The twenty-fifth book: #25 Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
Here is another large work - although I swear most adaptations only do the first part, on Lilliput, while ignoring some of the later (sometimes more esoteric) chapters. It's true that the book goes weirder as time goes on, and gets more philosophical, but there's some more interesting reflection in that as well. There are still more interesting action parts in the last fourth of the book, although there were bits where the philosophical pondering got me a bit. What doesn't help there is that a lot of it covers British politics of the day, something I don't have much of a connection with. Still, read on past the famous bits, as the book stays quite good - and in a way gets better, with more of a message.
The thirty-first album: #31 Ray Charles - Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music
Again, a nice change from the jazzier albums that have been appearing repeatedly. The country/R&B album comes out swinging, nice and upbeat in a style that I felt I needed. It slows down in the second song, but in a good way. Obviously thiese sounds are no longer modern, but Ray Charles was clearly trying out different genres at the time, and succeeds here in making an enjoyable, engaging album.