ETA#3: It’s January 2020 already, and I haven’t made much progress in my ever-expanding list of books that I’ve managed to hoard. But anyway, I bought a Kindle, so maybe that should help with things, no? Or not. I’m doing my second master’s degree full-time, which means that I still have a mountain pile of readings every week. But let’s see, I’ve managed to read half of a book already? Lol. So it goes. (PS: I started a 2020 reading challenge on Goodreads. Just 10 books for this year. *crosses fingers*)
ETA#2: It’s already 2017, and I’ve been reading The Little Prince and Zombies Vs. Unicorns for more than a year now. HAHA. In my defense, there was grad school and its mountain pile of readings. (But also, I’ve been reading tons and tons of YOI fan fiction. Mehehe. #notsorry) So, I guess I’ll continue this when I graduate (~hopefully~) next year. XD
ETA#1: SO, it’s already 2016. Apparently, I only read four books in 2015. HAHAHA. Whatta progress! Anyways, editing this to make it, er, a life book challenge? Or something like that. XD It’ll be a running list of the books I have to read. I’ll just add to the list books I bought recently. Haha. So it goes.
Since I’ve come to hoard books in recent years, have been unable to read them because life keeps getting in the way, and have now come to a point where I have time on my hands, maybe one of those reading challenges would be a good thing to do.
So! Challenging myself to read the following books for 2015. No definite number here because 1) these are all the unread books on my shelf; 2) this list will most likely be appended any time in the future because I like buying books whenever; and 3) hence, said challenge will most likely be a moving target (HAHA).
Posting this here for accountability. Maybe I can put this up as a sticky post or something and cross off those I’ve finished reading. Almost done with Ender in Exile, by the way! Not part of the list, though, as I’ve been reading that for most of 2014. Hahaha.
Anyway! The list~
First Meetings in the Enderverse, Orson Scott Card
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Díaz
Damned, Chuck Palahniuk
Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Lover’s Dictionary, David Levithan
Existentialism and Human Emotions, Jean-Paul Sartre
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories Volume 1, HITRECORD
The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories Volume 2, HITRECORD
The Meek One by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, JK Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne
How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Neil Gaiman
Zombies Vs. Unicorns, Black vs. Larbalestier
Attachments, Rainbow Rowell
Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
The Stranger, Albert Camus
Love Is A Mix Tape, Rob Sheffield
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
A Game of Thrones, George RR Martin
A Clash of Kings, George RR Martin
A Storm of Swords, George RR Martin
The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf
The Essential Feminist Reader
Shadow Show, Sam Weller and Mort Castle
The Casual Vacancy, JK Rowling
V for Vendetta, Alan Moore
Watchmen, Alan Moore
Life Lessons From Kierkegaard, Robert Ferguson
The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Down and Out in London and Paris, George Orwell
1984, George Orwell
The Umbrella Man and Other Stories, Roald Dahl
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ang Tundo Man May Langit Din, Andres Cristobal Cruz
A Lover’s Discourse, Roland Barthes
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Isms and Ologies: All the Movements, Ideologies and Doctrines That Have Shaped Our World, Arthur Goldwag
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
The Memory Artists, Jeffrey Moore
The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir
The Return of the King, JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien
The Godfather, Mario Puzo
Violence, Slavoj Žižek
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
Ender’s Shadow, Orson Scott Card
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, José Saramago
The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
The Edible Woman, Margaret Atwood
IQ84, Haruki Murakami
Gulag, Anne Applebaum
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: The Doll’s House, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: Dream Country, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: Fables and Reflections, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: Brief Lives, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: Worlds’ End, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, Neil Gaiman
The Sandman: The Wake, Neil Gaiman
Stonehenge, Bernard Cornwell
Freedom, Jonathan Franzen
Common Wealth, Jeffrey Sachs
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Ten Loves, Zhang Yueran
I Will Survive, Leow Yangpa
The Sleeper and the Spindle, Neil Gaiman
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy Kaling
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
One More Thing, BJ Novak
The First Bad Man, Miranda July
No Longer Human, Osamu Dazai
The Paris Review Book of People with Problems
Death with Interruptions, José Saramago
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion
The Ramayana, Elizabeth Seeger
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
Modern Romance, Aziz Ansari
Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman
Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman
The Mother of All Questions, Rebecca Solnit
Men Explain Things To Me, Rebecca Solnit
The Waves, Virginia Woolf
Dictionary Stories: Short Fictions and Other Findings, Jez Burrows
The Plot Against America, Philip Roth
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
When Women Ruled the World, Kara Cooney
Figuring, Maria Popova
The Big New Yorker Book of Dogs
The Big New Yorker Book of Cats
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
The Complete Works of HP Lovecraft
The Sea-Gull, Anton Chekhov
It Chooses You, Miranda July
Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood
The Fowl Twins, Eoin Colfer
Highfire, Eoin Colfer
The Rebel, Albert Camus
The Outsider, Albert Camus
The Fall, Albert Camus
The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus
Normal People, Sally Rooney
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief As Photos, John Berger
Fascism, Power, and Individual Rights: Escape from Freedom, To Have or To Be?, and The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Erich Fromm
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf
The Last Thing He Wanted, Joan Didion
The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion
Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara
His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
Dune, Frank Herbert
Trick Mirror, Jia Tolentino
Hell and Other Destinations, Madeleine Albright
My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante
The Story of a New Name, Elena Ferrante
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Elena Ferrante
The Story of the Lost Child, Elena Ferrante
The Lying Life of Adults, Elena Ferrante
Hunger Makes a Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein
Your Silence Will Not Protect You, Audre Lorde
The Silence of the Girls, Pat Barker
Circe, Madeline Miller
The Last of the Moon Girls, Barbara Davis
The Midnight Library, Matt Haig
The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden
The Girl in the Tower, Katherine Arden
The Winter of the Witch, Katherine Arden
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke
Jerusalem, Alan Moore
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, V.E. Schwab
Night, Elie Wiesel
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.
For most of the past two hours or so, I’ve been trying to remember this childhood snack that I always brought to school as my recess baon. It was kinda like rice crackers, ya know. It had that same crunch and the same yellowish hue. It tasted kinda sweet but at the same time, salty. It was wrapped in bright pink plastic, with yellow details on the side, and it kinda has this little imp/fairy/little man (?) drawing on the wrapper. (I dunno, hahaha)
But anyway! It’s been bugging me that I can’t remember its name nor what company produced it. Maybe people here can remember it? I dunno. Hahaha.
Paint is an awesome application to use for interpreting childhood snacks.
This feels a lot like last time when I couldn’t remember the name of a chocolate snack I used to buy when we still lived at UP. And then! I found said chocolate snack at a stall at UP’s Shopping Center:
This comes in brown, purple, yellow & white.
This time, though, I don’t think I’d be able to find this mysterious rice cracker. I shall remain hopeful, however, that I’ll remember its name. I just need a kick to the head or something. Haha.
Hokay~ Shall sleep nao. Elections will be in a couple of hours, and I still need to make a cheat sheet of the people I’ll be voting.
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful and don’t forget to make some art – write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.
I’m so sorry that I wasted your time because you really do mean a lot to me and I hope you have a very nice life because I really think you deserve it. I really do. I hope you do, too. Okay, then. Goodbye.
Okay, but a kid who’s run away from home wanders into Aziraphale’s shop while Aziraphale is out doing a blessing and Crowley is keeping an eye on the place till the angel gets back.
He’s short and dark haired and skinny in a way a healthy child really shouldn’t be. His clothes are worn and do not fit him At All. He looks about twelve. Thirteen at most.
Crowley’s slithering around the shop in snake form and doesn’t immediately notice the boy until the kid says “hello, what are you doing here?”
By hissing.
Crowley is Intrigued. He hasn’t met one of Those Humans in a very long time, and he’s never been around a child one that had the ability to talk to him like this.
So he hisses back “I live here. Whatsss your name kid?”
The boy hesitates a moment, looking around for any potential eavesdroppers. “Harry,” he hisses so quietly that Crowley just barely hears it. “Harry Potter.”
To Crowley’s increasing curiosity the boy pauses instinctively as if waiting for some sort of reaction.
Crowley just tilts his head. “Niccce to meet you Harry Potter. What are you doing here?”
When Aziraphale gets back some hours later he notices the wards on the shop have been considerably strengthened. He asks Crowley about it and the demon shrugs.
“There might be some unsavoury characters looking for our new godson so I thought I should freshen things up a bit.”
“New. Godson.”
“You’ll love him Angel! His name’s Harry, he’s asleep upstairs and he’s a self-sacrificing idiot, but not to worry, we’ll sort that out in short order.”
“New. Godson.”
“Also,” Crowley says proudly, “he’s a sarcastic little shit. I’ll barely even need to help him work on his comebacks!”
Aziraphale is initially very against this whole thing because “he’s a human child Crowley we can’t just take him!!”
“We didn’t take him Angel he walked in our front door.”
‘That’s not the point!’ *exasperated angel noises*
Aziraphale goes upstairs to look at the child that Crowley has installed in the bedroom just to make sure he’s okay.
He opens the door and quietly walks over to the boy sleeping soundly in the bed. Crowley, who is a step or two behind him, suddenly twitching in agitation.
Aziraphale Looks at the boy the way only an Angel (or demon) can Look at someone, because the boy is a runaway after all. There might be a small healing miracle or two necessary before they take him home.
And then he. Just. Freezes. The room goes cold, a terrible chill radiating from the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. Aziraphale’s expression as he looks at the boy in the bed is one of pure outrage.
“Yes,” says Crowley, and Aziraphale can hear matching white-hot fury in the demons voice. “I was about to mention … that.”
“Who dared?” Aziraphale spits, the words coming from his mouth sharp as ice. “What disgusting monster put that … that thing in a child’s head. A demon?”
Crowley shakes his head. “Don’t think so. Demons haven’t got the imagination for that. Except for me-“
“You would never!” Aziraphale exclaims cutting him off. “Even at your worst, at your most demonic, you would never sink to something like this!”
Crowley smiles crookedly, though the Angel can still see the fury in his eyes. “Thanks Angel. I know that, but it’s good to hear you say so too.”
“Anyway, as I was about to say, this has the hallmarks of humanity at *their* worst all over it.”
“You spoke to the boy,” Aziraphale says slowly, getting the urge to destroy something with his flaming sword under control. (Where *is* his sword he wonders, he’d really like to have it right now.) “Does he know?”
“Didn’t really get a chance to ask before he fell asleep,” Crowley answers. “But I doubt it. Pretty sure Harry thinks it’s just a weird scar.”
“His parents are dead, Angel,” the demon continues. “Probably due to whoever did that to him. He lives with some relatives, who even though he was obviously trying to be tactful, they still sound like utter shite.”
Aziraphale looks at him. There’s an almost pleading look in Crowley’s eyes now. The boy speaks the language of the serpent. That’s a rare gift, the angel knows, even among the practitioners of magic. And Crowley has always been undemonically soft where children are concerned. All the way back to the Ark.
The angel sighs. “I suppose,” he says slowly, “that it would be irresponsible to just send the boy off with that thing in his head. We ought to miracle it out at least.”
“Exactly,” Crowley nods emphatically. “Even with it miracled out he’s going to need a few days to recover,” he says reasonably, and Aziraphale can feel himself giving in. “You know how magic users are. We’ll just keep an eye on him. For a few days that’s all.”
“Just for a few days,” the angel echoes, idly wondering what kind of décor he should put in the spare room. Soothing colours, he decides.
Perhaps he’ll wait until Harry wakes up. They can go for lunch somewhere nice and discuss what he’d like. Maybe a nice tartan bedspread.
Aziraphale and Crowley showing up to Hogwarts and announcing to Dumbledore that he’s hiring them.
Crowley is Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. He reads one textbook and figures he’ll pick it up as he goes. That’s exactly what happens.
He’s also excellent at teaching, much better at finding the proper line between sarcasm and terror than Snape is, and does not bullshit the students. They love him.
Curse? What curse? There is no curse on the DADA position because it cannot do anything in the face of a demon’s complete and utter disbelief in it.
Aziraphale walks around the castle, encounters the ghost of Professor Binns, and helps him along to the appropriate afterlife. Students are very surprised to see a living being teaching History of Magic, but not the slightest bit unhappy about it.
Quirrel!mort tries to show up and Aziraphale and Crowley take one diabolically-and-divinely-powered look at him and in unison snap their fingers. Voldemort finds himself back in Albania without a body and Quirrel blinks his eyes at a nice French Riviera beach resort and decides to extend his sabbatical.
Crowley’s told Harry about other Parselmouths, and Aziraphale takes him to Diagon Alley, and when the Sorting Hat gets to Harry he has no preconceived objections to going into Slytherin, so into Slytherin he goes.
Harry Potter has a nice, uneventful year with no worries about Voldemort, Sorcerer’s Stones, dead unicorns or anything else.
He also doesn’t get on the quidditch team that year, but that’s okay.
Professor Crowley has plants in his classroom and office. They’re lush and they’re terrified. Neville Longbottom takes notice of this and Crowley catches him murmuring soothing words to one of them. Neville explains that they’re afraid and he’s trying to help them.
Crowley closes his eyes and has a long talk with himself (he stops time so it only takes a moment, but in actuality there’s about three hours’ worth of arguments and thrown objects). Then he opens his eyes and says, politely and without even a touch of malice, “I appreciate the assistance. Perhaps you can calm them.”
After Neville’s talked to (and about) the entire plant population of Crowley’s classroom and office, and wandered off beaming brightly, Crowley says, “I am choosing this. Don’t even think about getting smug,” and stalks off to do violence to a plate of fish and chips.
Professor Aziraphale spends the first few weeks of school making tea for a little first-year Gryffindor who hasn’t made any friends yet. After a bit, he starts inviting other students who share an interest in academic studies, and Hermione starts making friends.
Crowley is a bit more proactive. Letting a troll loose in the dungeons so that Harry and his friend Ron can save her from it is a nice little piece of diabolical work, and anyway, those toilet stalls were hideous.
He wasn’t expecting Draco to tag along with Harry, but the four of them worked together pretty nicely, and, well, there are some things you can’t do without becoming friends, and knocking out a mountain troll is one of them.
Aziraphale congratulates Crowley on the diabolical work of undermining Draco’s faith in his family’s pureblood ideology by inspiring his friendship with a muggleborn. Crowley preens for a solid week.
On Harry’s twelfth birthday, a house-elf shows up and insists that Harry cannot go to Hogwarts because he’ll die. Aziraphale and Crowley ask a few questions and Aziraphale promises to keep Harry safe and Crowlefollows Dobby home to Malfoy Manor to oops Lucius into handing Dobby a sock so that Dobby is free to protect Harry Potter from whatever the danger is.
Back at school, Aziraphale makes tea for a shy first year again and can’t help but read the recent possession of her the day after Halloween.
Pilfering the diary from her is easy. Destroying a book is harder, so he has Crowley do it.
A flaming sword once belonging to the Angel of the Eastern Gate of the Garden of Eden is easily able to defeat a horcrux.
Crowley drops in to the Chamber of Secrets and has words with the basilisk, which is all too happy to get out into the Forbidden Forest and eat some spiders.
“I’m helping, Angel. I’m making the Forbidden Forest more forbidding.”
“If the account given in Genesis is really true, ought we not, after all, to thank this serpent? He was the first schoolmaster, the first advocate of learning, the first enemy of ignorance, the first to whisper in human ears the sacred word liberty, the creator of ambition, the author of modesty, of inquiry, of doubt, of investigation, of progress and of civilization.”
The first image was traced from a screencap :D
Little comparison of how I draw the characters compared to the original source ^^
Wow, their hair is like, VASTLY different! XD
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