Today is J.R.R Tolkien’s birthday, and apparently toasting “The Professor!” is how one is supposed to celebrate it. While deciding what to put in this post I was looking through some quotes from his writings and found one from The Two Towers that I truly love – as in “I want to hang this one on my wall” love: So here’s to The Professor!Read More →
I currently have three fairly short non-fiction books at the top of my to-be-read list that I really want to read soon. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction… for “fun” I mean. I pick them up here and there. Reference them when needed. But rarely do I think of non-fiction as something to go on my to-be-read list and be read cover to cover. But the following are all books I’ve gotten recently just because I wanted to read them which is what’s so unusual. The Trouble With Tribbles This one I got on a whim after seeing it mentioned in a post onRead More →
On the fantasy side, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately reading The Wheel of Time (WoT) series. I’ve honestly decided I’d like to finish the entire series by the end of this year. Well, it’ a goal anyway. Which means I’m trying to read a couple of chapters a day. At least! Since I’m already almost finished with the 8th book (The Path of Daggers), it’s . . . doable. Maybe. The problem is that I think I’m in the middle of what the fans not so fondly call The Slog – the point in the series where Robert Jordan got really, reallyRead More →
Apparently bad covers are a problem that is as old as paperback publishing. I ran across an article that, um, beautifully illustrates that point. And it’s about the first US paperback covers for J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit of all things. Barbara Remington’s first cover is truly an exercise in interpreting the idea of The Hobbit, rather than its content, since she was not given a chance to read the book when she received the commission. The Bizarre Book Covers for the First U.S. Paperback Editions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Books, Made By an Artist Who Had Never Read Them The cover in question: Um, o-kay. Well,Read More →