#one of them is Ulysses by Joyce lol

[milfbro]

ok. no more new books until I finish reading this fucking pile.

[connorsnothereeither]

“And now it’s time for a breakdown…” /ref

Welcome to my (fairly long lol) breakdown of the thought process behind the Ulysses CMV background!! ✨ I’m gonna go through it shelf by shelf because I think that’s easiest, so… buckle up! :D

TOP SHELF:

On the far left, we have an Assassins Creed Apple of Eden! Most of the soundtracks to the Ulysses vods came from AC: Odyssey, and AC: Origins! The Ancient Greek and Egyptian music fit him perfectly, who’d have thought. Including the main song from Ulysses epilogue, “Reunited” from AC: Odyssey. Behind that is of course my hand-bound copy of On the Brink of Scientific Discovery. I had to work out a way to get my earliest entry into the Fable Fandom in there somewhere. Beside it is the skull, and a copy of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelly, which I’ve spoken about being an inspiration for Ulysses. Along with, of course, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and Herodotus’ Histories (Herodotus being the main inspiration for epilogue Ulysses and who he became towards the end)! And naturally, James Joyce's Ulysses. I had to. Besides that again is another copy of Frankenstein, along with more Ancient Greek works, specifically Euripides’ Medea and the works of the poet Sappho! And a copy of Moby Dick, since Ahab and Ishmael were both concept names for Ulysses during character creation! Besides those, the smaller penguin books, are some of my favourite details but some of the harder to spot because they’re so small. One is another poem by Sappho, Come Close. But the OTHER is The Fall of Icarus by Ovid, which I absolutely had to put in there. Impossible to see, but I know it’s there, and it makes me happy. Of course, once again on the theme of writers is a bust of Shakespeare, but behind him, is actually the set of D&D dice I bought inspired by Ulysses, which are made to look like they have kelp and seaweed inside them! ✨ and finally on the top shelf is a ship, in reference to his sailing and ship in the epilogue art, and a mini Greek style amphora.

MIDDLE SHELF:

On the far right, at the bottom, is the black knight chess piece, the same as Ulysses tattoo!! A reference to both the Trojan horse and him being a piece in the Telchin’s game. Behind it, the tiki mug, is a somewhat vague reference to the Sea Dragon Tavern! It’s never explicitly stated that they serve tiki drinks, but it certainly feels like a place that would. Tucked in, barely noticeable, is the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Both a reference to more ancient mythology, but also, in a little way, a reference to Lenarius. A book on the treatment and care of the dead. I think it would suit him. Make Len happy. More Greek texts (the Iliad and Odyssey again) this time including Ovid’s Metamorphosis, and Virgil’s Aeneid, a reference to both the mythological epic itself and to my little guy Virgil, from SkyBound SMP. Propped against those are a boatswain’s whistle, which I like to think is a little gift from Vorago and Casus. A captain’s call, to get someone’s attention no matter where you are on the sea, along with a small canon, which is actually from St Augustine Lighthouse, and felt very nautical. Behind those is a set of tarot cards, displaying the Magician, a symbol of manifesting and living to your true potential, which is fitting for Ulysses. All of that is of course propped on ANOTHER copy of the Odyssey. The full moon, as a little reference to his bestie Fenris, and a bear statue, which is a little nod to the fact I also voiced Deltavera (and the statue was actually a gift Jamie got me one of the times we met up)! Beside that is a handful of little bottles! The dice inside are mostly just because… that’s what I keep in those little potion bottles, but maybe they’re a reference to Wheel Not Fake or something too, who knows lol- and a little white axolotl plush. My son. My own personal little Perseus, I bought him the second I saw him akgsksgs ✨🫶

BOTTOM SHELF:

Almost done lol. The globe on the end, both a reference to the cartography/travel, and the fact that it’s turned to just show the ocean, rather than any countries. The sea is his home, after all. Another axolotl plush, peeking out from behind yet ANOTHER copy of the Iliad and Odyssey, which is balanced on a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, as another little reference to Virgil from Bound SMP. Behind that is a whisky bottle, which is empty in the photo but not in the CMV, as a reference to the Kelpin’ alcohol! And finally, the stack of books in the corner. The folio society set of The Greek Myths are some of my favourite books I own, and I had to include them, along with a few more potion bottles, which actually include the dice from various Cantripped One Shots (I have special dice for characters and one shots when I can)! The stack of books behind the scrolls and lanterns also include Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles (one of the inspirations behind Ulysses & Vesperae’s relationship) and Circe (more Odyssey references), along with world myths and Icelandic Sagas, and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, which was an early and incredibly influential historical text about the Roman’s (which somewhat inspired the structure and lore of the broader Telchin society!), on top of which is more mythology like the Welsh Mabinogion, the Norse Poetic Edda, and a horror anthology titled The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories, many of which inspired Brink!! The lantern is, in all honesty, the only there not there for a specific reason… I just thought it looked cool :)

So yeah! That was my overly long analysis of my overly detailed Ulysses set background! Barely any of it is visible in the CMV, but for my little farewell to the character and world I had spent so long falling in love with, I wanted to make the background something special 🫶

[ailichi]

reading since around august (selected)

Antigone, Jean Anouilh - French play based on the ancient Greek play by Sophocles, from 1944. loved it. I always love Anouilh's stuff.

Coal Dark Mornings, Brett Anderson - first autobiography of Brett Anderson, taking you up to the time when he formed Suede. I think you could read this even if you weren't into his music, it's well-written and gives a very good description of the time and place he grew up in while still being very quick to read.

The Coffee-House of Surat, Leo Tolstoy - short story by Tolstoy because I guess I'm trying to 100% his work.

Prophet Song, Paul Lynch - it's alright! it gets better and better very steadily as it goes along; I liked it much more on page 250 than on page 150, that kind of book. it seems to be out on the display tables of bookshops across Europe - not sure it's that much of a sensation really. but it takes like 2 days to read, not a waste of time.

Everyone Loves You When You’re Dead, Neil Strauss - I read most of these interviews and they're good but the book exists to record the Liam Gallagher one for me.

Getting High: The Adventures of Oasis, Paolo Hewitt - it's good!! I think I already posted a quick review but if you're a fan and want to read One book about Oasis, it's the perfect choice.

Shout!: The Beatles, Their Life and Times, Philip Norman - dear Lord, is this comprehensive. and it continues after 1970 - post-Beatles stuff is like half the book. I did enjoy it, but especially the first few hundred pages (yes), where he talks about each member before they joined, the other people in that Merseyside scene, etc.

Supersonic: The Uncut Interviews, Simon Halfton - interesting to see how they edited the band interviews for the documentary.

Remembering, Sinéad O’Connor - she can really write, wow. obviously parts of this book are very heavy, and it did make me cry. I'm glad I read it though.

Hadji Murad, Leo Tolstoy* - I'd read this before and apparently forgotten large swathes of it. it's fine, nothing crazy good, very much hampered by the noble-Oriental thing he's got going on. every day I realise I am the world's most unenthusiastic Tolstoy fan. like I'll read it but Jesus Christ.

The Horse, The Wheel, and Language, David W. Anthony DNF - if this is the intellectual standard expected of US undergrads, that's shocking. forget student debt cancellation, they should be giving them money back with interest. lmfao

Ulysses, James Joyce - it's Ulysses, it's great. but there were bits I subjectively didn't like (predictably, the grimy sex scenes, all that tackle). um. a masterpiece, clever, etc., didn't exactly have me weeping. it IS brilliant and very enjoyable to read on a pure prose level.

Do You Believe in the Power of Rock and Roll? John Robb - good interviews :)

Solenoid, Mircea Cărtărescu - been reading this on and off since the translation came out in 2022. interestingly weird until it's weirdly not interesting. probably excellent for someone, but not for me. which was really disappointing, because I was excited for it.

Regenade, Mark E. Smith - absolute masterclass of an "autobiography". I loved it. is there a lot of 'information' about his life story? of course not. can you necessarily believe that things happened as he writes? not really. (but then, the way the story is told is telling in itself). starts in media res. essentially the only story he tells from his childhood is Japanese Prison Camp, and yk? I'm pretty sure we used to play something like that too. obviously the whole book is hysterically witty. so good at having opinions, it's outrageous. made me laugh at jokes at the expense of Noel Gallagher, so it really is that charming as a book (don’t even think those anecdotes happened. like. at all. except maybe the one about him sneaking a look at his shirts in a hotel room. lol). "charming" in the slightly sinister fairy-tale sense. MES o7

[james-joyces-right-eyeball]

Absolute Favorite Books I’d Recommend to Anyone

This is a list of my top-tier favorite books that I would recommend/talk about endlessly to pretty much anyone (in no particular order). I know people probably don’t care but I just like talking about books I love so here we are.

Beloved - Toni Morrison

~ Based off the real story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who escaped slavery and when captured killed her child in order to prevent them from ever being enslaved again, Beloved tells the story of a mother named Sethe, born in slavery who eventually escaped and is haunted by the figurative demons of her trauma and the literal (arguably) ghost of her dead daughter, who she herself killed. It is an excellent exploration of the horrors of slavery and of the haunting legacy of the institution for those who were subjected to it.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

~ If you’ve been on Tumblr for a while, you probably know what Lolita is. The story of the predatory Humbert Humbert who lusts after, rapes, and kidnaps the “nymphet” Dolores Haze. An excellent construction of how predators, unreliable narrators in their own right, hide behind fabrications, almost-believable excuses, and pretty words to make their actions seem maybe not so bad. In the words of the book itself, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

Ulysses - James Joyce

~ Notoriously one of the most difficult books in the English language, Ulysses lifts its structure from Homer’s Odyssey to tell the story of a common man, Leopold Bloom, as he goes about his day. Yes, this book takes place over the course of only one day. We follow Bloom as well as Joyce’s literary counterpart Stephen Daedalus through their thoughts and actions, gathering details of their lives previous throughout. It’s a book that, in my own words, “is life”. It is sad, funny, strange, vulgar, disgusting, beautiful, revelatory, sensual, and nonsensical all at once. Joyce aimed to create a reflection of life through his stream-of-consciousness style which some people might find confusing, but I personally find absolutely beautiful and honest and realistic. The prose is also gorgeous, but that could be applied to everything Joyce wrote. 

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

~ The classic gothic book that tells the tale of Heathcliff and his ultimately destructive love of Catherine Earnshaw, whose eventual marriage to someone else and the general mistreatment of him by her family drives Heathcliff insane and he spends the rest of his life trying to take revenge by abusing and torturing the next Earnshaw and Linton (the family into which Catherine marries) generations. If I’m being honest, I like this book mostly because of how wild and dark it is, but the writing is also genius and beautiful. I think the book also carries an interesting view of the destructive nature of revenge, overzealous love, and othering.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

~ A coming-of-age story at the turn of the century that tells the story of Francie Nolan, a young bookish girl growing up in a lower class family in New York City. It tells about her father’s struggles with alcoholism as well as her mother’s struggles to deal with that and at the same time raise Francie and her brother. Francie is confronted with a strange, uncertain world as a young girl, but tries to face it with bravery throughout childhood

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

~ Another coming-of-age story, this time about four young sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March. You are probably familiar with this book already; it’s had more movie adaptations then I can possibly remember off the top of my head. It’s the story of four sisters as they try to navigate growing up, love, and loss during the mid to late 1800s.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

~ A novel that tells the story of Celie, a young black woman who is raped and then married young to a man who will go on to use and abuse her, through her letters to God. Throughout the novel she meets Shug Avery, a woman with whom she eventually falls in love and begins a relationship with. Through this and her eventual freedom from her abusive husband, she is able to gain at last her own sense of self and take back control over her life, a life no longer ruled by the abusive men around her.

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

~ The tragic story of young black girl Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more than to have blonde hair and blue eyes just like the women she sees in the movies. Both a deconstruction of the whiteness of beauty standards as well as how these standards can utterly destroy vulnerable young girls, it is also an exploration of the people who allow these sorts of things to happen, including Pecola’s mother and father. The Bluest Eye, I think, showcases one of the aspects of Toni Morrison that I like the most, that I aspire to the most: her ability to enter the minds of all people, even people who you might despise at first. Her characters, especially Cholly in The Bluest Eye, are ones you might not entirely sympathize with, but they will always be ones you understand.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

~ Based off of the author’s own experiences as a young college student, The Bell Jar tells the story of Esther Greenwood, whose depression over her place as a woman in a patriarchal society as well as her inability to choose a life path for herself leads to a suicide attempt and a subsequent stay in a mental hospital. A very nuanced portrayal of mental illness, especially anxiety and depression, The Bell Jar is an extremely moving and relatable story for me and clearly is as well for others. It is a classic for a reason.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

~ A memoir of Angelou’s childhood, this book tells the story of her experiences living as a black girl in the south with her grandmother and brother as well as her later years living with her mother. It also tells of how she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was around eight or nine, and how she struggled to live with that and find her voice, both literally and figuratively. A wonderful book about overcoming struggles and the power of words and literature in such times.

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

~ Ellison’s novel tells the story of a young black man, never getting a name in the text, and his feelings of invisibility and his struggles to find a place in society to belong. His struggles only lead him further into despair, until he decides to “become invisible” as people seem not to see him as a person anyway. Invisible Man is an exploration of American mid-century racism and the isolation it causes to those subjected to it. Not only that, but it is surprisingly relevant to our times now, especially on the subject of police violence. (Personal anecdote: When I first read this book, when I got to the aforementioned police violence part it was right in the middle of the BLM resurgence last summer and I cried for a good twenty minutes while reading that chapter over how nothing had changed and it still hurts me to think about it. Embarrassingly, my dad walked in on me while I was crying, and I had to quickly explain it away.)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

~ The title basically says it all lol. This book tells of the coming-of-age of Stephen Daedalus (the same one from the later-written Ulysses). His sensitive childhood, his awkward and lustful adolescence, his feelings of Irish nationality and Catholic guilt, and his struggles to fully realize himself, both as an artist and a human being. It is a very hopeful story, and one that I love mostly because I relate so much to Stephen Daedalus as an artist and as a person.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

~ A magical-realist intergenerational family drama, Marquez’s book traces the various lives and loves of the Buendia family over the course of (you guessed it!) one hundred years. A beautifully written, at times extremely emotionally moving and chilling masterpiece, Marquez in a way retells the history of Colombia, of its colonization and exploitation.  

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

~ A classic Russian novel of society and love, Tolstoy tells the story of Anna Karenina, married, wealthy woman with a child she adores. However, she falls in love with another man, Count Vronsky, and comes to a tragic end for her love. The parallel story of the novel is that of Konstantin Levin, a wealthy landowner who also struggles to find fulfillment in his life and understand his place in society.

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

~ A novel that features an entire family of unreliable narrators, The Sound and the Fury details the fall of a once-prominent southern Compson family and always-present place of the past. There are four different narratives: Benjy Compson, a mentally disabled man who is unsure of his surroundings and of time and only knows that he misses his older sister Caddy; Quintin Compson, the eldest son and a Harvard man both obsessed with his sister retaining her “purity” and the fact that she failed to do so and had a baby out of wedlock, going as far to claim it is his baby in an attempt to preserve something of the family reputation; Jason Compson, who is the caretaker of Caddy’s daughter and believes her to be going down her mother’s “sinful” path; and Dilsey, the black maid of the Compson’s who unlike the people she cares for is not weighed down by their history. The narratives take place in different time periods and is in a stream-of-consciousness style. It’s a deeply dark and disturbing novel about the haunting nature of the past, a common theme in Faulkner’s work (see Absalom, Absalom! for more of this).

Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

~ It is the story of Milkman Dead, a young black man growing up in the south and his relationship with his very complicated family. To say anymore would be to spoil the novel, but I will say that it is an excellent book about family, self-fulfillment in a world that tries to deny you that, and, like The Bluest Eye, exhibits Morrison’s excellent character work.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

~ A play which takes place on the patriarch of a family’s birthday in the oppressive heat of the midsummer south, Williams’ play explores lies, secrets, and how repression only results in anger, frustration, and sadness. It’s a tragic but brilliant play that I think was very ahead of its time. If you’ve read it (or do read it) then you know what I mean.

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin

~ This book tells the story of a young man and his love of another man named Giovanni while he is in Paris. It is a book about love, queer guilt, and has what I would call an ambiguous ending. There is uncertainty at the end, but there does seem to be some kind of acceptance. It is a bit of a coming-out story, but more than that it is a story of personal acceptance and at the same time a sad, tragic love story.

HERmione - H.D.

~ An underrated modernist masterpiece, HERmione is a somewhat fictionalized account of the author, Hilda Doolittle’s, experience as a young aspiring poet dating another poet (in real life Ezra Pound in this book named George Lowndes) who is a threat to her both physically and emotionally. It explores her own mental state, as she considers herself a failure and falls in love with a woman for the first time (Fayne Rabb in the book, Frances Gregg in real life). 

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

~ People think about going to a lighthouse. They do not. A couple years and a war passes then they do. That may seem like a boring plot, and you may be right. However, To the Lighthouse is not much about plot. It is more about the inner lives of its characters, a family and their friends, on two different occasions of their lives: one before WWI and one after WWI. Woolf explores in this novel the trauma that results from such a massive loss of life and security. Not only that, she also explores the nature of art (especially in female artists) in the character of Lily Briscoe and her struggles to complete a painting. It’s a short novel, but it contains so much about life, love, and loss within these few pages.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

~ A southern gothic novel about isolation and loneliness in a small town. Every character has something to separate them from wider society, and often find solace and companionship in a deaf man, John Singer, who himself experiences a loneliness that they cannot understand. There are various forms of social isolation explored in this novel: by race, disability, age, gender, etc. A wonderful, heart-wrenching book about loneliness and the depths it can potentially drag people to.

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

~ A modernist masterpiece of a poem, Eliot describes feeling emptiness and isolation. The brilliance of it can only be shown by an excerpt:

“Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

“The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. “

(My personal favorite line from this poem is, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”)

The Trial - Franz Kafka

~ The protagonist of the novel, Josef K., wakes up one morning to find that he has been placed under arrest for reasons that are kept from him. Kafka creates throughout the novel a scathing satire of bureaucracy, as K. tries to find out more about his case, more about his trial, but only becomes more confused as he digs deeper. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the world he lives in, and the more tries to explain it the further the more that proves to be the case. An excellently constructed novel and a great one to read if you would like to be depressed about the state of the world because, though Kafka’s work is a satire, like a lot of his other work, it manages to strike a strangely real note.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard

~ An absurdist play that is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in the broad overview of the original play, do not matter. Throughout the play, they question their existence and the purpose of it and through that Stoppard dissects not only the absurdity of life, but how fiction and theater reflect that absurdity inadvertently.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

~ The novel details the journey the Bundren family makes after the death of the family matriarch, Addie, to bury her. Each chapter offers a different narrative from the family members and those who surround them, revealing some ulterior motives to them “going to town” to bury Addie. The patriarch Anse desires a pair of false teeth, and the daughter Dewey Dell is pregnant and needs an abortion, as there is no way for her or her family to support it. It’s about the powerlessness of people in the impoverished south. The Bundrens are constantly subject to forces beyond their control, struggles which would be easily solved if they had the money to spare for it. There is more to the book, but that is my favorite reading of it, that of class. Faulkner’s ability to create distinct voices for every one of his characters shines through here.

And, last but not least:

The Collected Poems - Sylvia Plath

~ All the poems Plath wrote during her tragically short lifetime. The best way to demonstrate or summarize the book’s brilliance is just to show you. This is her poem “Edge”, which appears in the book:

“The woman is perfected.   Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment,   The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga,   Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,   One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty.   She has folded Them back into her body as petals   Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about,   Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED! HAPPY READING TO ALL!

[lightsaroundyourvanity]

Ksbdjdk Okay I'm really really sorry for sending ANOTHER ask but also, I would kill for book recs because I finished the sun also rises last week and I'm dying, I need more (even though the amount of books on my to-read list is already way too much lmao)

the sun also rises is one of my favourites!! tbh i have some very controversial hemingway opinions (in that i love him lmao.... my cat is named after his son!) if you liked that I'd also rec~

fitzgerald - very different writing style, but deals with a lot of similar themes. the great gatsby, of course, but for this particular rec list i would suggest tender is the night

save me the waltz which was zelda fitzgerald's only published book and the things she does with imagery is just??? god she was so underrated

a moveable feast -- this is hemingway's memoirs from his time living in 1920s paris and it is one of my all time favourite books, i've read in a thousand times. THE book to read if you want something else flavoured like the sun also rises though

nightwood by djuna barnes, a brilliant modernist writer (this book has the added benefit of being terribly gay)

their eyes were watching god by zora neale hurston -- an all time classic of the harlem renaissance. janie crawford is a protagonist that will stick with you forever

everybody behaved badly is a newer book that is sort of a biography of the writing of the sun also rises

the autobiography of alice b. toklas which is kind of like gertrude stein's a moveable feast (all of her contemporaries hated it lmao)

mrs dalloway by virginia woolf if another of my favourites, another brilliant modernist novel

the short stories of katherine mansfield -- hemingway was a huge fan! and i think you can see that reflected a lot in his work

all of anais nin's paris diaries <3 <3 <3

the awakening by kate chopin predates modernism slightly but i think heralded its coming in a lot of ways

the overcoat and other stories by nikolai gogol -- this might be the wildest swing on this list, but i think there are so many stylistic and emotional similarities between hem's work and gogol's. again, hemingway was a fan, and i think you can really see it comparing them! the overcoat is also just such a lovely, bitter, human little story

i'd be completely remiss if i didn't at least mention ulysses by james joyce here but it is frankly an exhausting book to get through. don't get me wrong it can be completely rewarding! but it's also exhausting lol

[johaerys-writes]

Tag Game

I was tagged by @in-arlathan, thank you friend!! <3

Last Song: Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed by David Bowie, which, honestly, is such a lockdown mood

Last movie: I don’t watch that many films anymore but I’m pretty sure it was Atonement 

Currently watching: “Dark”, the German Netflix series. I started it a while ago but abandoned it in the middle of season 3, but now I’ve been rewatching it from the start and I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Also, I’ve been rewatching “Darker than Black” (apparently, unless something has ‘dark’ in the title I don’t watch it), one of my favourite animes, and the resurgence of feels is as I imagined it would be. Such a great series with amazing characters and OST, I highly recommend. 

Currently reading: I’m currently in between books, and it’s bugging the hell out of me. I’ve just finished “The Tawny Man” trilogy by Robin Hobb, and the last two books from the Wheel of Time series that I’ve ordered have yet to arrive, so I’m at a loss. I’ve started a couple novels that were in my library and left them because I got bored lol, but now I’m reading “The Buried Giant” by Kazuo Ishiguro which is okay, Hamlet (random, I know, I just found an edited version with some cool commentary so I had to check it out), and I’m slowly chipping away at “Ulysses” by James Joyce. As for fanfiction, some fics I’ve been reading for a while now are “The Guardian” by @solas-disapproves, “The Rebel’s Ascension” by @in-arlathan, “Pour Forth Thy Soul in Ecstasy” by @midnightprelude and @oftachancer, “Night Shift” by @pinkfadespirit, and “Moments in Time”, a really lovely Leliana/f!Cousland fic by Snafu1000. I’m notorious for reading too many things at once, that’s why it gets me a while to finish everything lol!

Currently craving: SLEEP. Soooo much sleep. The last couple months have been really busy and draining, so I’m really looking forward to lying on my couch and doing absolutely nothing during the holidays.

I don’t know who would be interested in doing this, but I’m tagging everyone mentioned in this post as well as @noire-pandora, @strongsong117, @tevivinter and @zefenrian if you feel like it (no pressure), and anyone else reading this that would like to play!

[hamliet]

So your blog is pretty positive and I don’t want to ruin that but I’m curious of what stories you do NOT like.

Like what’s a story/anime/manga/book whatever that has just left you saying “....I’ll never ge those minutes of my life back....” lol

Don’t answer if you don’t want to! I’m not trying to be negative, but more so just have some laughs over stories that are whack lol

Well, thank you for finding my blog positive!! But I will say I am a huge fan of critique, so I have many critiques on this blog. I did not like the ending to Tokyo Ghoul:re, for example, but loved the story up until its final arcs. I’ve heavily critiqued Grishaverse, but I loved the characters. I didn’t think The Promised Neverland’s characters were well done and thus didn’t really enjoy it, but it had a great premise and excellent potential.

So, it’s hard for me to be like “I’ll never get that time back” to a story.

Um, I don’t really like Christopher Nolan’s movies most of the time? I think they lack heart. They convey ideas quite well, but without the humanity they just feel dry and dusty to me, plus he’s got a fridging problem with the women in his films. So yeah, I dislike The Dark Knight. That tends to be my most OMG WTF HOW COULD YOU NOT LIKE IT opinion. That said, I get why people do like it!

Oh, as I was writing... I realized I should mention my “Bad Boy Books” which aren’t at all what you think they are.

I call these books the fruit of the gratuitous self-indulgence of the pretentious white male: Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses (James Joyce), Infinite Jest (David Foster Wallace), and Steppenwolf (Hermann Hesse). Of these, Ulysses is the one with the most potential, and the thing is... I actually do like Joyce’s other works, and Hesse’s Demian is really powerful. Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses are just ridiculously hard to read for the sake of being hard (for the record, Joyce actually like, said this, so I’m not conjecturing; his contemporary Ezra Pound literally said only a “new cure for the clap” aka gonorrhea would make reading FW worth it ), an experiment that, while impressive for attempting it, imo didn’t work. Sometimes impressive experiments... fail. Steppenwolf has the most insufferable main character ever--like, Harry Haller is just an entitled whiny brat who doesn’t have the decency to be a teenager and never learns. And Infinite Jest combines everything that is awful about the three of these into one book that everyone claims is admirable because they can’t fully understand it--and again the author has said he wrote it to be impossible to understand, which, cool. Impressive, but also imo, bad. That said all of these clearly resonate with a lot of people so, kudos to them. I just have a burning antipathy towards these books. :P But if you like them, I’m glad for you!

[notyuta]

marti i also want to talk about yuta more but more specifically i want to hear you talk about yuta because you're my fave yuta girl! when did you realise he was your bias? what's been your fave look on him so far? if you were his personal stylist for the next comeback what would you make him wear? the public needs to know

sanne 🥺 omg thank you i do love talking and thinking about yuta 🤧 (this got so long i am so sorry to anyone reading i really went all james joyce ulysses in here)

jsnsns i honestly don't know exactly how he became my bias? i was like let's watch nct life in osaka. it has taeyong and doyoung, my favourite ncts, so it's gonna be fun! and in 5 minutes i was like *looks at non-yutas* if any of you fools don't praise him and properly appreciate this trip 😤 skjsjsjs i think something between his thoughtfulness in trying make his friends have fun and see the best of his home city, and the loud and boisterous and jokester act he put on to try and mask how nervous and eager to have them enjoy themselves, it just tugged at the corner of my heart ? i just wanted him to have everything good and all the love in the world (and i still do)

i think there's just. something about how he can be so clown and witty and ready to make people laugh, but also sometimes so quiet and into his own mind? so scorpio-man-like?, also how careless sometimes and mayb a bit brash, and his jokes fell flat, but he is also so thoughtful in his own way, how he throws his affection at people and yet can be so shy when receiving it? how much he grew since they debuted, how much he still is and how conscious he is in trying to grow and get comfortable !! idk. something about all this and how it makes him him and how we are opposites but yet sometimes i feel we are the same... man what is all of this sjwbbdbdj i just really like him 🤧

my favourite look on yuta! aaah this is a difficult one mainly bc i always think he looks good ejhebdb i do really like and associate yuta to pink/purple, so regular era has a reserved spot in my heart eheh but! i feel like in 2019/2020 he really started and experimenting with his image, and doing what he wanted, and we got all his iconic red hair and long hair and piercing that <3 and idk i just saw him more happy and sure of himself and <3 jsjsnsnjs (except kick it era, he looked so exceptional but i feel like something was going on behind and :/ kwbsbsjsj idk what was with sm but he deserved better yikes)

okay i don't think i am great at fashion actually sjebsjsj so i don't think i would be that great of a stylist lol i DO enjoy all of nct's most hated looks bc they were so fun and not-boring !! so i would LOVE to see them get back on something unique and particular and different (i feel like, kick it and punch styling were good, but? it lacks something? compared to before?) but also my forever dream that will never get true is the yutae unit with a rock concept (sooo original dbbdbdnd) and a japanese track, so i think it would be awesome to see something inspired from jpn street style also! (which. can mean nothing and all I guess but there's still a certain style in my eyes?) also would love to bring back hairstyles like tvxq of the beginning (see: hug mv) oh! and I'd love if they experimented more with yuta's make up too!! nct have v good eye makeup artists, it would be awesome if they went all out some day!!

[dillydedalus]

january reading

why was this january at least 3 months long

unequal affections, lara s. ormiston (audio) this is jane austen fanfiction about an alternate version of the story where lizzy does accept darcy’s first proposal - their ensuing engagement, which (because lizzy doesn’t go off about how she feels about darc in this one) is full of unspoken conflicts and tensions & hella awks. the initial premise needed some suspension of disbelief but once i got over that i found it super enjoyable, pretty believable in terms of character interactions and interiority (darcy is a dick), funny & sweet. i don’t think i will necessarily start getting into JAFF now (tho goodreads rly thinks i should), but this was just. nice. wholesome. also now i want to reread p&p..... 3/5

lincoln in the bardo, george saunders (uni) ya know what i really liked this. this is about abraham lincoln mourning his young son willie during the civil war, not exactly a topic i’m particularly (at all) interested in, but the execution is so cool - it’s told partly thru fragments from historical records, books, letters (both real and imagined) and partly thru the voices of the many ghosts stuck in a kind of limbo in the graveyard, who are trying to get willie to move on, while they themselves desperately try to stay in limbo, bitter about what went wrong in their lives and in denial about their state. & it’s done really well, the polyphony and contradiction of the historical record (one chapter has a bunch of quotes about how ugly lincoln was & then the last is like ‘idk i thought he was kinda handsome’), and the ghosts are so sad & bitter & desperate & hopeful. 4/5

the steppe & other stories, anton chekhov (tr. from russian) bunch of short stories from 1880-1890s russia. to be honest, i found most of them pretty boring, although ‘the duel’ is pretty good, an interesting look at how sticking too closely to your worldview/ideology/morality will probably either make you a useless disaster person or a eugenicist douchebag. some of the other stories were okay as well, but overall: 2/5, i’mma stick with his plays

perfectly preventable deaths, deirdre sullivan  teenage ocd witch book! this is a pretty good YA witchy horror book about twins who move into their new stepdad’s castle (yeah he has a castle) in a weird irish village where girls have been going missing for decades. creepy magical-ish things start happening (of course) & our narrator isn’t sure whether her sister’s new age-inappropriate boyfriend is just creepy, or creepy. i love the concept of ocd witchery & the atmosphere is really good as well, but the pacing is off, with slow build-up & a climax that happens way too quickly. also like can someone please say the word ocd it’s not gonna kill ya. 3/5

the priory of the orange tree, samantha shannon gonna be controversial here & say... yeah this should have been a duology. give the world some room to breathe, give the characters some room to breathe (give me another book w/ a cover this spectacular). anyway, this is a bigass book about eastern vs western dragon lore, a holy queendom (go sabran of inys!!), dragonriders, lesbian sword mages, how religion & historiography marginalises women, and magical trees. & like, okay, i wrote a lil thing right after finishing it about how i had some quibbles with it but enjoyed it overall but you know what? the more i think about it/let it sit the more complaints i have and the more annoyed/disappointed i get. 1) i liked all the characters fine, but none of them feel like they have any depth - i feel like i could sum all of the main characters up in like 3-4 words, and while i was rooting for ead/sabran, even this, the most central relationship of the book felt... surface-level. like, there were some big emotional moments but generally all i felt was like ‘good for her’ or ‘that sucks i guess’, 2) this world & its mythology is very much inspired by eastern vs western dragonlore so i understand the need to ground the fantasy world with real-world parallels but the extent to which some of the countries are literally just fantasy versions of real countries was... frustrating? irritating?? this is especially grating as, while inys is very clearly fantasy!britain, there is a lot of cool world-building (religion, aristocracy, history/myth) to make it more than that, while fantasy!japan and fantasy!china are literally just ... ‘what if japan but with dragons’. i did like fantasy!netherlands because at least you don’t see that a lot. 3) so much of the plot is just people travelling to different locations to get and transport different items but most of the travelling is cut short by some magical animal/being turning up and just transporting them in a cutscene.. 4) considering that this is all about dragonlore the dragons sure aren’t as important in the end as the three macguffins of power. 5) i loved so much about kalyba but not where it led, that said i want a kalyba-hawthorn-nurtha backstory.   okay that’s it for now but like. idk. this had a lot of potential but the execution was just severely flawed. 2/5 

trust exercise, susan choi this was super hyped, especially for a game-changing twist of some kind, but has a rather low rating on goodreads (3.18!) so y’all know i was intrigued. i’m not going to give away the twist because it is genuinely really cool if not really all that original, but this is a really clever & cool book about theatre kids, teenage dramatics, constructing your own narrative and what that excludes, elides, changes, and most of all consent & abuse (some very triggering depictions of sex/sexual abuse here). i really liked this, and am considering buying a copy so i can reread it. 4/5

soldiers of salamis, javier cercas (tr. from spanish by anne mclean) very meta novel about a writer called javier cercas writing a book (tentatively called soldiers of salamis) about a (real) falangist poet who escaped a mass execution & survived in the forest for a while with a group of republican deserters. ‘cercas’ researches, speculates, despairs, talks to roberto bolano (who compliments his previous books lol), and finally tracks down the man who he believes/imagines/hopes to be the soldier who let said fascist poet go, leading him to consider who really should be remembered & written about. made me think about that one poem about reading ezra pount that ends w/ a veteran saying ‘if i knew a fascist was a great poet, i’d shoot him anyway.’ interesting book altho i far prefer his book anatomy of a moment, one of the weirdest & most fascinating nonfic books i’ve read. 3/5

the stopping places, damian le bas (audio) damian le bas comes from a settled british romani family and, feeling somewhat unsure about his place in & connection to the community, he decided to go on a roadtrip through britain (+france) in a van to seek out the atchin tans or stopping places, starting with the ones his great-grandmother remembers from her childhood before the family became settled. he combines the travelogue with insights into romani culture(s) (mainly british) and history, as well as his own family history. it’s really interesting & engaging (the history&culture more so than the travelogue) and le bas narrates the audiobook himself & sounds like a cool dude. 3.5/5

confessions of a bookseller, shaun bythell  bythell records a year of working as a second-hand bookseller, with an entry for every day. he talks about the impact of amazon, rude & weird customers (but also nice customers), his weird staff, and some of the books he’s reading. the look into bookselling in the age of amazon is pretty interesting but much of this is banal & repetitive, & if it wasn’t the perfect thing to read in little bits while at work i probably would have dnf’d it. 2/5

giacomo joyce, james..... joyce  super short story by my man jamesy joyce that never made it out of manuscript (literal). not much to say about this - it’s interesting to see jj play around with themes while still working on portrait & thinking bout ulysses & the prose is nice, but the whole english tutor feels attracted to his student is a bit... eh. 3/5

[blackarmyslave]

About Me Tag

Thank you sooo much for the tag @lovingikesen! I love doing these uwu

The rules are:

Tag the person who tagged you.

Answer the questions.

Tag 10 people.

Here it goes~

How tall are you?

I'm 13 and 167 cm. I think that's about 5'4 ft.?

What color and style is your hair?

I have wavy hair that reaches a few inches below my shoulder blades. The roots are ebony black, but it slowly fades to a dark brown, and my tips are colored a rich copper. Lol funny thing is, I've never done anything to them - never dyed it, nor played around with it. They're naturally weird that way just like me.

What color are your eyes?

I can't tell if they're brown or black, honestly xD

Do you wear glasses?

Nope. But, if I look good in them, I'd love to try out fashion glasses (especially those round ones uwu)

Do you wear braces?

Nada.

What's your fashion sense?

Meh. It's not so interesting. I'm that girl who wears plain shirts, especially long-sleeved ones, covering as much skin as possible bc i feel so thicc when exposed, with no shorts or skirts in her wardrobe. I wear a lot of hoodies, varsity jackets, sweaters, sweatpants, sweatshirts, jeans (usually ripped and/or faded) and let my hair down. I never try styling it 'cause I'm the worst when it comes to hair. Also, I only wear earrings for jewelry on regular days. Lipstick and mascara is a go. Zero manicure, too. I wear dresses (I absolutely love them tbh) but never those strapless/really short ones. I'm awfully modest in dressing btw.

Full name?

Angeline Christie (Christie's my middle name xD I refuse to let y'all know my surname, coz privacy)

When were you born?

November 24 ♡

Where are you from and where do you live now?

Philippines and Philippines. Lol if you want more details, then I live in Iloilo. (I've never moved, and I don't think I ever will. It's not common for Filipinos to do that.)

What school do you go to?

In elementary I went to this really preppy school. Now I'm just going to a regular high school that specializes in sciences.

What kind of student are you?

I'm that student who never ever ever ever ever recites. I'd hide under my desk or pretend to be taking down notes so the teacher doesn't call on me. BUT when it's time to write an essay or submit a report, expect mine to be the longest and most detailed; with a hella huge gap from the rest lmao. I'm too damn lazy to study and recite, but I make up for it absorbing every single thing my teacher says, and passing satisfactory projects on time. I stay away from fights lol and I have a phobia of public speaking tho you'd never guess from the way I act in the internet xD. I'm a pretty strict leader but my mates tell me it's cool since our work almost always gets the most praise from our teacher. And I would like to ask God how tf did I get such good photographic memory and analization skills??!??!!?!!!?

Do you like school?

Y E S

Favorite subject?

Literature I guess, or Biology oof

Favorite TV show?

None. I don't really watch the tv that much.

Favorite movie?

Everything marvel uwu ♡♡

Favorite books?

*geek mode on*

- The Maze Runner series by James Dashner

- everything Rick Riordian's written

- GoT books

- The Boy Who Knew Everything by Victoria Forester

-Sarah J. Maas's Throne of Glass series

- P.C. Cast's Sun Warrior

- Echoes of an Angel by Aquanetta Gordon

- Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (yes I have the books lmao)

- everything in The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

- Jamie McGuire's Beautiful Disaster

- Ulysses by James Joyce

- Love Looks Good On You by Lang Leav

-Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

- Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

- Every Breath by Nicholas Sparks

-Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist

Favorite pastime?

Reading books or wasting hours YouTube. However my earphones are forever stuck to my ears, and I constantly dance around to bop songs and stuff. That's my favorite hobby - dancing and singing like you're having a seizure and/or asthma attack :))

Do you have any regrets?

Well... not being there for my mom while she was dealing with the then-sudden news of my bastard of a father's affair.

Dream job?

Surgeon ASDFGHJKL

Would you ever like to be married?

Fuck yeah!!!! That's definitely my no.1 dream����

Would you like to have kids?

Yeaaaaaaa uwu

How many?

3 uwu. Maybe a girl, and twin boys...?? Lmaooo

Do you like shopping?

Not really. Only if it's for a couple of high heels or new hoodies. As long as it doesn't take long, I'm good with 'em lol. I get quickly broed tho, especially if I have to shop for complete, blown-out outfits and the sort.

What countries have you visited?

-Hongkong

-does Macau count?

-Malaysia

-Singapore

-my parents are planning for Taiwan (maybe next year). We'll see lol

Scariest nightmare you ever had?

Bruh, I don't do dreams -_-

Any enemies?

YES. Well, if it were up to me, I wouldn't want one, but jealousy is a biatch soooo... our valedictorian, a former gay classmate, and maybe a couple of kids (we used to play but then we got to competitive and, well... stuff happened oof)

Any significant other?

Maybe👏I👏have👏one👏maybe👏I👏don't

Do you believe in miracles?

No...? Idk really

How are you?

Currently dying, thanks for asking

Holy shit that rhymed

Tagging: @bnha-and-marvel-but-somewhat-gay @otome-obsessed @lovingsiriusoswald @toloveawarlord @hello-darliiing @bakugoukatsukitty @mcotome @dreamy-sskiess @spideyjlaw @tomeyooo

[micehatecheesecake]

book tag!

i was tagged by my favorite enjoyer of so-called highbrow culture (complimentary) @allerod to do this. <3 it's not going to be that interesting because i don't read as much as i'd like to, but as books are a recently rediscovered interest of mine i wanted to do this anyway.

Last book I bought: when i initially thought about my answers for this tag i was planning to lie because i didn't want to be vulnerable, and name a book i plan to but have not yet bought (more on that later). but i figured i can just be vague yet honest. the last book i bought is a scholarly book by my professor crush. the most i want to say is that it has to do with book publishing. i liked it very much and will definitely reread it and look into other book publishing-themed academic writing.

Last book I borrowed: nothing because i don't understand how libraries work and at this point i'm too afraid too ask :( (meaning mostly i'm just scared of places i don't know so going to a strange library by myself is more than i can bear.) (very bad)

Last book I was gifted: the first volume of w.i.t.c.h. comics from my dad. hehe. i'm actually so happy they started issuing them again and he got me the first volume as a kickstart. :D i have the second volume already and have fallen behind with the other ones (there's at least two more out now), but i shall be ordering soon.

Last book I gave to someone: i got my grandma one of these river-interview (?) books with donald tusk. or is it a memoir? don't know, don't care, she requested it so i bought it for her lol. it was a gift completely devoid of sentiment or personal involvement. (i wish i had a less cynical answer but again... book-gifting is not something i do)

Last book I started: just a couple of days ago i finally started ulysses. it scares me bc it's a very hard book but i so want to read it and form an opinion. i read the introduction so far and took a peek at the first page. it doesn't look too bad; nevertheless, i am fear.jpg. i anticipate it will take me years to read properly. i can't die before i finish it, though.

Last book I finished: dubliners, aka what started my joyce fascination way back in high school and has now reblossomed. my favorite stories are araby, after the race, a little cloud, and the dead. araby is my #1 and joyce's streams of consciousness hit harrrd, especially the love-themed araby ones, and especially now... *zones out for a moment, then clears throat loudly* i also love the christmassy setting.

Last book I gave 5 stars: see above. hueh hueh.

Last book I gave 2 stars: nothing and hopefully i will never have to do that :v (said he, foolishly)

(bonus question i made up because i can)

Next book I'm planning to buy: i want to buy some james baldwin collections bc i am dying to reread him (took a class on him last semester). also, this book on shirley chisholm. i've always wanted to know more about her and am so thrilled there's a fresh new biography of hers coming out! also, more joyce. also also, more modernist fiction... but first, the first two i mentioned. gotta keep it cool, considering my snail-like reading pace.

i tag anyone who wants to do this!

[tl;dr. joyce this, joyce that]

[ramblings-from-elsinore]

1,11 and 18!

Yay Lynne!  Thank you!!  Good choices, rather difficult ones too so I have to think hard…

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

I’m going to take this one to mean a story I haven’t yet started, because god knows I’ve also held off on continuing several WIPs…  So, thinking about all my many story ideas, the main reason I haven’t written them is just time and effort.  I have to think hard about which stories are really worth putting so much work into, and what the payoff will be in return.

Some of my ideas are just too dark for me to feel excited about writing them, even though my imagination goes there.  For instance, one idea was inspired by the movie Room (not to be confused with The Room!  Very different lol), so it would feature Lud and Gil growing up in captivity, eventually escaping, and adjusting to life in the real world.  That could be well and interesting, but it would be a big project that would often be difficult to write, and probably to read, due to the subject matter.  Another such idea was an AU based on the short story The Prussian Officer by D. H. Lawrence, which is about an abusive, homoerotic relationship that ends in murder.

Other ideas rely too much on sex, lol.  I’ve gotten less comfortable with or interested in writing sex scenes, for some reason, so I can’t see myself writing a whole highly explicit story, like an old idea I had for a fic exploring Weimar era decadence and perversions.  It was going to be based loosely on Georges Bataille’s erotic novella L’histoire de l’oeil, Story of the Eye.  Other such ideas include AUs where Lud and Gil are porn actors or sex workers–and they wouldn’t be very happy stories, either.  I guess my mind dwells on misery, but I try not to let it overwhelm all my writing.

Yet other ideas would require more research than I can dedicate time to at the moment.  A number of historical AUs fall into that category, as well as my idea of a non-AU story providing glimpses of the German bros throughout their shared histories.  To do it properly I would need to actually read many more of the German history books crowding my bookshelves, lol.

I’ve also always wanted to write a long-lost-brothers meeting as adults and falling in love AU, but I get stuck on where it would go once they finally get together.

Since I have so many story ideas I’ll probably never get around to writing, I’ve often thought I should make a post at least sharing some of my outlines to stoke the imaginations of my fellow shippers.  So this was a little taste of that.

11. What aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

That is so hard to say!  I feel my writing has definitely, thankfully, improved a lot since the early days of Obsession, but it’s difficult to put my finger on how, exactly.  I think a lot of it simply has to do with breaking free from mediocre fanfic conventions, like the overuse of epithets, or slavishly including as many popular headcanons and references to canon as possible.  Getting away from this has allowed me to simply write the stories that interest me, which results in fresher, more interesting work, I like to think.

Other than that, it’s just the improvement that comes from writing and reading a lot over the years.  One of the hardest-learned yet most important lessons, which I’m still working on, is economy with words.  Not everything needs an adjective or adverb attached, and I’m amazed how often I could be redundant in my early writing.  At least half of the revision process should simply consist of deleting things.  And lastly, I have a tendency to externalize my characters’ thoughts, which sometimes comes across as telling rather than showing.  I’ve improved with that, but I’ve still got a ways to go.

Hmm I feel like I’m not the best person to answer this question, anyway–some of my readers would probably have more insight into how I’ve improved!  Sometimes you’re too close to it to tell, you know?

18. Were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? What were they?

Another really difficult question!  I feel like everything I read influences me and my style in some way, but it also varies considerably from fic to fic.  I think of the Obsession series as my “go-to” style, which feels very natural to write, and I can’t say with certainty that any one work has influenced that significantly.  Other stories do have more direct literary inspirations, though.  For instance, Sonderweg was very much influenced by the stream of consciousness style of James Joyce’s Ulysses (get it?  Cause Ulysses is Odysseus and it’s all about returning home from war…), though I’m afraid it’s a poor imitation.  Other stories of mine try to capture a more simple, understated and clipped style which I’ve admired in many things I’ve read, from Kelly Link’s horror short “The Specialist’s Hat” (which largely inspired The Inspector’s Insects), to the Grimm fairytales, to the book I’ve just started reading, Ann Carson’s beautiful verse novel Autobiography of Red.  Then for The Last Days of the Beilschmidts, gothic horror like Dracula and Carmilla were major influences.  So I suppose I’m constantly reading things that I would like to emulate in some way for a particular story, though those influences don’t necessarily affect my writing permanently, at least not in a particularly noticeable way.

Thanks so much for the ask, Lynne! :)

[alxndre-0001]

Alex’s Literary Reads of 2019 (from the months of June to September)

Caution: Bad, unedited writing ahead. Alex is a lazy person

Being a law student is an exhausting line of self-inflicted harm. Your life becomes an onslaught of reading materials and even more reading materials to catch up to. Now, reading has been second nature to me since I was four years old, so you can just imagine the sheer amount of readings my law professors have given us for me to consider detesting reading. 

I’ve managed to keep my sobriety from purely academic books by inserting novels, short stories and some poetry along the way. In all my four years in law school, this is the only year that I read as much as I wanted to. Mostly, short stories and essays that could be finished in one sitting. I had summer classes and wasn’t able to go home at all since January or February so I kept myself preoccupied by reading leisurely ( I know, gasp! Is that even possible for Alex in this economy?).

So here they are ++ some reviews and thoughts on the books.

1. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

I read this book at the same time as a friend of mine. It was my first time diving into erotica considered to hold literary merit, the ones I had before were utterly terrible, by the way. But we are talking of Anais Nin anyway, so there’s that. It’s actually a collection of erotic short stories involving different, unconnected characters although a few of them were referenced in other stories. As someone who’s always been fine with sex in plots, this one left me feeling visibly unsettled. I realized how truly romanticized sex can be in popular books (e.g Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy). The outpouring of feminine pleasure on those books was strictly gratuitous and self-indulgent. Delta of Venus was an uncomfortable experience because it fleshed out several discomfiting realities of sex and titillation – violence is often an element of power play in the bedroom, voyeuristic tendencies of everyone, depraved fantasies which are almost immoral in their insistence. 

Of particular impressions were ‘The Hungarian Adventurer’ and ‘Boarding School’ which explored themes of rape, incest, and even bestiality at one point.  It wasn’t the fact of preference that appalled me, it was the simple exposition of the truth – sex is all things good and bad, inexplicable and sensual. I have a problem with how media portrays sex, especially in popular culture which is partial with idealistic notions of sexual roles apparent in concepts like the male gaze and fantasy in porn. You see, these things eventually become damaging. When we glamorize something as common as sex, it either becomes fodder for taboo or fantasy, which incidentally what occurs with conversations of sex. Either it is a subject much condemned for its alleged impurity or a dirty little secret which encourages unrealistic expectations for both sexes. 

Nin’s style of writing borders on the absurd, but it is done intentionally. In one interview, she narrated how a client wanted her to write erotica which was basically porn and just skip the poetry. She refused as any self-respecting and intelligent woman would.  And well, we need to appreciate her for that. If she let the client have his way, then what we’d have is an exaggerated image of sex instead of the unnerving stories of Delta. In a sense, we can consider Delta as a commentary on sex literature which caters to a male audience. The stories were rife with feeling, of emotion, which feminized a genre so overtly masculine, pandering to the male gaze.

There were quite a number of jibes at the male gaze as well with stories like ‘Marianne’ and the ‘The Veiled Woman’. My favorite was when Marianne (Marianne) met a man who felt erotic pleasure by only being looked at, like an object of desire. It appeared to me as a reverse of the male gaze, which often portrayed women as the object of desire, effacing her human qualities to turn her into just a vessel to express lust, infatuation or even love. But here, the object of desire is a man and we are made privy into his thoughts and actions, humanizing him instead of treating him as just an object. 

Overall, Delta of Venus was a fine starter for anyone who wished to know more of Anais Nin. The prose flowed well, even lyrically so, despite sex being a subject which can easily turn stale if not carefully written. 

2. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

My first experience with Poe was when I was around nine or ten years old. I was a nosy child when it came to other people’s books and one day I found printed copies of short stories of my cousin’s in his room. One of them was A Tell-Tale Heart.  I still remember feeling on edge as I read the slightly blurred lines in cheap brown paper, it was utterly thrilling. The horror of the story comes less from the almost supernatural obsession of the unnamed character with the eye of the old man. It was more on his slipping attempts of overcoming the inhuman desire to kill the man for his eye. 

There’s always something that fascinates me with horror that is internally driven. More than the hostility of vampires, the looming threats of an apocalypse, the real horror for me lies in the deep recesses of the human heart, that inscrutable machine that throbs inextricably within all of us. And I feel like that’s what always impressed me with Poe. He had the excellent ability to articulate darkness that is motivated by the self and that is a feat for writers. Stephen King, for example, is great at understanding that his monsters are metaphors for his inner demons but he relates them into tangible forms be it demon dogs, telekinetic teenagers to give them an external existence. 

Poe has a clear grasp of fear and all its friends. And though some critics would lend an idea that Poe writes well with supernatural elements, I beg to disagree. He uses, for one, unreliable narrators (Berenice, William Williamson, Fall of the House of Usher). The thing with unreliable narrators is they warp the sense of reality of the stories, an indication to the reader that everything is not what it seems. And if one pays enough attention, then they could ask the all-important question: Is this the real-life or is this just fantasy? If you’re playing with those two possibilities, then you’d be less scared with the supernatural/ external world than the worldview of the narrator. You start to scrutinize him more closely, dog his steps, intimate his intentions, etc like some fixated lover. In doing so, in peering into the mind of another, you stumble into your own inner motivations, your thoughts and who knows you might mirror the darkness the narrator is struggling with? 

And there is the true gift of Poe – he reads everyone like how he reads himself. He doesn’t do this by getting acquainted with thousands of people with innumerable different lives. No, sir. He forces readers to examine themselves and the darkness inherent in men but constantly, through our self-delusion denied as present in others but not in ourselves. I need not belabor that this kind of writer is my favorite, the ones with a very vivid understanding of humanity, no matter how bleak the answers that arrive to them.

I went at liberties with Poe (lol) but some favorites inside the collection of stories are The Case of M. Valdemar, Black Cat, Descent into the Maelstrom and Pit of the Pendulum. My only issue is Poe’s tendency to philosophize in protracted terms that I was afraid I was going to get bored to death ( Domain of Arnheim, The Island of the Fay) with the possible exception of ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’ since I like the ideas presented there. 

3. Slapstick! or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut

I was supposed to start with Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions or Cat’s Cradle but the only available copy of the writer’s work in the book fair (thanks BBW!!) was this one. It seemed like a light read, a stark contrast from Poe’s grim, verbose collection, so I decided to give it a go. The last time I read a sci-fi novel was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 ( a real shame since I planned on reading more sci-fi this year). I finished it in less than a day and I wouldn’t say it left me with any remarkable opinion as much as the other books have had on me except that Vonnegut seemed like that fun, carefree uncle in reunions who has an alcohol abuse problem, is unmarried, and eats grapefruit for breakfast.

It’s not a very long novel and Vonnegut kept ending every part with ‘Hi, ho’. There’s a deeper sadness that is thinly veiled in the book as well, yeah slapstick, which reminded me of David Wallace’s Infinite Jest except the latter presents a more serious nod to its humor. 

It tells the story of Wilbur and Eliza, twins who are considered conventionally horrendous and abnormal in physical qualities. They are tall, too tall in fact. But thank god for rich parents who secretly dislike them, that they lived a sheltered existence away from everyone else other than their servants and a doctor who checks them every day. Unbeknownst to the parents and everyone else, the twins are super smart but only if they are allowed to share their intelligence by being close to each other. 

Long story made short, it’s a light read and perhaps a good overview of Vonnegut’s style of writing. I did want to read Slaughterhouse-Five after this one, so maybe that’s a good start. 

4. Dubliners by James Joyce

I’m having a hard time deciding whether this is my favorite out of everything else in this list or not. James Joyce was actually one of the writers I wanted to read very closely and understand his style better. He had such status and influence in modernism, plus the mythic reputations of both Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses for their wrought complexity and ingenuity in style that I felt drawn to his works.  You should have seen my face when I got a copy of this book at the BBW Fair last August – think of a kid in a candy store for an accurate depiction. 

Let’s cut right down to the chase. What do I really think of this book? To sum up my thoughts about it: If there is a master class for short story writing, Dubliners should be a required reading. I am by no means a writer or journalist but as someone who reads short stories often (more often than novels or poetry) for the last two or three years, Dubliners was a standout. 

Dubliners is actually a collection of short stories (hell I’ve only been having collections, is this a pattern? lol). They are set in Ireland mediated through the simplicity of daily life.  I admired the craftsmanship of Joyce in this one, the prose was written so concisely, dispensing with the arduous descriptions that lead nowhere.  

The characters, too, were forged from the circumstances of ordinariness – a dead priest, an abused woman, a boy about to come of age and so on. The characters themselves feel like semblances of a collective consciousness – that of Ireland during a tumultuous time in the  20th century.  In a way, the mundane, individual aspects of a character’s life was a mirror to the social conditions Joyce wanted to portray emphatically in the stories. The style was polished in a way that one is made to occupy the places mentioned in Dublin through the familiarity of an old friend, a returning local into the arms of unchanged memories. There hung in each story, a great atmosphere of nostalgia and I suspect it is because Joyce knows how to excavate sentiments for places which we haven’t even visited or seen but that somehow we recognize as phantoms of our very own lives. 

There is indeed great beauty in the most ordinary things and it takes the eye of an artist to take the uneventful and reveal its exquisiteness. Joyce made me grasp a show of that ability in the days that I pored through his collection. Whatever he intended while writing Dubliners, whether as a mirror of a conflicted Irish society or as a commentary to the social context borne through those times, it is his style that won me over. The plots were as simplistic as possible and there was no way to harness more meaning from the events of a character’s life rather than to take them at face value and coming to the understanding of just how nuanced and visceral our daily lives can be if only we looked hard enough, paid attention enough.

Dubliners reminded me of what I look for most in a book. It really is less of the plot or even it’s overarching theme and more of the style. Language as an art form has always been my standard in saying if a book has taken me in or not.  The great writer, Vladimir Nabokov is similarly convinced that language can elevate a story into an art form. There is artistic merit in a writer’s style just by itself and I would rather read a book with a weak plot but with a sound use of language than a novel plot with a severely exploited and copied style. 

5. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Perhaps the other strong contender for favorite in this list is Heart of Darkness. To be fair, it was less a book and more of an experience. An experience of what literature can do when it goes beyond style and narration to get to the bottom of the writer’s innermost motivations for writing the book. I ended Heart of Darkness, perplexed and in much quandary. There are only two possible explanations: First either the book was beyond me and my mediocre mind that try as I might, meaning of any sort would only elude me. Second, it was so condensed with significance that reading it once simply didn’t qualify as reading it at all. By the end of maybe two days, I realized it was the latter. For the lack of any other time, I’m going to try and process its entirety with the sum of my reading it only once.

I confess I looked up a video review off YouTube before getting to the book, mostly because classics have a way of being exhaustively discussed without losing their ability to sustain a reader’s interest. In my case, spoilers don’t do any damage or if there is any, of only negligible consequence since I look for other things other than the stream of events.

According to the video review, the book is an example of darkness as a location. To put context to this description, it would be good to tell a bit of the story. This is about an English man named Marlow who went to Congo to take on greener chances in the trade therein and for which the backdrop is meant to replicate the inhuman conditions of the slave trade. Amidst all this is another man named Kurtz, who was quite illustrious as a prodigious ivory trader and who was steeped in so much mystery. Upon arriving at the Congo, Marlow witnesses the cruel treatment of the ‘slaves’ under the supervision of the Europeans. 

[papofglencoe]

BBC 100 Books Tag

BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Bold the ones you’ve read. (AND/OR ITALIC THE ONES ON YOUR READING LIST)

Thanks for the tag, @bandathebillie and @javistg! Long post, under the cut. <3

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (🙌🙌🙌) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (🙌🙌🙌) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee The Bible (lbr, not all of it) 
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (🙌🙌🙌) Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (🙌🙌🙌) 
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (man, this book makes me salty to this day) Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy


Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Complete Works of Shakespeare (All of them, BBC? 🙄) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (@badnovels: Percentage of Us feeeeeels <3) 
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger Middlemarch - George Eliot Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell  The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (🙌🙌🙌) Bleak House - Charles Dickens (🙌🙌🙌) 
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (so long, and thanks for all the fish...) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (this makes me think of the TV show Extras) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy David Copperfield - Charles Dickens Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Emma - Jane Austen Persuasion - Jane Austen (🙌🙌🙌) 
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne Animal Farm - George Orwell The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving 
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood Lord of the Flies - William Golding Atonement - Ian McEwan (🙌🙌🙌) 
Life of Pi - Yann Martel Dune - Frank Herbert Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (🙌🙌🙌 twisted af) The Secret History - Donna Tartt The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 
On The Road - Jack Kerouac Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (it genuinely warms my heart to see fanfiction make this list. Long live Mr. Darcy) Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (🙌🙌🙌) 
Moby Dick - Herman Melville 
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens Dracula - Bram Stoker 
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson Ulysses - James Joyce The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome Germinal - Emile Zola Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray Possession - AS Byatt A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell The Color Purple - Alice Walker The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (OMG who here has read Never Let Me Go?) 
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry Charlotte’s Web - EB White The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (LOL) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks Watership Down - Richard Adams A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole 
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute 
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas 
Hamlet - William Shakespeare 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl 
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(I have no idea why the BBC included so many repeated authors- and the occasional dreck- but left out folks like Willa Cather, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy, Chinua Achebe, Samuel Beckett, James Baldwin, Frank Norris, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. Well, I mean, I have an idea why...) 

I haven’t been around much, so I dunno who has done this already. But I’d love to see what you guys have to say: @thegreatorangedragon, @appleblossomgirl0305, @rowenammurillo, @mareebrittenford, @jennagill, @everlylark, @katamount, @w00-ly, @fempeeta, @xerxia31, @burkygirl, @pinksnailsaver, @eala-musings, @finduilasnumenesse, @akosiroxy, @jeeno2, @bleuwrites, @lvfics, @ambpersand, @am2c, and whoever wants to do this. (Or not, no pressure).

[owlawesomeness]

I was tagged by @tessalivesandbreathesbooks (Thanks Tessa! ^-^)

BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Bold the ones you’ve read. (OR ITALIC THE ONES ON YOUR READING LIST).

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The Bible

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Complete Works of Shakespeare

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

Emma - Jane Austen

Persuasion - Jane Austen

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Dune - Frank Herbert

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

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

Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

On The Road - Jack Kerouac

Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

Dracula - Bram Stoker

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

Ulysses - James Joyce

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

Germinal - Emile Zola

Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

Possession - AS Byatt.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

Charlotte’s Web - EB White

The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

Watership Down - Richard Adams

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Well, I’ve read 11 of the 100, so that’s better than 6 at least. And 8 are on my reading list, I just have to remember them when I go looking for new books to read lol. Anyway, I’m going to tag @crimgy , @reynaskyrunner , @mittlieder-17 , and @buttons1220

[maeglinofficial]

BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 out of the 100 listed below. Bold the ones you’ve read (AND/OR ITALIC THE ONES ON YOUR READING LIST)

thanks @isilloth for tagging me! (on my other blog lol but im posting it here)

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

To Kill a Mocking Bird - Harper Lee

The Bible (ive read some it it? haha)

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

Tess of D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Complete Works of Shakespeare

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

Middlemarch - George Eliot

Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Bleak House - Charles Dickens

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dosteyevsky

Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The Wind in the WIllows - Jenneth Grahame

Anna Karenine - Leo Tolstoy

David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (i read like half of them)

Emma - Jane Austen

Persuasion - Jane Austen

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louois de Bernieres

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Animal Farm - George Orwell

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Atonement - Ian McEwan

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Dune - Frank Herbert

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

Judge the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding

Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

Dracula - Bram Stoker

The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

Ulysses - James Joyce

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Swallow and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

Germinal - Emile Zola

Vanity Fair - WIlliam Makepeace Thackery

Possession - AS Byatt.

A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

A Fine Balance - Robinton Mistry

Charlotte’s Web - EB White

The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

Watership Down - Richard Adams

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

so thats like, 17ish :P someday itll be more though

im tagging @elvenprinces @sothisisthehobbit @78nanosieverts @woodlandcrowns and everyone who sees this