[  Mood: Embarrased ]
[  Currently: Listening to My Son Watch Justice League ]
Hey! Remember me? Yeah, well I got busy this week and took a little break from the blogging but not the reading.

So where am I in Lord of the Rings? Well after a long bit about Frodo living in Bilbo’s house, and Gandalf wandering through the wilderness, we get Frodo, Sam and Merry running through the forest being chased by Ringwraiths.

Not exactly as shown

During this flight, there is much hardship, with the running through bushes and the forgoing of inns with really good beer. This is apparently a tragedy for Merry, in a theme that I am sure will reappear in the book. Hobbits, like me, don’t travel well.

No beer for you. Come back 5 years.

Our Hobbit trio meets up with some elves, who they spend the night with. And in a way we are all so familiar with, the one night stand ends with the Hobbits waking up in the morning to find the elves gone!

Again, not exactly as pictured

I left off just as the trio arrived at Farmer Maggot’s, where Frodo spent much of his youth pilfering. Since then Farmer Maggot has acquired three lovely puppies named Grip, Fang and Wolf that help scare away pilferers. Apparently Farmer Maggot doesn’t remember the pilfering. How nice!

Nice puppies.

So that’s it. Hopefully I can check in in the next few days and update you on my progress.

And here you thought I was only reading LoTR. No, no, I am still reading far too many books. Recently, I just finished the most recent Kim Harrison book, Pale Demon.

Kim Harrison has delivered again in her Hollows series. This volume see Rachel travelling to San Francisco to try and stop her shunning by the coven. Along for the ride are the usual group of Ivy and Jenks. Add to the mix is Trent, who needs to make it to the west coast for reasons he’s not saying. But when an early demon experiment at day walking is released, Rachel realizes there is far more going on than just her avoiding a shunning. Trent is promising that he has a plan and he can protect her, but can Rachel trust him? And what about the demon Al who is eager for Rachel to join him as a full fledged demon in the ever after? Rachel has a lot to deal with.

What is so special about Kim Harrison as an author is that she is not afraid to have her characters grow and change. This holds true for Pale Demon. Rachel, Ivy, Trent, Al, Pierce, Jenks, heck even Al, experience some growth. And things are different at the end of the volume, making your investment worth your time. There are many a contemporary author that could learn from Harrison. Scratch that, should learn from her.

Great read.

[  Mood: Happy ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
So last night I finished the first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring. So this means I got to see Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday, although it appeared to be more of Bilbo’s celebrations. And then his little "joke" and Gandalf’s getting him to leave the ring behind before he disappeared. We also get to see the power of the ring, with Bilbo calling it his precious. Foreshadowing!!!

Oh, look. It’s in my pocket again! Bet you didn’t think that was going to happen?

I did find the description of every single type of firework to be a little boring, did we really need to know every type Gandalf shot off? With graphic descriptions of colour and shape? I get it, his fireworks are great. So great that he is famous for them, even though no living Hobbit has ever seen them. Even for Tolkein this was wordy. It made what is essentially a page and a half, feel two times longer.

Skip ahead a bit, Brother Tolkein.

The scenes with Frodo trying to sort out the inheritance were enjoyable. Clearly Tolkein was working through some issues or things that he had seen. We also get our first glance at Merry and Sam.

So not too bad. Until tomorrow fellow readers.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
So Hobbit Hashish has come and gone, and can I say I am little disappointed with the length of this section. It was too short. (I realize the irony of this statement people. Don’t yell all at once.) I was psyched for much more.

P.S. This is a shirt. You may need to buy it.

Then Tolkein veers into Shire is governed and a bit of a summary of the Hobbit. In the end of the last section he does some name dropping. Merry and Pippin are mentioned. (Or rather their full names of Meriadoc Brandybuck and Peregrin Took.) But here’s the thing, I only know they are Merry and Pippin because I saw the movies. The first time reader would have no idea who these guys were and what little nuggets Tolkein is giving you. Same for the reference to Sam at this point.

To put it in terms, I understand, it would be as if Rowling put the platform epilogue at the beginning of Philosopher’s Stone.

I finished my reading with mention of Bilbo and Frodo’s joint parties approaching.

So good progress last night. Until tomorrow fair readers.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
Sad to say that not much reading was done last night. I slip between the sheets and sleep took over. Hard.

What I did read was the first bit of Tolkein’s prologue. Still not in the main action of the story yet, but boy did I learn a lot about Hobbit history. <sarcasm> My favourite part? Where he tells us where the Hobbits used to live, but then tells us they don’t live there any more.</sarcasm> Then why tell us J.R.R.?

Just started the pipeweed part when sleep claimed me. Might it be the history of Hobbit hashish!?!?!

Until tomorrow fellow readers!

[  Mood: Cool ]
[  Currently: Eating Breakfast ]
Perhaps choosing to start this project the evening of the last day of school was not a good idea. Especially given that I had to pack up my office and move out of my school by 6:00 pm last night. My back, already mad at having to sit on the floor for the Primary Assembly, was further grumpy at having to lift and bend.

So you can understand that as I nestled into the bed with my copy of the Fellowship of the Ring, that I just wanted to drift into oblivion. But silly me had made a commitment on the web. If I didn’t read, someone on the Interwebs was going to whine and tsk. So to avoid a public shaming, I read.

Now before I get too deep into this entry. (Too late?) I want to go over which version of the book I am reading. It is the 50th Anniversary Edition with a white cover, exactly like the one below.

As I worked through the note on the text, note on the 50th anniversary and the author’s introduction to the second edition, I noticed something. For a book that I have abandoned on more than one occasion because it spends too much time on the history of a mountain range, this part of the book spends far too much time on the history of the spelling errors that crept into various editions. Apparently, well meaning editors and typesetters changed words like elvish to elfish because they didn’t understand that Tolkein was inventing new languages.

Which is kind of fascinating, but did we need to spend 26 pages on it? I felt like I was in an Oliver Stone movie. YOU IN THE BACK!! DID YOU UNDERSTAND THAT?!?!?!? Tolkein’s note for the second edition would have been enough.

So I am ready to start the main part of the story. That will be today’s effort. But before I do that, I need to grab my post it notes so I can mark words and phrases that catch my attention. Like "emendations", which I had no idea what it meant. And I was too tired to get up and look it up. (BTW: It means the act or practice of emending (Don’t you hate when dictionaries do that? Did your English teacher not tell you to not use a variation of the word you am looking up in the definition? Read a little further on the page and you will see an alteration designed to correct or improve.)

Until tomorrow, people.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
So ladies and gentlemen, the summer is here. It is time for me to begin my mega project:

UBALSTECHA INTENDS TO READ LORD OF THE RINGS

That’s right, I have never, ever, ever made it through J.R.R. Tolkein’s magnum opus. I usually get caught by that damn mountain range chapter. BORING!!!!! But this summer, I have committed to try to read the whole trilogy. And I have committed to BLOG about it. And probably WHINE about it too.

I commit to reading LoTR for at least 30 minutes a day. I will use this blog to keep you up to date with my progress. Feel free to read at the same glacial pace I will. Shout words of encouragement or derision. Up to you really.

Off for my first 30 minutes.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
[ Currently: Thinking about Bed ]
I stumbled across this book while transferring my book collection from Visual Bookshelf to Goodreads. Intrigued, I ILL’d it.

This graphic novel starts out slow, with the first part being a little too hagiographic and a little too, isn’t the US great! But once the work settles into the meat of the constitution, the pace picks up and gets much better. This is not a clause by clause graphic explanation of the constitution, but rather a look at prominent sections, clauses and/or amendments and a smidgen of the history that lead up to them.

This would be a good book for those taking a U.S. civic course who are looking for a more visual way to explore the constitution. Or for sending to your local political nutbar who claims to know the Constitution, but continually misquotes it. The book comes with a suggested reading list for those who want to explore more.

[  Mood: In Love ]
[  Currently: Eating Vegerarian Bagel from Kettleman’s ]
I have not been shy in my distaste with the hero I describe as "The Big Blue Boyscout", yet I was so impressed by the first All-Star Superman that I made sure to pick up the second, and last installment, of this saga. I wasn’t disappointed.

Volume 1 of Grant Morrison’s work was a brilliant look at what would Superman do if he knew he was dying. Volume 2 continues this exploration, with Superman doing the truly amazing, like journeying to the Bizarro Universe and defeating some long lost Kryptonians, while also having time for the simple, almost mundane stopping a young woman from jumping off a building. Morrison even leaves a ray of hope at the end for those that want to see Superman’s return, making him Arthurian in stature.

By focusing on the Superman mythos, rather than his place in the DC universe as a whole, Morrison has created an almost intimate portrait of the Man of Steel. Through Morrison’s tale, we see the nobility of Superman in a way that has rarely been captured in comics or on film. He is an honourable man trying to do the right thing in a universe that doesn’t reward that kind of behaviour.

This is an excellent graphic novel and worth taking time for.

[  Mood: Sleepy ]
Let’s be blunt, Twilight did for YA supernatural romance what Harry Potter did for Juvenile Fantasy. Thanks to Stephanie Myer, we have tens, if not hundreds of new titles and authors flooding the scene. Even established Fantasy/Sci-Fi authors are turning to the field. And who wouldn’t given the burgeoning sales?

Into this burgeoning field, walks Maggie Stiefvater with her humongous bestseller, Shiver.

When Grace was a little girl, she was attacked by a pack of wolves. One of the pack, defended her, driving the others away. Since then, Grace has watched that yellow eyed wolf. And he has watched back.

So when Sam walks into her life, with his yellow eyes, she can not help but to be entranced. She knows there is more to him, that he is linked to her wolf. What she doesn’t realize is that meeting him will change her life forever.

Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out from the description above, that Sam is a the yellow-eyed wolf. And author Stiefvater is smart enough to know that trying to keep the reading in the dark about that would not work. Instead, we get alternating points of view, Sam and Grace, to move the story along.

Stiefvater has created a supernatural YA romance book, that is Twilight without the vampires. She explores the passion and immediacy of teen romance without getting too graphic, and plays on the temperature idea in the title quite nicely in the story. There is also the requisite absentee parents. (Because how else is Grace going to have sex with her boyfriend in her own bed?) Finally, the possibility of Sam transforming into a werewolf forever is a very nice metaphor for growing up and losing your child forever. I wish she would have pushed that last theme more in the book.

Overall, this was a good book, but not a great book. Some people will look upon this as Furry literature for teens. And they aren’t half wrong on that.