors him (and, politically, Doyle would make an exceptional king). I was a little put off that a lot of Merry and Frost's relationship development takes place off page. They barely like each other in the last book, and now suddenly they're in love? I did enjoy Kitto's development here. He's a bit like Anita Blake's Nathaniel in spirit in exploring a character who's almost entirely subservient, and it's a nice contrast to all the raging egos of the fae. As usual, I'm enjoying being in Hamilton's world, and there's not a lot stopping me from binging this whole series at once.

[the-firebird69]

Silverchair - Tomorrow (US Version) (Official Video)

This **** has been following me around trying to shoot me and has been blaming everybody and he's probably the one shooting at me not Tommy F and he got shot in Iraq and out of convenience he's blaming me and I needed my brother to hand over the program I don't know who this guy is or who he was before or that he was involved but he's screwed because he is the one who ran into Jesus Christ and Mary and I think his own father shot him for it and he was the paparazzi in the tunnel in the Britain and the sequence in chronology is important and I think it went that way now this **** is bothering me and it's attacking me and he attacked my dad instead of his **** business to attack us he's gonna get killed and I'm putting the hit in the order on it now and he screwed trump up really badly his idiots infiltrated using the Charles Manson look and they're insane all of these guys kids and clones sound nuttier than hell I and I mean it they sound nuts and insane you can see it in the movie Elysium Yeah and it's Timmy Doyle is not insane like this person he does it on purpose this guy here is a **** loser in a nut case it's going after me and we finally found out who he is it's not Tommy F it's not Trump it's Trump who shot his kid unfortunately I helped save him but he's going after me so he's not going to be saved he's going to die up on Elysium And that's his last place to go ever in history and he's never coming back. It might be the one who's playing Jesus and you might consider himself to be the ruler of all mankind it seems he may have taken a bunch of things over and people don't know about it like the matrix and other things he's also been threatening me very severely and I feel that he is sitting on things that could be ours and people should be alerted about this net case.

Zues Hera

We noticed this **** **** won't stop doing things to you and he's blaming everybody else and he is a horrible horrible person and he is a failure and he's ruined his wife many times she got hurt because of him and recently was tossed off the balcony and I know it happened a while ago but he's the one who hadn't happened because he's a moronic pig and she saved his life I don't have to tell you that this guy has to go and he's actually the Joker and the girl playing the wife is not his girl and it's not Sarah it's a pseudo empire and he messes with her head with electrotherapy and she kills him a whole bunch of times. And yeah he's the one who dies on Titan asked the emperor of all mankind this is last stop after Elizume where he loses his body and he has devices up there he has all sorts of people and clones are his they're not Daniels and he's the one who took over Mac Daddy's stuff.

Thor Freya

We did figure it out and we're having them put it out there because he's a serious liability our friend here had nothing to do with you getting shot and you're gonna get killed because you keep bothering him and saying he did when he did not. That Dave stuff and he didn't do anything about it or plan it then your **** came out of nowhere going after him so we're making an assumption that you're this guy gravel and you took it on yourself to bother our son and you believe him for all sorts of dumb things and you're having everybody else take the blame. We have to stop you we need to stop you and yeah your father shot you grandfather that is not just son of ours brother your nut case and you're going out y your nut case and you're going out you have no defense you've been harming him and you're dead.

...

Olympus

You've always been a run to the litter you've always had things wrong and here you are priest screwed up the entire plan probably all of our plans it's amazing you are just a massive massive ****. I don't know what the hell got into you we thought you were Russian we thought you were this Mac Nathaniel Hall hawthorne whatever and really they're screwing around with everybody so much it was hard to see you you did a good job trying to take over now you're **** dead

trump

[musemuseum]

Muses | D

Dakota Peters | 35 | Julianne Hough | Baker | Extra Info | Verses

Damien Cavanaugh | 49 | Misha Collins | Private Investigator | Extra Info | Verses

Dane Lance | 38 | Jack Quaid | Assistant | Extra Info | Verses

Darcy Paige | 300 (looks 28) | Malese Jow | Vampire | Extra Info | Verses

Darius Ray | 55 | Sam Rockwell | Assassin | Extra Info | Verses

Dashiel Hobbs | 41 | Bradley James | Chauffeur | Extra Info | Verses

Davina Chamberlain | 41 | Anne Hathaway | Princess | Extra Info | Verses

Dawn Espenoza | 31 | Kiana Madeira | Comic Book Store Owner | Extra Info | Verses

Dean Major | 40 | Nathaniel Buzolic | Jack Of All Trades | Extra Info | Verses

Declan Nichols | 39 | Tom Ellis | Club Owner | Extra Info | Verses

Deloris Van Dyke | 78 | Helen Mirren | Actress | Extra Info | Verses

Devlin Belmonte | 49 | Ryan Phillippe | Hockey Player | Extra Info | Verses

Diego Martinez | 30 | Taylor Zakhar Perez | Mafia Heir | Extra Info | Verses

Dinah Crombie | 29 | Saoirse Ronan | Costume Designer | Extra Info | Verses

Dominic Hall | 27 | Bill Skarsgård | Science Teacher/Serial Killer | Extra Info | Verses

Donald Reese | 43 | Joseph Morgan | Author/Serial Killer | Extra Info | Verses

Donovan Kole | 40 | Tom Hardy | Bodyguard | Extra Info | Verses

Dorian Carrow | 40 | Tom Hopper | Intelligence Officer | Extra Info | Verses

Doyle Lockhart | 31 | Barry Keoghan | Computer Programmer/Hacker | Extra Info | Verses

[unlikelysuitchaos]

The Therapeutic Power of Reading

Nurturing Imagination and Mental Well-being Growing up, reading fiction was one of my favorite activities outside of swimming, punchball, and television. There were Jules Verne, Alexander Dumas, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, and many more. They were captivating and adventuresome, especially for a kid growing up in the Bronx. These…

[poppletonink]

Regulus Black Inspired Book Recommendations

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph by Jan Swafford

Solitaire by Alice Oseman

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Best Friend's Brother by Zeppazariel

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I Was Born For This by Alice Oseman

A Study In Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

[buzzdixonwriter]

Outta Da Ballpark

The term “masterpiece” gets bandied about a lot.

It’s come to mean the crème de la crème, the ne plus ultra of any creative soul, but the reality is it’s the benchmark that determines if you’re good enough to be considered a master.

In short, not the best, but better than anything you’ve done before.

In contemporary parlance, however, it means something universally recognized and acknowledged as the best of the best.

We can argue about how we define “best” but when we look at writers (and we’ll focus solely on novelists this time out), we can judge their output by their batting average.

In other words, how many times did they swing, and how many times did they score?

Like baseball, it’s possible to:

Swing and miss

Swing and hit but not get on base

Swing and hit a single / double / triple

Swing and hit a home run. 

We’re going to focus just on the home runs (i.e., their best known works, the ones readers around the world instantly recognize to this day when you mention the title) and only those published in their lifetime (more than a few had completed manuscripts in the hopper when they died). 

And I’m not interested in doubles or triples, as praiseworthy as they are.  Nope, only clear cut outta-da-ballpark hits here, nothing less

Jane Austen Lifetime at bats:  4 books One home run: Pride And Prejudice

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Lifetime at bats:  6 books One home run: Frankenstein

Nathaniel Hawthorne Lifetime at bats:  17 books One home run: The Scarlet Letter

Charles Dickens Lifetime at bats:  22 books Four home runs: A Christmas Carol Oliver Twist Great Expectations A Tale Of Two Cities

Herman Melville Lifetime at bats:  11 books One home run: Moby Dick

Alexandre Dumas Lifetime at bats:  48 books Two home runs: The Three Musketeers The Count Of Monte Cristo

Victor Hugo Lifetime at bats:  11 books Two home runs: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame Les Miserables

Jules Verne Lifetime at bats:  54 books Four home runs: Journey To The Center Of The Earth From The Earth To The Moon + 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea Around The World In 80 Days

+  now typically published as one volume with its sequel All Around The Moon

Mark Twain Lifetime at bats:  41 books Two home runs: The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn

Booth Tarkington Lifetime at bats:  40 books Zero home runs

H.G. Wells Lifetime at bats:  51 books Three home runs: The Time Machine The War Of The Worlds The Invisible Man

Edgar Rice Burroughs Lifetime at bats:  71 books One home run: Tarzan Of The Apes

Ernest Hemingway Lifetime at bats:  9 books Three home runs: The Sun Also Rise A Farewell To Arms For Whom The Bell Tolls

John Steinbeck Lifetime at bats:  27 books Three home runs: Of Mice And Men The Grapes Of Wrath East Of Eden

Jack Kerouac Lifetime at bats:  14 books One home run: On The Road

Joseph Heller Lifetimes at bat:  6 books One home run: Catch-22

Ray Bradbury Lifetime at bats:  11 books + Two home runs: The Martian Chronicles Fahrenheit 451

+ counting only novels, not short story collections

For those asking “Where are Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan-Doyle and Ian Fleming and Harlan Ellison?” the answer is they either wrote mostly short stories and no novels of lasting consequence, or they wrote series fiction, not standalone works, and while everyone knows who their series’ characters are, most people would be hard pressed to name a single novel from those series unless they had been filmed as mega-hit movies (Hound Of The Baskervilles excepted).

Burroughs gets mentioned because Tarzan Of The Apes is a fairly well written for an artefact of its era.  He wrote several series of books, his pattern being to turn in two or three engrossing first volumes then, once on the hook for that $weet $weet $weet $equel $erie$ ca$h, started slumming out the follow-ups.  Burroughs could write well when he put his mind to it, and his best later fiction are those rare occasions when he chose to indulge in wickedly insightful self-parody.

And for those wondering “Hoodafuq is Booth Tarkington?” the answer is one of the most famous, important, and influential American writers of the early to mid-20th century, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and a popular dramatist as well as a novelist.  Several of his works were adapted into motion pictures, the most famous being The Magnificent Ambersons as directed by Orson Welles.  He’s on the list because despite his popularity and prestige in his lifetime, he and his works are virtually forgotten today.

There’s a reason for that, and one that ties in with why everybody else has at least one home run masterpiece to their credit:

“It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.” – Alan Moore

Before we proceed, let me state I deny no one their pleasure, I yuck no one else’s yum.*  There’s certainly a place and purpose for popular entertainment, and since I’m the guy who read Lester Dent’s Doc Savage novel The Sargasso Ogre at least 20 times during my 13th summer, I’d be a hypocrite to say you can’t enjoy your favorite forms of pop culture.

And art can be gleefully entertaining, it’s not confined to somber despair laden tragedy and tsuris. 

But art always possesses what Robert Hughes called “the shock of the new.”  It makes us see and experience things we’ve never seen nor experienced before.  Even when it’s a joyous celebration, it’s a celebration that’s fresh and insightful.  Even when it’s set in a previous era, or a well known contemporary setting, it catches us by surprise.

Tarkington, a masterful writer, specialized in nostalgia.  His works reject modernity not the way Burroughs gleefully rejected modernity with Tarzan, but rather turned his back on the present and condemned the future sight unseen.

Nothing he wrote surprises us.

It pleases us, and that’s nice and certainly worthy of praise…

…but it’s nothing we’re going to remember for long.

  © Buzz Dixon

  * Unless you enjoy harming children, animals, and innocent people, in which case f.u.