And the war came with all the poise of a cannonball

I just got back from a dramatic reading of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War at the Whitney Humanities Center—or at least the four speeches of the debate at Sparta and Perikles' funeral oration, as introduced in a short lecture by Donald Kagan—and it was awesome. Yay for rhetoric. I will try to present some sort of coherent reaction tomorrow; for now, I will note only that I am almost certain they used J.M. Dent's translation at least as a template, and I got this meme from shewhomust and darcydodo.

(. . . for something completely different . . .)

Listed below are the fifty most significant science fiction / fantasy novels, 1953—2002, according to the Science Fiction Book Club: bold the ones you have read, italicize the ones you started but never finished, underline the ones you own but never started, strike out the ones you hated, and put an asterisk beside the ones you love. Cut because, look, it's fifty novels!
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Reaction 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is one of the most significant sfantasy novels of the last half-century?

Reaction 2: I think a list of my fifty most significant books would look quite different.

Reaction 3: Not tonight!