Judi’s Reviews > A Reader's Book of Days: True Tales from the Lives and Works of Writers for Every Day of the Year > Status Update
Judi
is on page 28 of 448
January 23
1892 The Spectator on Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: "We confess that this is a story which, in site of its almost unrivalled power, is very difficult to read, because in almost every page the mind rebels against the steady assumptions of the author, and shrinks from the untrue picture of a universe so blank and godless."
— Mar 11, 2026 08:33AM
1892 The Spectator on Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles: "We confess that this is a story which, in site of its almost unrivalled power, is very difficult to read, because in almost every page the mind rebels against the steady assumptions of the author, and shrinks from the untrue picture of a universe so blank and godless."
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Judi’s Previous Updates
Judi
is on page 55 of 448
February 16
1985 There was no single day when John M. Hull went blind. From childhood, the dark shadows in his vision waxed and waned, but they finally grew until he could no longer tell day from night. His memoir, Touching the Rock, begins after that point, a record of complete blindness written by someone who once knew full sight but found himself forgetting what it was like. It's a modestly extraordinary book...
— 10 hours, 29 min ago
1985 There was no single day when John M. Hull went blind. From childhood, the dark shadows in his vision waxed and waned, but they finally grew until he could no longer tell day from night. His memoir, Touching the Rock, begins after that point, a record of complete blindness written by someone who once knew full sight but found himself forgetting what it was like. It's a modestly extraordinary book...
Judi
is on page 54 of 448
February 15
2001 The wheels were already starting to loosen on the Enron juggernaut when new CEO Jeff Skilling spent an agitated twenty minutes on the phone with Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, insisting that his company's finances were "not a black box" before hanging up on her. On this morning, the next day, Enron CFO Andy Fastow flew to New York to unconvincingly address her concerns, finally ending their...
— 12 hours, 38 min ago
2001 The wheels were already starting to loosen on the Enron juggernaut when new CEO Jeff Skilling spent an agitated twenty minutes on the phone with Fortune reporter Bethany McLean, insisting that his company's finances were "not a black box" before hanging up on her. On this morning, the next day, Enron CFO Andy Fastow flew to New York to unconvincingly address her concerns, finally ending their...
Judi
is on page 53 of 448
February 14
1971 In Oaxaca, Mexico, Clifford Irving got the call he had flown there to receive, from a "friend of Octavio's, "the code name for Howard Hughes, the pathologically reclusive billionaire who soon agreed—without shaking hands of course—to collaborate with Irving on an authorized biography. Or at least that's the story Irving told his editors at McGraw-Hill a few days later, leading them to eagerly...
— 14 hours, 35 min ago
1971 In Oaxaca, Mexico, Clifford Irving got the call he had flown there to receive, from a "friend of Octavio's, "the code name for Howard Hughes, the pathologically reclusive billionaire who soon agreed—without shaking hands of course—to collaborate with Irving on an authorized biography. Or at least that's the story Irving told his editors at McGraw-Hill a few days later, leading them to eagerly...
Judi
is on page 52 of 448
February 13
1945 ... ABOUT IT"—before arriving at the jumbled and fragmented form of Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel that, amid its time travel and green spacemen, returns relentlessly to the inexplicable carnage of those days, echoed in the life of a time-traveling American prisoner who knows that "I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth 1976," the anniversary of the bombing.
— 15 hours, 29 min ago
1945 ... ABOUT IT"—before arriving at the jumbled and fragmented form of Slaughterhouse-Five, a novel that, amid its time travel and green spacemen, returns relentlessly to the inexplicable carnage of those days, echoed in the life of a time-traveling American prisoner who knows that "I, Billy Pilgrim, will die, have died, and always will die on February thirteenth 1976," the anniversary of the bombing.
Judi
is on page 51 of 448
February 12
1976 ... for which Vargas Llosa had written the screenplay. "Brother!" cried García Márquez and raised his arms for an embrace, but Vargas Llosa punched his old friend in the face and knocked him to the ground, shouting, "That's for what you said"—or "did", according to other witnesses—"to Patricia," Mario's wife. They were the last words either writer—both Nobel laureates now—has spoken to the other.
— Mar 23, 2026 01:29PM
1976 ... for which Vargas Llosa had written the screenplay. "Brother!" cried García Márquez and raised his arms for an embrace, but Vargas Llosa punched his old friend in the face and knocked him to the ground, shouting, "That's for what you said"—or "did", according to other witnesses—"to Patricia," Mario's wife. They were the last words either writer—both Nobel laureates now—has spoken to the other.
Judi
is on page 50 of 448
February 11
1917 ..."well, civet cat that has taken to street walking." But their short friendship was intense and immeasurably influential, each finding in the other a woman she could speak with about her work as with no one else, and when Woolf learned of Mansfield's death from tuberculosis in 1923, she wrote, "it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won't read it. Katherine's my rival no longer."
— Mar 22, 2026 08:31AM
1917 ..."well, civet cat that has taken to street walking." But their short friendship was intense and immeasurably influential, each finding in the other a woman she could speak with about her work as with no one else, and when Woolf learned of Mansfield's death from tuberculosis in 1923, she wrote, "it seemed to me there was no point in writing. Katherine won't read it. Katherine's my rival no longer."
Judi
is on page 49 of 448
February 10
1879 ...bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splat-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police"—and righteous in the cause of the poor, the Jerilderie Letter has a raw and vivid charisma that gave Peter Carey a voice for The True History of the Kelly Gang, his Booker Prize-winning 2000 re-creation of Kelly's short and infamous career.
— Mar 22, 2026 07:17AM
1879 ...bellied magpie legged narrow hipped splat-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or English landlords which is better known as Officers of Justice or Victorian Police"—and righteous in the cause of the poor, the Jerilderie Letter has a raw and vivid charisma that gave Peter Carey a voice for The True History of the Kelly Gang, his Booker Prize-winning 2000 re-creation of Kelly's short and infamous career.
Judi
is on page 48 of 448
February 9
1927 "Having no longer, I think, any claims to beauty," Virginia Woolf had her hair "shingled," that is, cut. "In front there is no change; behind I'm like the rump of a partridge."
— Mar 22, 2026 06:30AM
1927 "Having no longer, I think, any claims to beauty," Virginia Woolf had her hair "shingled," that is, cut. "In front there is no change; behind I'm like the rump of a partridge."
Judi
is on page 47 of 448
February 8
1926... set billions of years in the future: the winner of an Arsenal vs. Real Madrid match, a treaty between Turkey and Japan, and, most poignantly, the sort of question that novelists have to decide every day: "On February 8, 1926, at Santhià, in the Province of Vercelli ... Signoraina Guiseppina Pensotti, aged twenty-two, leaves her home at quarter to six in the afternoon: does she turn right or left?"
— Mar 21, 2026 12:37PM
1926... set billions of years in the future: the winner of an Arsenal vs. Real Madrid match, a treaty between Turkey and Japan, and, most poignantly, the sort of question that novelists have to decide every day: "On February 8, 1926, at Santhià, in the Province of Vercelli ... Signoraina Guiseppina Pensotti, aged twenty-two, leaves her home at quarter to six in the afternoon: does she turn right or left?"
Judi
is on page 46 of 448
February 7
1968 ...It took dominion everywhere." for some time the feeling of an uneasy, bunkered truce held there, while reporters like Herr read The Battle of Dienbienphu and Hell in a Very Small Placce to prepare for the siege they expected, but on this day the m old got darker. A nearby Special Forces camp called Langvei had been overrun, with "weapons and tactics which no one imagined" the North Vietnamese had.
— Mar 17, 2026 11:19AM
1968 ...It took dominion everywhere." for some time the feeling of an uneasy, bunkered truce held there, while reporters like Herr read The Battle of Dienbienphu and Hell in a Very Small Placce to prepare for the siege they expected, but on this day the m old got darker. A nearby Special Forces camp called Langvei had been overrun, with "weapons and tactics which no one imagined" the North Vietnamese had.
