Letters From St Nick

Have I mentioned I'm spoiled?  Hubbin got me a new top of the line tablet to help me read and write while I'm away from home...cause apparently I am never ever ever home any more.  Anyways, one of the many perks of the new tablet...or the Sketchbook as my nephew calls it (Hubbin also got me an super cool awesome bestest ever cover for said tablet) is the amazing resolution and screen size.  So to test out the abilities of my new toy I found and downloaded Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien, which is not really a story but a collection of letters written by the famous J.R.R. Tolkien to his children over the course of many years.

Normally this is the sort of book I would only buy in hard copy as the whole point of it is to be able to appreciate the detailed and magical letters and illustrations...but with the new tablet I can see everything perfectly (full disclosure, I'm so totally gonna still buy this in hard copy lol)!  Anyways back to the letters.  This isn't really gonna be a rambling 'cause there is really no story per se,  but I'm still going to expound on some of my favorite stuff...'cause it's Christmas week...and it's my blog :-)  There are a couple of things about this collection that really struck me.  The foremost is the amazing ability Tolkien had to create a world in such a short time and space.  In the course of apx 25-30 letters this guy created a whole entire world populated with developed characters and it's own story line.

 I find this to be further testament to this mans brilliance at creating worlds and story's, this my friend is the real deal.   The envelopes, the letters and the accompanying illustrations, all done by Tolkien are just absolute insane.  Seriously the time, effort and eye to detail these little bits and pieces add to the over all feel are stunning.   It is kind of hard to believe that they were ever only intended for his children.  Which brings me to my last point.  This guy clearly adored his kids.  Even when the older ones started to grow up, he still mentioned them multiple times.  This whole endevor was so clearly a labor of love and it makes my heart happy to know that this talented man was also a phenomenal father.  This collection is the perfect Christmas read, it is quick, simple, beautiful, heartwarming and I will probably peruse it for many years to come.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Gandalf's Fireworks

Happy Fourth of July to those of you who live in the US.  Here are some of my favorite literary fireworks (I know there from the movie...but that's ok)  Here are Gandalf's Fireworks from The Fellowship of the Ring

"squibs, crackers, backarrapas, sparklers, torches, dwarf-candles, elf-fountains, goblin-barkers and thunderclaps. They were all superb."

Happy Reading Everybody!

Online Extra's

One of the best things about a good series is the world building.  Some authors have created such complete worlds that they cannot put all of their ideas and stories into the actual books.  I love it when this happens 'cause now a days they tend to create online sites for all the extras!  To me reading through some of these sites makes the books that much richer and more complete.  Chalk up another plus for technology.  Here are some of my favorite extra's sites.

The Harry Potter Lexicon - This all inclusive website gives us page by page info, extras and links to even more Harry Potter goodness.  There is so many cross links and rabbit hole possibilities that I can (and have) spent almost as much time clicking through the site as reading the books.

Pottermore - Just like the name implies, this site is more of Harry Potter.  More illustrations, more stories, more details, more interactions.  It is a great way for those of us who love the series to continue to explore the rich wizarding universe.

InCryptid Field Guide - This handy little field guide give those of us who want to delve into the varied and rich history of Cryptids in Seanan McGuires IncCryptid world need look no further then her website.  Add to this a great listing and description of the series books and a whole TON of short stories (seriously gonna have to take a sick day to read them all) makes this site a massively cool extension of an awesomly great series.

A Wheel of Time Wiki - Anybody who has read the Wheel of Time series can tell you that as awesome as it is, a guide is definitely needed (unless you have a photographic memory) to try and keep the people, cultures, places and story lines straight.  I had a friend who tried to do this using colored pennies but had to stop after he almost when bankrupt (teeheehee).  This guide is much easier and bit less bulky.

Tolkien Gateway - When Tolkien wrote his famous Lord of the Rings trilogy, he intended it to be one piece in a larger mythology...that he then proceeded to write.  If one has the time and enough pots of coffee you can discover on of the most detailed worlds in literary existence, with each story and character linking to each other in fantastic ways.  This wiki helps us keep all the strands of this beautiful tapestry from getting to tangled.

Dragonriders of Pern - One of my first introductions to a series where the world was as important as the story and characters, the books of Anne McCaffery and Pern in particular have inspired my imagination and fueled my devouring of books like no other series.  This wiki gives us just a bit more information, and a bit more time in the world I love so very much.

There are a ton other great sites dedicated to other literary worlds of awesome that I can't wait to explore...so off I go down the rabbit hole, you all start on these and we will meet back here and talk ok?  Happy Reading Everybody!

Water And Wizards

You know those books you know you should read, the ones by the authors you are pretty sure you are gonna love, the ones that you see on the shelves of your local bookstore, reviewed favorably by all your trusted sources and raved about by all your closest reading buddies, the ones that will probably become one of your favorites...if you could just pick it up an read it. So then finally one day you do pick it up and read it and then you beat yourself up for taking so long to pick up one of your new favorite books, WHY WHY WHY you groan to yourself, why did I take so long to read this, I could have read the rest of the series by now, I could have reread this by now, I could have gushed to everybody who would listen to this by now...why why why?!? That folks is how I felt about A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, yep it has taken me more years then I care to admit to finally read this gem and I will tell you why shortly, but first as always SPOILERS AHEAD!

A young boy dwelling in a northern island called Gont is found to have great wizarding potential.  He is taught by the local witch and saves his village from eastern Kargard raiders who have crossed on of the many oceans and seas to raid the boys little village.  He calls down a fog so thick that the villagers can escape and the many of the invaders are killed in the confusion.  The boy (who calls himself Sparrowhawk) is then taken to be taught by the hermit wizard Ogion who gives him his true name which is Ged.  Ged learns quickly and soon chafes under the slow pace that Ogion appears to be teaching him, culminating in him showing off to a local girl by summoning a spirit for the world beyond.  Ogion tells Ged that he has a choice, he can stay and continue to learn from Ogion at a slow pace, but will learn great control along the way, or he can leave and sail for Roke, where wizards are trained under the Archmage and his associates.  As much as Ged loves his master, he is young and hungry for power and chooses to leave.  Ged gets to Roke and is accepted as a pupil, and there he meets two people who will play two very different roles in his life.  The first is Jasper an older boy who seems to always be not quit mocking Ged, always challenging him, making him feel young and stupid, but not in an obvious way.  The other is Vetch, the big man from Iffish who is becomes Ged's

steadfast friend.  Ged learns quickly, always hungry for more knowledge and more power.  This all comes out when Jasper who has been awarded the title of sorcerer challenges Ged, resulting in Ged summoning what he ends up calling the Shadow, a twisted, deformed monster that hungers to take over Ged's body and use his powers for evil and destruction.  Ged is severely wounded and the Archmage dies protecting him.  A new Archmage is chosen, telling the finally recovered Ged that he must stay of Roke as that is the only place the Shadow cannot get to him. Ged stays and returns to his learning, but at a much slower, much more cautious pace.  He eventually earns his wizard staff and goes out into the world to earn his keep.  He ends up being the wizard to a small fishing village in the west of the world, very close to the island of Pendor which houses a dragon and his spawn.  The village is worried that when the dragons spawn get older, they will sate their voracious appetites by eating the villagers.  Ged works and lives among the people, until he starts to sense his Shadow, he knows he cannot stay and endanger the villagers, yet he cannot leave them defenseless against the dragons either. He decides to go to the island of Pendor and take care of the problem head on.  He defeats several of the young dragons and confronts the father dragon with his true name (in this world any who know a person or things true name has mastery over it, this is the real study of wizards).  The dragon tries to bargain with Ged, offering to tell him the Shadows true name, but Ged refuses and instead exacts an oath that the dragon or his offspring will never harm the villagers.  Ged then sails hither and yon, attempting to flee the Shadow.  He ends up in Osskill, a frozen island to the north where he has a run in with the Shadow, who uses Ged's name and saps him of all power.  He ends up in the care of Serret and her old husband the lord of the castle.  Serret shows him a stone that appears to be all powerful and tells him that it can tell him the name of his Shadow.  Ged realizes that the stone is actually a
prison for a malevolent spirit that has already taken in Serret and her husband for its own uses.  Ged refuses the offer of power and flees.  He sails to various islands, learning and processing life, eventually ending up on his old home island of Gont where his old master shows him that he will need to confront his Shadow if he is to ever have any sort of life.  Ged takes this to heart and instead of running starts pursuing his shadow.  After chasing it hither and yon (I love that phrase) Ged ends up on the island of Iffrish and meets up with his old friend Vetch. Together they set sail past the last known island to the south east and into the open ocean. Eventually Ged finds his Shadow and names it using his own name, finally figuring out that the Shadow he called up so long ago is actually part of him, and by naming it his true name he assumes mastery over himself.  The two friends sail home, thus starting the Earthsea Cycle and the adventures of Ged a wizard of Earthsea.

Obviously there is a whole lot of rich detail that has been left out of the synopsis.  This book is actually not all that long, but the story and the words and the imagery are just packed in like a delicious box full of chocolates.  There are a couple of reasons that it took me so long to pick this book up, the first being I had read a couple short stories of hers and while I enjoyed them, they seemed a bit dense and hard to get into and I have read "classics" that are no more then pretty words that do not add up to anything special.  This was not the case for this book.  In this case I think the full novel length of this book is much more suited to the style of prose that Ms. Le Guin employs, it is like the world of Earthsea itself a prose that swells and ebbs just like the ocean, and having enough pages for this full cycle of words to be expressed works much better then in a short story (in my own little opinion).  I will however go back and read some of the short stories now that I have a handle of the rhythem of the authors prose and see if it comes across differently. The second reason it took me a while is that there was no "hook" to get me excited to read it, I knew I should for all the reasons in the opening paragraph, but there was nothing that I had heard about that made me go "oh I have to read that right now!".  Of course now that I have read it, well I still feel the same way.  See this book is very subtle and not a really in your face type of work.  To me it is more of a story, or a piece of a long saga, and less of a book, which I love!  In some ways it reminds me of what Tolkien was trying to do with his Middle Earth saga and that is create a whole mythos for a world.  This wizard Ged we are told right away is a great and mighty epic wizard of fame and awesomeness, but the story we read is his personal journey to become the eventual legend. There is also a taste of C.S. Lewis in her prose, in the
actual traveling and interactions of Ged. This is not in any way to say that she is copying these authors, or that she has no style of her own, quit the opposite Ms. Le Guin has a very unique and beautiful writing style that is all her own, any references I make are just points of good writing that I think any good author needs to hit to be considered a writer worthy of praise. I loved that the struggle of the main character was not an epic violent battle of good vs. evil with a whole war to tear the world of Earthsea apart.  In fact the author purposely did not have her world at war, or any major world wide struggle, which is so prevalent in high fantasy.  The story however did not lag, it was still a battle of sorts, and the out come of the struggle was still as dire as any war, it was just more about a powerful man knowing himself and using that knowledge to defeat the dark parts of himself. This book is one of those where the setting is almost a character itself.  This world of Earthsea is just that, a place that is mostly water, where the land is all of these islands, there are no major landmasses like we think of, just greater and lesser islands. This influences a lot of the story in a very positive way (also keep the map in the front of the book handy to help keep all the places straight).  I also loved that nobody was white (Ok the barbarian invaders where white in a Viking sort of way, but that is it).  The hero's, the women, the men, the children, everybody was some shade of brown or black 'cause that is just how it is and especially in the era these were written, in the hey day of epic fantasy, non-white hero' were not (and sadly still are not) the norm. This point of her world is not pounded into our heads, this is not a "hey look I'm being awesome by writing about brown people" type of book, this is just how it is and I love it.  Ok so this post is getting to be as long as the book so I will attempt to wrap it up.  As I am sure you can tell, I really enjoyed this book.  It is powerful, yet subtle, epic, yet personal, involves a whole world, but is about the individual, there is magic, friendship, oceans, sailing, learning, jealousy, dragons, family, enemies, everything you could want in a book without it feeling crowded or stuffed. It is beautiful and sticks in your head and will go on my favorites shelf along with the rest of the series that I am now on my way to the book store to pick up.  I give it 9 out of 10 islands in an endless sea.

What books do you know you should read that you haven't?  What is stopping you from reading those books? Do I know how to ramble or what?

Stupid Kate

Hello all and Merry Christmas eve x 364.  I hope everybody had a wonderful and book filled Christmas, I know I certainly did.  I got spoiled rotten with B&N and Amazon gift card, bookends, Ikea gift cards (for more book shelves to put my new books and bookends on), book ornaments, book related toys, and of course new books!  Needless to say my little bookworm heart is full to the brim.  To top off my literary holiday Hubbin took me to see the second installment of the Hobbit movie trilogy based on the book The Hobbit by my buddy J.R.R. Tolkien.  I had seen the first one last year and loved it, still wasn't sure why this little book needed to be made into three movies, but hey it is gorgeous and well done so no real complaints on the first movie.  I loved the lighter feel of The Hobbit compared to the pretty dark and sometimes
depressing (yet awesome and EPIC) Lord of the Rings series in both book and movie form.  The Hobbit sets up the potential world ending doom and gloom events of the LotR trilogy in a more, hmmm I'm not sure how to put it without taking something away...I guess the Hobbit is a bit more personal, we see the beginnings of whats to come, but for the most part the quest to recover the Dwarven treasure is more about individual beings and families then it is about saving the WHOLE WORLD.  This gives a bit more room for some hope and fun.  The casting for the first movie was fairly spot on and kept to the book as much as any epic movie can (that is not to say it remained purely faithful by any stretch, just that I could actually tell what book the movie was made from.). And can I just say the Misty Mountains song is sublime!  All of this to say I was very much looking forward to the second movie in the series, I was especially excited to see the dragon Smaug as I LOVED him in the book (what can I say I'm a sucker for dragons).  And then I watched it...As always spoilers ahead.

I am not going to rehash the whole plot of this movie here, I will save that for when I reread the book, I am mostly writing this to vent, so apologies for the scatter shot writing :-)  Part of the reason for no real synopses is that most of the movie was just a string of action, lots of running and fighting and fighting and running and then more running and then some more fighting.  They pretty much took a couple chapters from the book and filled out the rest of the movie with fighting and running.  This is not to say it was not very entertaining fighting and running, but I don't think it was worth 161 minutes.  They did keep in my friend Beorn the skin-changer who can take the form of a great bear which was pretty cool, and reminded me what a great world and history Mr. Tolkien had built.  The great spiders of Mirkwood were pretty cool and I am pretty sure gave my baby sis nightmares for weeks, and it was nice to see Bilbo use his new found courage/ring to step up his game. I loved the elfking (even if he was a bit snotty for the book version) he came across very etheral and superior just like he was supposed to.  Then came stupid Kate.  So a bit of background on to who this stupid Kate is.  For some inexplicable reason the movie writers decided to add a character that is nowhere in any of the books, much less the Hobbit.  The reasoning was essentially to add a female to a male dominated cast and of course provide stupid love stories 'cause apparently you can't make a movie without a stupid love story.  To make it worse they cast Evangeline Lilly  who while gorgeous makes my teeth hurt every time I see her on screen.  This stems back to her time playing Kate on Lost.  The character of Kate was a
reckless, whiny, drama queen who's every decision seemed wrong and dumb (obviously this is all personal feeling and opinion, feel free to disagree).  Now anytime we (Hubbin and I) see or read or hear a person make a decision based on stupidity we call it a stupid Kate (see Lori in The Walking Dead tv show for example).  Now I was trying very hard to be open minded, they have strayed from the books before and it has been ok, so maybe this character would add some depth.  Nope, this character was stupid Kate all the way through.  And to make it worse they set her up to be part of a dwarf/stupid Kate/Legolas love triangle that was so unnecessary and distracting.  It also turned our beloved cool, calm, otherworldly (as written by Tolkein) Legolas into a mean, temperamental teenager.  I can see why they wanted to bring back Galadriel and Legolas, even if they were not technically in the Hobbit, they were at least around and could possibly be used in a way that served the story, but this stupid new character just did not fit in in any way and actually demeaned the story (in my most humble opinion). I don't know if this would have been any better if they had gotten a different actress, but I doubt it as her whole storyline seemed forced.  I enjoyed it much more when we were in the Lonely Mountain and hanging out with Smaug, who was the COOLEST THING EVER.  Seriously the CGI team should get major awards, the dragon was everything I wanted it to be, massive, sleek, red, fiery, toothy, gleaming, sarcastic, old, gold obsessed, just wonderful.  I was both terrified and entranced by him all at the same time.  Lake-town was fairly well done and the surprise addition of Stephen Fry as the Master of Lake-town made me squeal with delight. I know I am in the minority in not being overly thrilled with 2/3 of this movie, but it really felt like filler to me.  I felt like I did with several other movies and books that this does not need to be three movies long.  You could easily have cut out about 60+ minutes of the running and fighting and still have kept all the story and all of the dragon (man I love that dragon).  If you cut out the insipid love triangle you could probably give yourselves another 45+ minutes.  I guess my feelings are not as positive about this movie as compared to the first one and I bet these could have been really great if they had stuck to two movies instead of three.  I guess I will have to watch the third one next year and come back and report on the trilogy as a whole.

What did you think of the first and second movie?  Do I have unrealistic expectations of book to movie adaptions?  Am I being to hard on Kate?