"The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien

I hope I'm not the only who ever does this: when I'm reading a novel like "the Hobbit" or the LOTR series, I feel this weird need to eat similarly to them. You know--you go on an adventure in books like these and they have hard, dry bread; old, hard cheese; water or ale or wine; and maybe some dried meat. Even as a kid I would do this; I have to get out some bread with butter, a big slab of cheddar, when I was a kid--apple juice--it totally looks like ale, now as an adult--wine. If I don't have bread, tortillas work great for lembas bread. And usually a pickle. Just 'cause I like pickles.

So, a week ago, I settled down with a few tortillas, some deli meat, a slab of cheese, a glass of wine, and my copy of "the Hobbit."

This is one of my all-time favorite books. The copy you see above is the same copy my mom read out loud to me from when I was 8 years old. We went through it in a few days and when we were finished I picked it back up and reread it immediately. This book is simply timeless and ageless. I loved it as a kid, I love it as an adult, I'm sure when I'm 80 years old I'll be downloading the audiobook onto the chip in my brain (that's where technology's headed, right? Right?). I'm always sort of stumped when people tell me they haven't read it. My roommate informed me the other day that he'd actually never read it, though he did own it and I was shocked. "I'm not sure we can be friends anymore," I said.

This isn't going to be one of my traditional reviews, as I stated in my last blog post. You don't need me to layout the good and nonexistant bad points of "the Hobbit" for you--most of you have probably read it already and if you haven't, you know you should. In case you actually need someone to tell you to read it, consider this my demand: go and read it--right now. Quit your job, get off your butt, go buy the book, and sit in the sunshine with a tortilla, some cheese, and some wine and read it. If you don't like "the Hobbit" you seriously don't have a soul. And I may have to reconsider being friends with you. Just saying. So if you don't like it, don't tell me. I don't want to have my soul crushed.

I thought what I would do instead of my review is talk a little bit about the movie coming up: some of my concerns, hopes, fears, and expectations for it. If you've ever watched a movie based off a book with me, you'll know it's pretty annoying to do. My roommate and I have been watching the "Game of Thrones" series together. He's just beginning the second book and I've finished through the third book. During episodes of the second series, my poor roommate has to sit through the following comments made by me about every five seconds: "That's not how I pictured it from the book." or "That is NOT how that happened!" or "I don't really remember THAT happening." After three episodes of this, my roommate finally said: "AJ, nothing is how you pictured it in the book. Please shut up." He's very reluctant to watch "the Hobbit" with me because he knows how truly excited I am to sit in the theater and compare the movie to the book. I love doing that. It's so much fun to me!

There are a few things I'm definitely concerned about and talking animals are the first. In the LOTR movies, they didn't have a whole lot of speaking animals, but in "the Hobbit" you have talking Wargs, Eagles, and Spiders. I'm curious to see if they have the animals growl or otherwise make sound and caption it? Or do they go the whole animals talking with moving mouths look? Talking animals are always hard to portray in movies in a non-ridiculous way, I find. They could also go the CG route, which I'm not fond of, but tends to work well. I'm really interested to see how that works out.

Another thing I think needs to be in the movie is all the music from the book. There's a lot of singing that goes on in the book--a lot of really ridiculous singing. What I loved about the animated movie of "the Hobbit" is that they take on Tolkien's lyrics and make some music. I adored the animated feature as a kid, so whenever I read the book, I sing the songs from the animated movie in my head. The animated feature had the advantage that it was already pretty ridiculous, so it could do the songs and pull it off. I don't know if you can have actors playing elves sing songs like: "tra-la-la-la-lolly" etc. and not have it be totally absurd. And at the same time, the music is, to me, an integral part of the book. So it would really suck if they left it out.

I'm really concerned that Peter Jackson is bringing back the cast of the LOTR movies for "the Hobbit". I understand that they're very beloved characters and that they will bring in an audience, but most of them really have nothing to do with "the Hobbit," so I'm hoping what Jackson does is have it be like story time with Bilbo Baggins, telling how he came about the ring to Aragorn and Legolas and all the rest. That would make the most sense to me. Then again, the actors are all very high profile, so it's hard to believe that Jackson would bring them back for such a small role. That's my biggest concern--that Jackson is really playing with the story's basic premise to bring back these beloved characters. I'd like to believe that he wouldn't do that, but it's hard to tell with Hollywood.

Those are my biggest concerns with the upcoming movies, but I do have a lot of hopes as well. Since they're splitting the book into two movies, I think we can expect the attention to detail to be very high. All the dialogue should be on point, straight from the book. They shouldn't need to deviate from the original story for the sake of time. And that's a great relief for me. Keeping that in mind, I'm actually really excited for the movies to come out. It'll be interesting to see how they take on the challenge of the talking animals and the songs and to see what Jackson is doing with the cast of LOTR. Knowing him, I'm sure it'll be something daringly creative. And that's never a bad thing. Well, rarely a bad thing.

Supposing you couldn't guess, my rating for the "Hobbit" is 10/5. It exceeds all expectations for a novel. It surprises you in pleasant ways, and entertains you in others. There's nothing bad about this book, it's an easy, but not boring read, great for humans of all ages! Read it to your children, read it to your senior citizens, but most of all read it to yourself. You deserve it!

Happy reading, lovely friends! I hope you're enjoying some sunshine wherever you are!
AJ

                                                        Featured Bookshelf of the Day!

The Wishbone Project: Book 1: Tom Sawyer

Since I'm sick with the flu and I don't have a job, I thought I would get started on my Wishbone Project. So I was taking a look through what books I still need to read that I actually have with me and the first one I found was "the Adventures of Tom Sawyer." I bought it ages ago for $2.00, knowing I'd always wanted to read it, but years later, I still haven't gotten around to it.

It's actually rather fitting to start this way, because the first two episodes of "Wishbone" are dedicated to  "Tom Sawyer." They're also two of my favorite episodes of the series.

I have to admit, after reading "Huck Finn" twice in an academic setting, I wasn't too fond of Mark Twain. That is to say, I think he's a genius who lived a very interesting life and was a fantastic writer, BUT I really hated "Huck Finn."You can disagree with me, but I just didn't find it interesting either time. Constructed and written well, but plot-wise? Meh. Granted it was revolutionary and tackled some very controversial issues, but I just didn't enjoy it.

I've read that "Huck Finn" was originally intended to be directed towards a younger audience like "Tom Sawyer," but Mark Twain found himself writing something different. It's for that reason that I'm still excited to read "Tom Sawyer"--a book that's intended to be more about boyhood adventures than about social issues. Not that social issues aren't important and all, but sometimes it's nice to read something more...relaxed.

I would LOVE for people to join me in reading this book. You can pick up a Dover Thrift Edition, brand new, for two dollars like I did, or you can support a local bookstore (Go Local for Books!). I won't put any sort of time limit on the reading or anything, just that I'll probably be starting today and I imagine will finish with a week or so. Depends on how my job search goes. I never put spoilers in my reviews without fair warning, so even if you aren't finished when I am, you can pop back here and check out my impressions of the book.

I'm also going to watch the two "Wishbone" episodes on it (links below!)--so even if you're too lazy to pick up a good book (as the show suggests) you can always watch the lovely "Wishbone" version with me!

"Wishbone: A Tail in Twain" links! (Disclaimer: I don't own "Wishbone," nor were the videos below uploaded to Youtube.com by myself)

Part 1/4

Part 2/4

Part 3/4

Part 4/4


Happy reading and watching, friends!

In a few days, I'll have that "Hobbit" review up. In the meantime, I love me some "Wishbone"!
AJ

Margaret Atwood's "the Handmaid's Tale"

Good evening everybody,

So my roommate and I have both come down with a summer flu. Joy. The advantages of said flu are the following: a natural excuse to become a blanket person (as in one always covered in blankets), lying on the couch all day, watching hours upon hours of Buffy, having my mother at my beck and call to bring me juice; soup; and chocolate, and reading 250-350 page books in one day.

"the Handmaid's Tale" isn't one of the books I've read in the past five days. Some of you may have heard my "Margaret Atwood Elevator Experience" story. If not, you should go check it out, 'cause it's pretty funny, I think. Anyway, my senior project professor LOVES Margaret Atwood--practically worships her. And since both Margaret Atwood and my Prof are both really amazing fiction writers, I've been planning to read some Atwood for some time. On top of this, my best friend called me in April and told me about "the Handmaid's Tale"--that I would love it, that I had, had, had to read it. And that pretty much sold it for me, since Shy and I have the same taste in books.

 1998, First Anchor Books Edition


First off, before I even talk about summary, plot, upsides, etc, let me just talk about the writing. Good Lord, I wanted to make love with Atwood's sentences. I wanted to have babies with them. Little Atwood sentence babies. That's how much I loved her writing. I wanted to take a yellow highlighter and oh-so-carefully highlight the sentences in perfectly straight lines so I could remember which sentences were my favorites forever. I did not actually do this. I thought it might mar the perfect perfectness of the perfect sentences from perfect land. If nothing else, you must read this book for the beauty of the writing. You must. Go. Now. You're not leaving fast enough.

Summary, from the back of the book (edition noted above): "Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to read. She must lie on her back once a month and pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, because in an age of declining births, Offred and the other Handmaids are only valued if their ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she lived and made love with her husband, Luke; when she played with and protected her daughter; when she had a job, money of her own, and access to knowledge. But all of that is gone now..." I didn't think I could sum it up better than that!

Upsides: The good writing aside, I love it when writers take society, especially a society we're used to and do something really interesting with it and take it to a place that's possible, but that we wouldn't think about it. From the summary, you can surmise that the society of the book is still patriarchal, and to some definitions you can say so, but it's actually a female based society. High class men have all the freedom, but women are incredibly important in the story because of the desperate need for babies. The structure of this book is also very interesting--it's separated into titled sections, the titles giving you a hint of what's to come. Time is very fluid in this book: glimpses of the far past, close past, and the present all sort of blended together in a seriously masterful way. Atwood really eases you into each time switch and gives you pretty clear signals as to when you are. The characters are incredibly vivid. There are times when Moira is talking and you're told she's talking, but you don't need to be told, you can tell by the way she speaks. This books is all at once sad, longing, hope, fear, and anticipation. You feel it as fully as the characters feel it. I also love the mystery of this book. You're effectively thrown into the situation Offred is in without a whole lot of explanation on how society got there in the first place. That comes later. Offred's personal circumstances are revealed slowly as time goes forward (and backward) as well. And I really enjoyed how the reader is given information little by little.

Downsides (I'll try to be objective, but Atwood makes it hard!): I can see how the time jumping could be confusing for some readers, there occasionally isn't a warning and for a paragraph (or a sentence) or two, you might not be perfectly positive about what's going on. There also isn't the most conclusive ending--and it has its purpose--but I, personally, am a fan of conclusive endings. The ending does sort of leave you wanting for answers and certainly wanting for more, please GOD, more. I actually looked up all of Margaret Atwood's books and short stories to see if she'd written anything in the same universe or about the same characters. I found nothing. . .

Overall Rating: 5/5. You'll like this novel. I promise. Just look at the upsides above. And the fact that I want to have sentence sex with this book. To have sentence babies. Shy--you were right. I loved this. And the next time I see you we will have beautiful discussions about it. Of beautifulness. And stuff.

Next time: "the Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien--it won't be the most traditional review, because if you don't all know in the heart of your being that "the Hobbit" is one of the best books of all time, you don't have a soul. This is not something that needs telling. I thought I might lay out some of my expectations for the upcoming movies and talk a bit about the animated movie and how everyone should see it as an extremely accurate representation of the book. . .

Happy reading everyone!
AJ

"Exiles: The Mageborn Traitor" by Melanie Rawn

Good day readers! 

First of all, I have to thank Lady B on the Melanie Rawn boards for sharing my last review! That was very sweet and much unexpected! I woke up this morning and checked my page views and nearly had an aneurysm when I saw how high they were: "What? 57 people looked at my blog? Where the hell did they come from?!" I, being accustomed to the 4 people who read my blog on any kind of regular basis, my roommate, my best friend, my college buddy, and my cousin. So thanks, to any new readers! I hope you enjoy my reviews!

I thought, since I had a few more books stored up, ready to review, that I would just get another one out there. (Really I'm bored and have nothing better to do. Indulge me.)

Image courtesy of Melanie Rawn's website: http://bb.melanierawn.com/. 

Links to my other Melanie Rawn reviews:

Exiles: the Ruins of Ambrai

Touchstone

Spellbinder

If you read my last blog post, you may guess that "the Mageborn Traitor" is a sequel to "Ruins of Ambrai." Indeed, the much awaited sequel to the first book. 

Here's a quick summary in my own words: In "the Mageborn Traitor," readers find the land of Lenfell undergoing a lot of change. With the resistance fully successful and new leaders in the government, a lot of reform is being made of old tradition, creating enemies and new friends for the main instigator, Sarra, and her sister Cailet, the leader of the Mages. Meanwhile, their other sister, Glenin, forced to hide in the shadows, leads the opposing faction of mageborns, the Malerissi, and waits for the perfect moment to take down her sisters. 

So, as that summary suggests, it's pretty intense! I enjoy this novel a lot, though not as much as the first in the series. Rawn's structure, again, is very sound with clear sections of the novel and I appreciate that Rawn still--though having set some characters against each other--still presents the antagonist to us in a really honest way; she doesn't go overboard on trying to make the antagonist as evil as possible, but lets it happen very naturally. 

Upsides: The usual for Rawn--very vivid characters, fantastically natural dialogue, nothing seems contrived or forced; obviously all good qualities in a novel. What I really love about Rawn books is that she always takes on a social issue and just tackles it. While sort of touching on gender rights in the first book, Rawn takes them on full-force in the second book, dealing especially with domestic violence. For one, taking on issues like that is brave as sometimes authors can be seen as "preachy" if they do so, but having one of the main characters--Sarra--deeply involved in government gave her an outlet for the issue and it was approached really well. So kudos to her on that. 

Downsides: I always struggle to find downsides for Rawn books. I'll say this, that while I don't think this is a downside per say, I think this is something readers may struggle with: the death of secondary characters that you really get attached to and that you think you're going to get to know a lot better. It happens, it sucks, it makes a reader sad. There are some secondary characters I would have liked to see more of in the novel, both that live and die (and I'm not saying which these do): I wanted to see more of Aidan, of Imi Gorrst, who is an active character in the first book, and barely comes into the second book. There was also a section where we got a summary of how Cailet built her Academy and I actually would have liked a bit more of in-depth information about how it was built, and how the villages reacted--just more detail overall. However, the book is pretty long--800+ pages, so naturally you have to skimp on some things to keep other, much more important things in. 

Overall rating: 5/5 Everything readers were promised in the first novel comes through in the second. It's thoroughly enjoyable and definitely a page turner in the last 1/3rd of the book. I naturally highly recommend it! Now go out and buy this series!

Happy reading!

AJ

PS. Next time: Margaret Atwood's "the Handmaid's Tale"--be on the lookout!

"Exiles: the Ruins of Ambrai" by Melanie Rawn

Good evening everyone!

So, the plus sides of being a college graduate: being able to read novels in less than a month--hell--being able to read novels!, having time to write blog posts about said novels, and having time to work on my stories. The downsides? Nothing, other than a slowly dwindling bank account...

SO! I'm actually catching up on reviews today; I did do some reading during my very last month of college, but I didn't allow myself to write blog reviews on them yet. I did a re-read of the "Exiles" series by Melanie Rawn, which is my favorite series out of all of her books and I HIGHLY recommend them to anyone. But I think it's always good to look at a book objectively and that the best way to recommend a book to anyone is to recognize its best and worst points.

Image Courtesy of Melanie Rawn's website: http://bb.melanierawn.com/


I love this book a lot. I first picked it up in a library when I was about 12 years old because I thought the cover art was pretty. But Michael Whelan cover art aside, I was and still am drastically impressed with the contents of this book.

A quick summary for you all: In the land of Lenfell, magic is greatly feared and completely outlawed to government officials. Two factions of magic war for control of the country--on one side, the Malerissi, responsible for the brutal destruction of a major city and on the other side, the Mages fiercely hunted by the government and leading a resistance against immoral practices. Torn in this struggle are three sisters,  one interested in government and two on either side of the factions, leading them against the other.

I love the structure of this book. The first half of the novel is split up into sections for each of the four main characters, introducing the reader to them, getting them invested in them, and relating their background to the reader. I really appreciate this because Rawn gives you a fair chance to get to know all the characters really well before the action really gets started. In the second half, all the stories are rather masterfully weaved together from 4 different stories into one incredible tale of a warring factions of magic and taking down the tyrant that runs the government and prosecutes mageborns.

Upsides: Incredibly lifelike characters, the masterful structure of the novel, the very interesting content matter. It's one thing to have a warring faction novel--that sort of thing happens all the time, strictly speaking. But the structure of the society and government that Rawn creates are very interesting. It's a matriarchal society--the woman is the head of the household, owns the property and the children, who possess her last name, not the husbands. Husbands are treated as is the wife's protocol, and that having been said, the men are not treated poorly in this novel, but as human beings still. Sons cannot inherit. And it is the First Daughter who gets the majority of the inheritance, the rest being doled out to the other daughters, if any. It's the fact that this plot takes place in this society that makes the whole thing so interesting to me. The laws and structure of the government are so carefully considered in this novel, that you almost think that Lenfell exists somewhere out there.

Downsides: It's been joked on Rawn's forums that she "gives good death." Rawn is fantastic at making every single character really memorable and special. Why is this a downside? Well, some secondary characters are amazing, adorable, wonderful, you love them and wait--what just happened? HOW COULD SHE DO THAT? That sort of reaction when one of your favorite characters is cut down soon before you'd like them to go...that's the biggest downside to me.

It's really a wonderful book. There's so much great playful banter amongst the character, but the banter is still useful to the plot, not superfluous. For me, it's always a book I just breeze through; I can't put it down and I always notice something new every time, a little detail. If you're interested in solving mysteries, a bit of drama, a bit of comedy, and a lot of fantasy you'll like this novel. I think it's the perfect combination of genres. 5/5 Stars is my rating and I would HIGHLY recommend this book. You can borrow one of my many, many copies. Really. I own three copies of the first book and four of the second. I'm really a crazy collector lady. Shh. Don't tell anyone.

Happy reading everyone!
AJ

PS. Next post will be the second book in the Exiles series and after that Margaret Atwood's "the Handmaid's Tale."

The Wishbone Project

I really hope I'm not the only one who's thought to do this.

Does anyone else remember/love Wishbone?

You know, this guy?

First--let me say, that if you don't remember this wonderful dog, his adorable theme song, and all, then you had no childhood; please go to a PBS store and buy a real childhood. You can also find episodes on Youtube. If for some reason you DIDN'T grow up watching this amazing show, let me recap: Wishbone is a cute Jack Russell Terrier owned by a middle schooler named Joe. Wishbone is a prolific reader and somehow whatever book the show focuses on has parallels to Joe's everyday problems and through the novels, we get a nice moral. Or just some cute puppy fun.

I loved to read before I started to watch Wishbone, but the show introduced me to a lot of the classics like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, and even Homer. Yes, it was a kid's show about classic literature. And it was enjoyable and interesting for said children. What? Shows like that existed, you ask? Yes.

I have seen all the episodes of said show, taped them off PBS. When I was about 10, I made a list of every book Wishbone covered and promised myself I would read them all before I turned 30. I'm 22. So far, I've only read 11 of them.

I feel like an invalid. Only 11? What have I spent the past 12 years doing? And believe me--I read a lot. I thought I'd accomplished a lot more than this...out of 48 episodes. Okay, I am SO far behind...

SO! I am instigating a revival of WISHBONE CHALLENGE, circa 1998. Below is a list of all the books Wishbone covered. Highlighted are the one's I have already read and italicized are the ones I already do own, though haven't read:

Edit: Books that have been read and reviewed are linked! 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
The Odyssey by Homer
Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmund Rostand
The Hound of the Baskervilles (a Sherlock Holmes story) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 
Faust by Goethe
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
Silas Marner by George Eliot 
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne
One Thousand and One Arabian Nights by (collection of authors)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Imaginary Invalid by Moliere
The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe
The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
Robin Hood by (various authors)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
the Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
David and Goliath from the Bible
A Scandal in Bohemia (a Sherlock Holmes story) by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
The Tempest by Shakespeare
The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas
Hercules and the Golden Apples from Greek Mythology
Our Lady of Guadalupe from the Catholic Tradition
Metamorphosis (King Midas) by Ovid
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Laroux
The Inspector General by Gogol

And that's just the first season. I think I'll just start with that.
Unfortunately, the show was cancelled, which I'll never understand. The show won 4 daytime Emmys...It was educational AND fun. Which is nearly impossible half the time. I think, honestly, combining classic literature with a talking Jack Russell Terrier is the best way to present books to children. The creator is a genius.

So that's what I'll be undertaking the next year. I'm hoping I can read one or two a month. As you can tell from the italicized books, I've been planning on undertaking this mission of mine for a long time. In the back of my head, when I go to a bookstore, I think: Oh, this is cheap, and it's a Wishbone book. That'll come in handy!

So you can expect some reviews of those books coming up. Project Wishbone is a go! And you can completely expect that I am also watching the corresponding episode when I am finished. I hope someone besides me will set out on this epic mission of epicness. Nothing was cooler than Wishbone when I was a kid. I still firmly plan to buy--or download--the Wishbone series for when I have a kid and just let the whole thing sink into my offspring.

For a quick sidenote: I think Wishbone made me a book snob. I find it so hard to touch books written after 1980 if they aren't fantasy, which I find somewhat timeless.

Coming up: reviews of the Exiles series by Melanie Rawn (what? More Melanie Rawn books? I'm sure you're shocked), a review of "the Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood, and a return to my reviews of more classic literature!

Happy reading everyone! I hope someone jumps on my Wishbone bandwagon!
AJ