#memoire 61

[retracexcviii]

I don't know what to say

EDIT: I already changed the quality of the pages + added the translated Omake

[vamphobias]

he said i want those twinks OBLITERATED!!!!

[briebysabs]

THE GAYS HAVE WON

Vanitas allowing himself to be vulnerable and kinda soft around Noé THE BEST FLAVOUR THANK YOU MOCHIJUN

[seeinganewlight]

2024 books read

2024 goal: 150 books

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[deadpresidents]

Volcanoes

It was the crowning moment in Richard Milhous Nixon’s long career of political ups-and-downs. For the fifth time, Nixon had been a candidate on the national ticket (twice as Vice President, three times as President). In 1952 and 1956, the focus was on the top of the ticket, Nixon’s running mate, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1960, Nixon narrowly lost to – and some would say was the victim of electoral theft from – John F. Kennedy. In 1968, Nixon finally won election to the Presidency, but he did so with some bitterness:  the country was in shambles and the two people he wanted to oppose more than anyone else in the election – Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Kennedy – had respectively quit and been murdered during the turbulent campaign. Not only that, but in victory, Nixon had garnered only 43.4% of the vote – a full 6 percentage points less than he had earned in his 1960 loss to JFK.

On November 7, 1972, however, Nixon’s “Silent Majority” spoke loud and clear – and truly gave him both a majority victory and a strong mandate for his second term in the White House. Nixon trounced his opponent, Democratic Senator George S. McGovern, on election night. His popular vote victory was 61%-38% and Nixon’s margin in the Electoral College was even larger, 520-17. Nixon won every single state in the country except for Massachusetts. Nixon even won McGovern’s home state of South Dakota.

As the election returns rolled in and Nixon’s family, supporters, and staff celebrated, the man who had received the votes of 47,169,841 of his fellow Americans that day to be their President noted that he felt “a curious feeling, perhaps a foreboding, that muted my enjoyment of this triumphal moment." In his Memoirs (BOOK | KINDLE), Richard Nixon elaborated further, "I am at a loss to explain the melancholy that settled over me on that victorious night…To some extent the marring effects of Watergate may have played a part, to some extent our failure to win Congress, and to a greater extent the fact that we had not yet been able to end the war in Vietnam. Or perhaps it was because this would be my last campaign. Whatever the reasons, I allowed myself only a few minutes to reflect on the past. I was confident that a new era was about to begin, and I was eager to begin it.”

The new era began the next morning. At 12:00 PM on November 8, 1972, President Nixon gathered his Cabinet in the White House. Nixon seemed tired and was suffering from a painful toothache. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger noted that the President seemed “grim and remote”. Nixon’s loyal Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman was at his side as the President nonchalantly thanked his Cabinet and then described his recent readings about 19th Century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and how Disraeli described a need to refresh the British government and rid it of the “exhausted volcanoes” in William Gladstone’s Cabinet. Nixon’s Cabinet was perplexed and curious as to where the President was headed. He had just won a historic landslide victory in the Presidential election, but he spoke as if he had lost everything. 

After a few more minutes of talking about his plans for a second term that wasn’t “lethargic” such as those of some of his predecessors, Nixon simply stood up and walked out of the Cabinet Room, headed across the South Lawn, boarded Marine One and flew to his Camp David retreat. When the President stands, everyone stands but as soon as he left the room, the Cabinet sat down and looked at Bob Haldeman, who took over the meeting. Haldeman handed pieces of paper out to the Cabinet and said, “You’re all a bunch of burned-out volcanoes”. Then he immediately demanded everyone’s resignation. Nixon had won one of the biggest victories in American electoral history, and 24 hours later, he was basically firing everyone who had helped him to do so – earlier in the day, he had done the same thing that he did to the Cabinet to his White House staff.

Henry Kissinger summed it up by saying that, “It was as if victory was not an occasion for reconciliation but an opportunity to settle the scores of a lifetime." For Richard Nixon, victory was never enough. He needed destruction. Nixon got rid of his exhausted volcanoes, but he was sitting on top of another volcano named Watergate. His abbreviated second term, which had been won the night before, would end less than two years later in his own personal and professional destruction.

[beardedmrbean]

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The writings of the person who killed three 9-year-olds and three adults at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville last year cannot be released to the public, a judge ruled Thursday.

Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles found that The Covenant School children and parents hold the copyright to any writings or other works created by shooter Audrey Hale, a former student who was killed by police. As part of the effort to keep the records closed, Hale’s parents transferred ownership of Hale’s property to the victims’ families, who then argued in court that they should be allowed to determine who has access to them.

Myles agreed, ruling that “the original writings, journals, art, photos and videos created by Hale” are subject to an exception to the Tennessee Public Records Act created by the federal Copyright Act.

The ruling comes more than a year after several groups filed public records requests for documents seized by Metro Nashville Police during their investigation into the March 2023 shooting. Those killed were Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney, all 9 years old, and adults Cynthia Peak, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, 61.

Part of the interest in the records stems from the fact that Hale, who police say was “assigned female at birth,” may have identified as a transgender man, and some pundits have floated the theory that the journals will reveal a planned hate crime against Christians.

The victims’ families released statements about the ruling on Friday. Cindy Peak’s family wrote, “The last year and a half without Cindy has been difficult. But today brings a measure of relief in our family. Denying the shooter some of the notoriety she sought by releasing her vile and unfiltered thoughts on the world is a result everyone should be thankful for.”

The shooter left behind at least 20 journals, a suicide note and a memoir, according to court filings. When the records requests were denied, several parties sued, and the situation quickly ballooned into a messy mix of conspiracy theories, leaked documents, probate battles and accusations of ethical misconduct. Myles’ order will almost surely be appealed.

After the initial records requests last year, police said they would eventually release the documents but could not do so right away because their investigation was still open. The groups suing for the immediate release of the records — including news outlets, a gun rights group, a law enforcement nonprofit and Tennessee state Sen. Todd Gardenhire — argued that there was no meaningful criminal investigation underway since Hale, who police say acted alone, was dead.

Meanwhile, a group of Covenant parents was allowed to intervene in the case and argue that the records should never become public. They said the release would be traumatic for the families and could inspire copycat attacks.

Myles found that the copycat risk was real and “of grave concern.”

“Hale used the writings of other perpetrators in similar crimes to guide how this plan was constructed and accomplished, mimicking some not only in their methodology, but also choice of weapons and targets,” Myles wrote. “Hale even held past perpetrators out as heroes in their attacks, idolizing them.”

Also intervening in the case were The Covenant School and the Covenant Presbyterian Church, which shares a building. They argued the records should remain closed because their release could threaten their security.

The Associated Press is among the groups that requested the records but did not participate in the lawsuit.

As the court case has dragged on, pages from one journal were leaked to a conservative commentator who posted them to social media in November. More recently, The Tennessee Star published dozens of stories based on allegedly 80 pages of Hale’s writings provided by an unnamed source. The publication is among the plaintiffs, and Myles briefly threatened to hold the paper’s editor-in-chief, Michael Leahy, and owner, Star News Digital Media, in contempt.

Although Myles’ ruling will shield many of the documents created by Hale from public release, other documents in the police file can be released once the case is officially closed as long as they fall under Tennessee’s open records law.

An attorney for the lead plaintiff in the case did not immediately have a reaction to the ruling.

[magicaltear]

How many have you read?

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

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

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

As found in the original post I saw by @macrolit

My total: 43/100

[usafphantom2]

SR-71 pilot recalls that time his Blackbird flew so fast that he and his RSO landed at Kadena AB two hours before they took off from Beale AFB beating the sun

‘We took off from Beale at 11:00 AM and arrived at Kadena at 9:00AM, two hours before we took off from Beale, we beat the Sun!’ Buddy Brown, SR-71 Blackbird pilot.

The SR-71, unofficially known as the “Blackbird,” is a long-range, advanced, strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft.

The first flight of an SR-71 took place on Dec. 22, 1964, and the first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th(later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Beale Air Force Base, Calif., in January 1966.

On Mar. 8 1968 Lieutenant Colonel Buddy Brown and RSO Major Dave Jensen flew the very first SR-71 Blackbird (#978) out of the US to Kadena Air Base, Japan also known as the OL (operation allocation).

Buddy came from the U-2 program* to the SR-71 and he had many risky adventures. He was picked for this honor because he was the chief of Standardization during this time.

Buddy and Dave experienced quite a few problems with the SR-71 since the airplane was not used to the weather in the tropics. The following story is an excerpt taken from Buddy Brown memoirs.

The story of the first SR-71 crew to deploy a Blackbird in Japan that landed at Kadena two hours before the take off from Beale beating the sun

Buddy Brown and Dave Jensen in front of an SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3 spy plane

‘The first leg of the first flight of the SR-71 across the Pacific was to Hawaii. And then on to Kadena it took five hours. When I flew the U-2 on this same flight it took five days (that included resting). Speed is good! On the third leg of the flight we encountered another small problem, my left generator went off-line and I couldn’t reset it. This was a NO-GO situation which means I should land as soon as practical… My decision was to continue on because we were only 1000 miles (less than 30minutes) from Kadena. At this time on the high frequency radio using our coded callsign I contacted mama [Kadena’s Command post] and informed them “I was lost, but was making good time” [because despite the problem, Buddy’s SR-71was flying REALLY fast].

‘We landed at Kadena with no further problems.

‘We took off from Beale at 11:00 AM and arrived at Kadena at 9:00AM, two hours before we took off from Beale, we beat the Sun!*

‘For the first few weeks we would be using the hangars next to the CIA hangars that’s where the A-12’s were. A couple of the CIA pilots briefed us on the missions they were flying, what to expect when flying some of our missions. They were very helpful. Kadena was one of the major US strongholds of the far east. Since I had flown the U-2 a few years before out of Kadena I was very familiar with the Far East.

‘Dave and I had over a week to target study the route of flight and survival techniques in case we were shot down, refueling emergency recovery HF procedures. Dave and I were planning to fly the first mission operational.

SR-71 print

This print is available in multiple sizes from AircraftProfilePrints.com – CLICK HERE TO GET YOURS. SR-71A Blackbird 61-7972 “Skunkworks”

‘My back up crew was Jerry O’Malley and Ed Payne, they were briefed on the mission also.

‘The following day March 21, 1968 the routine was normal during our taxi out at the end of the runway for the engine run up and trim [but] the ANS system froze on us. This of course was a NO-GO situation which caused us to abort the mission.

‘Our backup crew, O’Malley and Payne, flew the first operational Sortie in aircraft # 976.’**

*Former SR-71 pilot David Peters recalls: “It always fascinated me to see the Sun in the periscope go down and disappear in the East as we outran it. And then to catch up to it and see it come up in the West.”

**Noteworthy Buddy Brown could have been shot down over Cuba since he was major Rudolph Anderson’s backup. If there would’ve been a technical problem with Anderson’s U-2, it would’ve been Brown that was killed over Cuba. And because of a technical difficulty, it was not Buddy who became first to fly an operational mission in the SR-71.

Be sure to check out Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) Twitter Page Habubrats SR-71 and Facebook Page Born into the Wilde Blue Yonder for awesome Blackbird’s photos and stories.

@Habubrats71 via X

[mariacallous]

Growing up in Beirut during Lebanon’s 15–year civil war, I wished for someone like Anthony Bourdain to tell the story of my country: a place ripped apart by violence, yes, but also a country where people still drove through militia checkpoints just to gather for big Sunday family lunches, or dodged sniper fire to get to their favorite butcher across town to sample some fresh, raw liver for breakfast. Bourdain, the legendary roving chef and master storyteller who committed suicide on Friday in France at the age of 61, would have approved of such excursions in search of the perfect morsel—he probably would have come along.

Coming of age during conflict made me want to become a journalist. I hoped to tell the story of my country and the Middle East—a place rife with conflicts, sure, but also layered with complexities, a place of diverse peoples full of humanity. In the summer of 2006, I was the BBC’s Beirut correspondent when war erupted between Israel and Hezbollah, the pro-Iran Shia militant group. Hezbollah had kidnapped three Israeli soldiers, triggering the month-long conflict. Within a day, the Israelis had bombed Beirut’s airport out of action. I worked 34 days in a row, 20 hours a day, reporting live on television and radio, alongside dozens of colleagues who’d flown in to help cover the conflict.

I didn’t know it then, but Bourdain was there too, filming an episode of his show No Reservations. And perhaps he didn’t know it then, but Lebanon would change him forever. In the episode, he talked about how he had come to Beirut to make a happy show about food and culture in a city that was regaining its reputation as the party capital of the Middle East. Instead, he found himself filming a country that had tipped into war overnight. Filming on the day the violence broke out, he managed to capture that split second where people’s faces fell as they realized their lives had been upended.

After a few days in Beirut itself, Bourdain and his team moved to a hotel just north of the capital, closer to their eventual evacuation spot. By then, Israeli jets were bombing not only areas with a Hezbollah presence, but bridges and power plants across the country. Yet the show never became about the experience of a terrorized American stranded in a scary place. Bourdain never made it about Bourdain—Lebanon was the story. And even during the dramatic scene of his departure, on a ship surrounded by Marines and hundreds of other evacuees—Americans and dual citizens—his focus remained on Lebanon and the distraught faces of its people, leaving behind country and family, uncertain of whether they’d ever return.

Despite the trying circumstances he faced, Bourdain still managed to produce a 43-minute piece later nominated for a news and documentary Emmy. We were also nominated for our coverage of the 2006 war, albeit in a different category, and won. While Bourdain did not win (although he would go on to pick up many other Emmys), I knew his episode had told my country’s story better than I ever could. I cried when I watched it.

I met Bourdain briefly at the award ceremony in New York, and managed to mumble a few awestruck words of thanks for his work on television and as a writer. I fantasize about opening a restaurant one day, and had devoured Kitchen Confidential, Bourdain’s 2000 memoir about working as a chef in New York City’s cut-throat restaurant scene. Here was a man who had revolutionized food writing, food shows, and international reporting, all at once. But more importantly, he did it with an inimitable blend of empathy and levity, and a remarkable eye for nuance.

One might think that after Bourdain’s first trip to Lebanon, he would never go back. But four years later he returned, this time to make the fun episode he’d originally set out to produce. The 2006 experience, however, had changed him, something he talked about at length in a freewheeling 2014 interview with Blogs of War. He described that first trip as a “defining moment for the show—and some kind of crossroads … personally,” while still talking up Beirut as a “magical” place of “unbelievable possibilities.”

After Beirut in the summer of 2006, Bourdain decided it was time to tell more complicated stories, as he put it in that 2014 interview. “To stand there, day after day, useless and relatively safe by a hotel pool, looking at the people and the neighborhoods I had just been getting to know being hammered back 20 years a few short miles away was ... well... it was something,” Bourdain said. But he was also struck by “the complete disconnect between what [he] was seeing and hearing on the ground from Beirutis of all stripes and what was being reported” by the media, he said.

Bourdain developed a new approach that used conversations about food to tell the story and politics of the countries he visited in ways that hard news couldn’t. Perhaps Beirut had taught him what every Lebanese knows: that conversations around and about food allow people to let their guard down. Discussions about the secret source of your spices, or how to pound your meat, erase all differences.

And so off Bourdain went to make Parts Unknown, his next show, in Libya, Cuba, Haiti, Liberia, Iraq, Beirut again, and Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. He was horrified by what he saw in Gaza, and even more dismayed when he was criticized for showing Palestinians doing ordinary things, like cooking, as though that meant he had chosen sides. “The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity,” Bourdain said.

Every time I read Bourdain on Lebanon, I marvel at his ability to grasp the subtleties of a place where he’d never lived. There’s a joke about my country: If you think you understand Lebanon, someone’s just done a bad job explaining it to you. But he understood it just the way I did. “The food’s delicious, the people are awesome. It’s a party town. And everything wrong with the world is there,” he told Blogs of War. “Hopefully, you will come back smarter about the world. You’ll understand a little more about how uninformed people are when they talk about that part of the world,” he added. “You’ll come back as I did: changed and cautiously hopeful and confused in the best possible way.”

I suspect people in other countries Bourdain visited felt he understood them too, spoke for them, and saw them for who they were: ordinary people with real names, lives filled with hope, love stories, heartbreak, and laughter. He cared about people outside the lens of violence, beyond the headlines and the reductionist clichés. He broke down the barrier of the other, especially in countries with long-standing political enmity with the United States, like Iran and Cuba. Americans probably learned more about the world watching his shows than any news programs.

I don’t know why Bourdain decided to end his life. But I know he understood places and people intuitively. He grasped their pain, their intensity, and their humanity, in the way that only someone with great empathy could—the kind of empathy that comes with raw vulnerability and deep creativity, the kind that can bring with it inner demons.

In this age of dislocation and isolation, walls and travel bans, the world needs more Anthony Bourdains. Tragically, now it has none.

[thelonelybrilliance]

2023 Reads: thelonelybrilliance

Final count 72! I set a goal of 52 originally but raised the bar when I realized that would only bring me into early November.

Decided it would be fun to share some stats and recommendations along with the full list.

First, ten recommendations:

The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner (best completed series)

Gregory Orr, The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write (best new poetry read)

Minka Kelly, Tell Me Everything (best memoir)

E.B. White, Here Is New York (best short read)

Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist (best journals)

Sydney Taylor, All-of-a-Kind Family (best children's lit)

Laurie Halse Anderson, Shout (best poetry memoir)

George Eliot, Middlemarch (best classic)

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart (best food writing)

Red Rising series by Pierce Brown (best sci-fi/ongoing series + best audio drama (Red Rising (Book 1))

Of my 72 reads, 31 were rereads, 41 new . Four were audiobooks, the rest print (primarily e-books). My longest read was David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. My shortest read (I think? A lot of poetry collections are short) was the longform essay, Here Is New York by E.B. White. I read the most books in December (15) and the least in June (2). 50 authors were women, 21 were men, and one poetry collection was multi-author. My most-read authors were as follows:

Megan Whalen Turner (7 books)

Lucy Maud Montgomery (6 books)

Louise Glück (5 books)

Elizabeth Wein (5 books)

Jane Austen (3 books)

Pierce Brown (3 books)

Full list organized by month under the cut!

Favorites: Bold | Rereads: Underline

Fiction: Blue | Non-Fiction: Red | Poetry: Purple | Audiobook: *

JANUARY

Megan Whalen Turner, The Thief

2. Annie Chagnot & Emi Ikkanda (eds.), How Lovely the Ruins

3. Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

FEBRUARY

4. Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice

5. Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

6. Jane Austen, Sense & Sensibility

MARCH

7. Rita Dove, Playlist for the Apocalypse

8. Louise Glück, The Seven Ages

9. Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

APRIL

10. Megan Whalen Turner, Moira's Pen

11. Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia

12. Megan Whalen Turner, The King of Attolia

13. Megan Whalen Turner, A Conspiracy of Kings

MAY

14. Megan Whalen Turner, Thick as Thieves

15. Megan Whalen Turner, Return of the Thief

16. Elizabeth Wein, The Winter Prince

17. Elizabeth Wein, A Coalition of Lions

18. Elizabeth Wein, Sunbird

19. Elizabeth Wein, The Lion Hunter

JUNE

20. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

21. bell hooks, Applachian Elegy

JULY

22. Michael Gibney, Sous Chef: 24 Hours on the Line*

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

24. Elizabeth Wein, The Empty Kingdom

25. Dorothy Dunnett, Spring of the Ram

26. Michael Bazzett, You Must Remember This

27. Lisa Ampelman, Romances

28. Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential

29. Natalie Diaz, Post-Colonial Love Poem

AUGUST

30. Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty

31. Jenny Han, It's Not Summer Without You

32. Natalie Diaz, When My Brother Was an Aztec

33. Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother

34. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

35. Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds

SEPTEMBER

36. Gregory Orr, The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write

37. E.B. White, Here Is New York

38. Minka Kelly, Tell Me Everything

39. P.G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves

40. Carrie Fisher, The Princess Diarist

41. Jonathan Stroud, The Screaming Staircase*

42. Tobias Wolff, Old School

OCTOBER

43. Emi Nietfeld, Acceptance*

44. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

45. R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

46. Louise Glück, Vita Nova

47. L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

48. L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

49. L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

50. Ada Limón, The Hurting Kind

NOVEMBER

51. Ron Rash, Poems

52. Louise Glück, Meadowlands

53. Tom Perrotta, Election

54. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

55. Louise Glück, Averno

56. L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

57. Curtis Sittenfeld, Prep

DECEMBER

58. Tom Perrotta, Tracy Flick Can't Win

59. Pierce Brown, Red Rising*

60. Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle

61. Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

62. Pierce Brown, Iron Gold

63. Sydney Taylor, All-of-a-Kind Family

64. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

65. George Eliot, Middlemarch

66. Louise Glück, Ararat

67. Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

68. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

69. Kate Baer, And Yet

70. Marguerite de Angeli, The Lion in the Box

71. Pierce Brown, Golden Son

72. Laurie Halse Anderson, Shout

[ayakashibackstreet]

Ensemble Stars!! MV Tournament - Round 1 statistics

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

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

Part 1: Voting numbers.

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

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

Top 5 polls with the most votes:

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

Top 5 polls with the least votes:

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

Part 2: Voting results.

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

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

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

Top 5 SWEEEEEEEEEEPS:

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

Top 5 head-to-head matches:

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

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

Top 5 MVs with the most votes:

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

Top 5 MVs with the least votes:

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

Part 3: Unit statistics

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

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

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

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

[retracexcviii]

They were fast this time

[briebysabs]

I like how we’re approaching the dham prejudice now bc if we entering an arc focusing a lot on them, that will be addressed very much. And we have each part of the spectrum here.

-Nox and Manet who are very prejudiced and hold strongly to those beliefs.

-Orlock who wouldn’t openly say these things but do align with his servants.

-Vanitas who’s a jerk to everyone which is why Dante gravitated towards him.

-Domi, who is the most interesting element here. Because that’s the majority, and even us at times, may end up in.They know the bigoted thinking is backwards and wrong but subconsciously feed into it. And she was ashamed discovering that fact.

-And of course Noé, the sheltered boy who sees the world honestly like a child, is just confused. And rightfully points out the elephant in the room. Also I think it’s fitting (even though it makes sense regardless bc its Noé) that it’s the character with melanin who speaks up about it.

[liminalweirdo]

How many have you read?

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

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

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

original post

[cecilyacat]

BBC Big Read List

Many years ago, I first started tallying the books from the BBC Big Read list, seeing how my reading and interests correllate. I don't take it as the "one truth" on which books are worth reading or "good", I just find it interesting which ones I agree with. Let's go!

Out of the BBC's "The Big Read" list from 2005, which ones did you read, plan to read or started to read, but didn't finish? The ones I read are fat, the ones I still want to read are in italics, the ones I started but didn't finish are crossed out and all the other ones I have either never heard of before or never wanted to read them.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien 2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen 3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman 4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams 5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling 6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee 7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne 8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell 9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis 10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë 11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller 12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë (and I thought it was horrible. But I wanted to finish it!) 13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks 14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier 15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger 16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame 17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott 19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres 20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy 21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell 22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling 23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling 24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling 25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien 26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy 27. Middlemarch, George Eliot 28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving 29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck 30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll 31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson 32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez 33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett 34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens 35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl 36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson 37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute 38. Persuasion, Jane Austen 39. Dune, Frank Herbert 40. Emma, Jane Austen 41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery 42. Watership Down, Richard Adams 43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald 44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas 45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh 46. Animal Farm, George Orwell 47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens 48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy 49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian 50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (and I love it) 52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck (didn't finish it in school but want to try again) 53. The Stand, Stephen King 54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy 55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth 56. The BFG, Roald Dahl 57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome 58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell 59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer 60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky 61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman 62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden 63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough 65. Mort, Terry Pratchett 66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton 67. The Magus, John Fowles 68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman 69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett 70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding 71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind 72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell 73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett 74. Matilda, Roald Dahl 75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding 76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt 77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins 78. Ulysses, James Joyce 79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens 80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson 81. The Twits, Roald Dahl 82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith 83. Holes, Louis Sachar 84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake 85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy 86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson 87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley 88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons 89. Magician, Raymond E Feist 90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac 91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo 92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel 93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett 94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho 95. Katherine, Anya Seton 96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer 97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez 98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson 99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot 100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome 102.Small Gods, Terry Pratchett 103. The Beach, Alex Garland 104. Dracula, Bram Stoker 105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz 106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens 107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz 108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks 109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth 110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson 111. Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy 112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, Sue Townsend 113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat 114. Les Misérables, Victor Hugo 115. The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy 116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson 117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson 118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde 119. Shogun, James Clavell 120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham 121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson 122. Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray 123. The Forsyte Saga, John Galsworthy 124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski 125. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver 126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett 127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison 128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle 129. Possession, A. S. Byatt 130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov 131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood 132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl 133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck 134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl 135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett 136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker 137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett 138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan 139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson 140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson 141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque 142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson 143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby 144. It, Stephen King 145. James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl 146. The Green Mile, Stephen King 147. Papillon, Henri Charriere 148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett 149. Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian 150. Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz

151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett 152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett 153. The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett 154. Atonement, Ian McEwan 155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson 156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier 157. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey 158. Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad 159. Kim, Rudyard Kipling 160. Cross Stitch, Diana Gabaldon 161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville 162. River God, Wilbur Smith 163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon 164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx 165. The World According To Garp, John Irving 166. Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore 167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson 168. The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye 169. The Witches, Roald Dahl 170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White 171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley (I've read excepts for uni) 172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams 173. The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway 174. The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco 175. Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder 176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson 177. Fantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl 178. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov 179. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach 180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery 181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson 182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens 183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay 184. Silas Marner, George Eliot 185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis 186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith 187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh (I stopped after the toilet-scene. Too disgusting) 188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine 189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri 190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. LawrenceLife of Lawrence 191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera 192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons 193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett 194. The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells 195. The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans 196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry 197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett 198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White 199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle 200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews

Read: 57 Want to read: 60

Some of the books to read I know very little about except the title and that they're classics, some others I know a lot about (and I even have "Men at Arms" on my TBR pile for when the mood strikes me next). I like reading classics once in a while, but especially older ones I can't read too often, I need to be in the right mood for that style of writing.

The last time I updated this was in 2015 and I had read 44 and wanted to read 72 - so 15 books in 9 years xD Like I said, it's not a challenge or a goal to read all of them, just a convenient way of keeping track of which classics I want to read eventually.

[child-of-the-danube]

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

1. Pride and prejudice - Jane Austen

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

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

4. Harry Potter series

5. To kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6. The Bible

7. Wuthering heights - Emily Brontë (TBR)

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9. His dark material - Philip Pullman

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M. Alcott

12. Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (DNF)

14. Complete works of Shakespeare (TBR)

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18. Catcher in the Rye

19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffeneger

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26. Brideshead revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis

34. Emma - Jane Austen

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

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

37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres

39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell

42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (DNF)

43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47. Far from the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (TBR)

48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding (TBR)

50. Atonement - Ian McEwan

51. Life of Pi - Yan Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert

53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (DNF)

58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (TBR)

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

60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt (TBR)

64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (DNF)

66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac

67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding

69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville (DNF)

71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72. Dracula - Bram Stoker

73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74. Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson

75. Ulysses - James Joyce

76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78. Germinal - Emile Zola

79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker (TBR)

84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (TBR)

85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87. Charlotte's Web - EB White

88. The Five People You meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom

89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94. Watership Down - Richard Adams

95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (DNF)