a book and cocktail blog
This isn’t my post but I enjoyed it a lot. I love ‘Lord of the Rings’ so I thought I’d share.
Between Tolkien’s immense novel and Peter Jackson’s incredible adaptation, The Lord of the Rings has more interesting little tidbits than every novel I’ve read from the list combined.
I found this exhaustive list of “facts you never knew” on Empire Online, so I thought I’d share 10 of my favorites with you.
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It took me months to read Stephen King’s The Drawing of The Three because my life is like that now.
I found it really enjoyable throughout most of it until Eddie “fell in love” with Odetta after talking to her for, I dunno, half hour. I really have very little patience for love stories.
As with many books I read, if we’d cut out some of it, I wouldn’t have minded. As much as I like Eddie – and I think he was my favorite of the new characters introduced – if we’d spent slightly less time focused on him on the airplane, I think we would have been served just as well.
I tend to skim a lot of King’s physical descriptions. Yes, it probably is realism to describe all the ins and outs of taking a dump, but I feel as though we can skip that in books.
The biggest problem I see going forward with this series is that Odetta/Detta/Susannah…I just don’t really like her. I’m reading this series because two of my friends and my mom really like it, but I don’t think I like her. My mom says she improves or becomes more likeable, but I dunno.
In spite of this, I went all over St. Maarten looking for a bookstore to buy the next one in. Sadly, I had to wait ’til I was back in the US to pick up the next one: The Waste Lands.
Like ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ I think I’m going to have evaluate this more in depth once I’ve read them all.
Of all the made up words in these stories that I’ve encountered so far, I think my favorite is “lobstrosities.”
Originally, I didn’t see The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie by choice. I was about 13 at the time, and my mother dragged me along with her. I didn’t really want to go, but went anyway. She said that I “owed” her for all the crappy movies she’d taken me to through my life because she didn’t actually want to see any of them, she was just being a good parent.
So, I saw the movie with her because guilt is one my family’s biggest motivational tools. I really liked the movie, and was mad that it didn’t conclude the story. I was even upset to find out there were TWO more of these films, and downright distressed when I discovered that they were coming out one and two years from that point.
I decided to read the books, and started The Hobbit the next weekend.
The Lord of the Rings movies are epic, and I mean that in two ways. They are epic in the most literal sense: they are extremely long movies. The other way I mean it is in size and scope: there are very few movie adaptations of books that cover as much rich material as the LotR movies do with JRR Tolkien’s huge fantasy.
The Hobbit films were rumored to be coming out not long after the original films, but the buzz about them didn’t pan out until much later. I reread it in preparation of its release (at the time rumored to be in 2009) but it turned out I wouldn’t have had to reread it until 2012. It was good that I did, though. I’d made up my own ending to the book, apparently, and read an entirely different ending than the one I remembered.
Anyway, the film: I didn’t expect The Hobbit films to happen with all problems, like the screen writing and directing changes, and I was a little nervous about what I was hearing: The Hobbit being stretched into three films didn’t sound like it was possible, or was necessary, since they were ADDING material.
Well. ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ really put my mind at ease. It was just as good as the original LotR films, and I really enjoyed some of the stuff they added. I had also forgotten how much I missed having a movie that covered the size and scope of the original films. Movies that cinematically beautiful and that complex don’t come around a lot.
The new trailer for the second film, ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ came out recently, and I’m really excited about it. Check it out:
The only thing so far that’s a little off-putting? I always pronounced the dragon’s name, Smaug, as ‘Smawg’ not as ‘Smoug’. ‘Aw’ as in ‘awful’ and not ‘ou’ as in ‘ouch’, if that makes sense. But I think I’ll be able to overlook it! 😉
September 22 is Hobbit Day. Hobbits are some of my favorite fantasy creatures 🙂 This graphic is a year old, but useful on how to throw a Hobbit Day Party. Enjoy!
As everyone has probably heard by now, J.K. Rowling is making her screenwriting debut based on the ‘textbook’ she wrote – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – which originally appeared in her Harry Potter novels.
Along with Quidditch Through The Ages, Rowling originally wrote Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to benefit the British charity Comic Relief.
As a Potterphile, I’m super excited about this. There’s so much room to play in the Harry Potter universe, and this will be fun! Some of the my favorite things about Harry Potter are the mythological creatures she uses/creatures she makes up.
Anyway, yeah, I’m super excited about it! I hope they skip the acromantulas and focus more on chimeras or something.
I finished A Storm of Swords some weeks ago but life got in the way of my commenting on it ’til now. Here we are.
Ho-ly. SHIT.
Spoilers, people-who-only-watch-the-TV-show.
A Storm of Swords totally made up for the wandering through the woods that A Clash of Kings was. I knew about the Red Wedding and Joffrey’s death, but Joffrey’s death was particularly satisfying, since I think he might be the most hated character in books and on television of all time.
Reading the Red Wedding was particularly bad. It was uncomfortable, mostly because you had the distinct feeling that something was wrong. Walder Frey was too accepting of their apology, things were going too well. The worst part is what they did to Grey Wind. I love the direwolves.
I really liked Tyrion killing his father, and I couldn’t believe Shae betrayed him. I mean, I can, but I didn’t entirely understand how she was discovered. I did feel bad about Bronn leaving, though.
But his father’s death amused me. Finding out that Tywin Lannister did not shit gold was not something I really needed to know but was great all the same. Additionally, I was pretty sad Tywin is gone, but since his main use for me was to tell off Joffrey, once Joffrey was dead it didn’t matter.
Poor Tommen though! He’s going to become a huge target. I like him, he’s a cute kid, so I’m hoping for the best for him.
I also enjoyed that Tyrion tried to protect Sansa from the worst of Joffrey’s and the rest of his family’s cruelties. I might have said this before, but I’ve heard the claim that the TV show really favors Tyrion and makes him look good, but I haven’t found that book!Tyrion is much different than TV!Tyrion, except that we know what’s going on inside his head, but maybe I’m just one of those horrendously jaded people who never really thought that what was going on inside of Tyrion’s head was any different than what was going on inside anyone else’s. He’s smarter than most, not less willing to survive.
One of my favorite parts of reading these books (up until this point) has been comparing the TV adaptation with the books. The relationship between Jaime and Brienne has not disappointed in either adaptation. I thought maybe the TV was overdoing it, but it’s almost exactly the same and I immensely enjoy my favorite duo’s adventures on the page as much as on the screen. The whole thing with the bear? Love it.
Arya is one of my favorite characters in the series, but I feel like she is wasted a lot, wandering through the woods. Her relationship with the Hound in the book is far more developed than it is on TV, and I really like it much better. While she is always secretly scheming to kill him, she never actually goes through with it, and when she finally gets the opportunity, she doesn’t do it. The Hound himself has become a fascinating character – while he claims that he protects Arya (and earlier, Sansa) for money, he never actually gets around to selling them off. What’s even more interesting is that he seems to express remorse to both of them, which is strange, since he spends a lot of time claiming he doesn’t care. He seems to both like and despise Sansa, and he seems to understand Arya better than most people understand Arya.
I’m sad Arya’s relationship with Gendry is over. I thought maybe that wouldn’t be the case, but unfortunately, it is.
Jon’s story with Ygritte is finally done. That took entirely too long. I’m amused at Jon’s shock that he’s been selected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. Seems like Winterfell is, indeed, a thing of the past.
Bran’s storyline also needs improvement, as far as I’m concerned. Lots about dreams, not much about anything else. I did like the story the Reeds told him about his father, his uncles, and his aunt at the tournament. Lyanna Stark is the catalyst for everything that happened before the series takes place, and I’d like to know more about her, but given everyone who knew her is dead, that doesn’t seem likely.
One aspect I’m finding the TV series is really neglecting (as far as I’m concerned) is the Stannis – Davos – Melisandre side of things. On the TV side, I understood nothing of it, now at least I get what’s going on. Melisandre is a lot less annoying in print. I don’t think it has anything to do with the actress, and more to do with the fact that they don’t really explain clearly on TV what’s going on, so all she does is lurk and say things that sound scary.
Finally: Daenerys. Does anything ever go wrong for her? At any point? Yeah, her husband died and her baby died, and since then she has been Mary Sue-ing her way through the East. I hear things start going south for her in A Feast For Crows, which is good because I don’t buy that a 14 year old is going to conquer the world without any problems. I’m also amused how the TV show glossed over that whole thing with her and Jorah Mormont. I guess that’s one thread they decided wasn’t important.
As I said, I finished this book some time ago, but life got in the way of my updating this blog about it. I was in the middle of another book, but it was a sequel that hasn’t captured me anywhere near as much as the original, and so I’m putting it down. I haven’t started A Feast for Crows, and for the moment I think I’m going to move on to The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King.
Two of my friends and my mother have read ‘The Dark Tower’ series by Stephen King and loved it, and since I needed a break between ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ books, I started The Gunslinger, the first book of the series.
Now, I was in a beach house for four days about two weeks ago, and I have to say I blew through The Gunslinger in record time. Even for me. I don’t know how I got through it so fast, although it’s not very long.
The one thing everyone did tell me about The Gunslinger is that I should be patient. It doesn’t make a ton of sense in the beginning. There are more questions than answers, but what is made very clear is that there is one guy, the Gunslinger, chasing another guy, the Man in Black, who seems always to be one step ahead.
We get some of the Gunslinger’s history, as well as some of the history between him and The Man in Black. I found the whole thing very compelling, particularly his relationship Jake (and how he ultimately betrays Jake to catch the Man in Black).
You begin to realize that the Gunslinger is in a universe other than our own. It’s similar, but not exactly the same, and that there are other universes out there that can be traveled between (and dying in one doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve died in all of them).
How to travel between said universes isn’t made clear, but that’s part of why the Gunslinger is chasing the Man in Black and has something to do with The Dark Tower, which seems to be the point at which all the universes are connected.
Right now, the genre of the series seems unclear. It seems a dark sci-fi/fantasy/horror series, and I can’t wait to see how the series continues. Since King considers ‘The Dark Tower’ series his magnum opus, I expect big things.
So far, beyond this book, I’ve read It and some short stories by King, and my mom says a lot of his books borrow from this series. I don’t consider King an incredible writer, per se. His writing is average in terms of expression and beauty of prose; however, he’s a hell of a storyteller. I got sucked into The Gunslinger within the first few pages and read the whole thing in three days. I would have finished It much faster, but that book involved my two biggest fears – spiders and clowns – so I had to keep putting it down and kept having nightmares about a clown with pointed teeth that was out to kill me.
I’ve bought the next book, called The Drawing of the Three, which is supposedly more like a regular book than like reading a comic book, at least according to my friend.
But The Drawing of the Three will have to wait, at least until I’m done with one of the two books I started. I’m currently in the middle of both A Storm of Swords (the next book in the ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ series) and Blue Magic, the sequel to Indigo Springs, by A.M. Dellamonica.
I finished George R.R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings about two weeks ago.
I really enjoyed it.
My favorite part of it was the ongoing plotting of Cersei and Tyrion against each other, but I was super happy that this book explained why Melisandre supported Stannis, which either wasn’t made clear in the HBO adaptation or I didn’t pick up on it.
The Battle of Blackwater Bay was also really great. The books have really made me like Davos better. He doesn’t get enough screen time in the TV adaptation to really get to know him, and I thought having the battle from his perspective, rather than Stannis (which is where I thought he was going to go with it) or just Tyrion and Sansa.
I also liked Sansa a bit more in this book, actually showing some strength rather than being a little mouse. The Hound’s fascination with her has always interested me, but I still don’t get the point of their bizarre interactions, which mostly include him yelling at her for being nice.
On TV, I feel like Jon Snow’s plotline was easily one of the least interesting, and that continues as I read the book. The whole thing with Ygritte bores me to death, and honestly, enough of the Wildlings. I liked Qhorin Halfhand, and was sort of pissed Jon had to kill him. I like Jon, but his storyline is killing me. Best character north of the Wall: Ghost.
Daenarys trip to Qarth ended less spectacularly in this book than on TV. On TV, she locks Xaro Xhoan Daxos in his own empty vault as punishment for being a lying douche, but here one of her dragons just burns down The House of the Undying. Unless this is part of the third book that I haven’t gotten to yet, I was a bit disappointed with how this went down.
Catelyn Stark continues to be both tremendously wise and seriously dumb. I don’t understand how she figures out all the right pieces and all the right things, and somehow manages to do the dumbest possible thing EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.
Bran’s story isn’t very interesting in this book except for how he’s a Warg and doesn’t know it. At least he wasn’t murdered as Theon claimed. I hate Theon a lot. He’s both more sympathetic in the book and more completely a bitch. I almost feel sorry for him, because I know what’s about to happen to him, but…eh, you did this to yourself, dude.
Arya is probably my favorite character in this series, and I love her relationship with Jaqen H’ghar so I can’t wait for the point in the series where that comes full circle. I know from Wikipedia she eventually joins The Faceless Men, but I hope she meets Jaqen again (and that her skills as an assassin help her get revenge in Westeros).
Finally: I always thought Renly Baratheon was an idiot and man, he really is. He has no legitimate claim to the throne except people like him. He’s so hilariously dumb about the whole things that I’m sort of glad he gets murdered.
I’ve started A Storm of Swords and the TV show has covered up to the first half of that book, so I’m excited I’m finally going to read something I haven’t already seen on TV. Looking forward to it.
My friends and I were discussing Game of Thrones (books and TV show).
For some reason, I find the series – books and TV show – a lot funnier than I think they’re meant to be. So much of it is so deadpan, I just laugh.
My friend was complaining about the Starks who, while being the only “good guys” in the series, are too dumb to survive. “Honor before reason,” as he said.
So I started coming up with alternate house mottoes.
House Stark: Honor Before Reason (not entirely my idea)
House Baratheon: Sibling Rivalry Gone Awry
House Targaryen: Incest – Bad For Dogs, Worse For People
House Lannister: We Barely Like Each Other…Except Jaime. We All Like Him
House Greyjoy: Our Last Male Heir Got Himself Castrated
House Tyrell: Pretty And Prickly (alternate alternate motto: Every Rose Has Its Thorns)
House Bolton: We’re Sadists
House Tully: Just Edmure And A Zombie
House Frey: We Lack Originality And Foresight
Fun stuff. I can’t stop giggling, but I don’t know if it’s because these are actually funny of it’s because it’s the middle of the night, I’m tired, and I just think they’re funny.
On one more ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ note: popuptee.com is selling some pretty awesome shirts of various houses – Stark, Baratheon, Greyjoy, Lannister, and Targaryen – for only $12.99 + free shipping. Other shirts include a White Walkers shirt, a Night’s Watch shirt, and a “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die” Cersei quote shirt. Hurry though! There’s only about 38 hours left before the sale is over and they won’t be available anymore!
I bought a Stark shirt and a Baratheon shirt for myself, as well as a Lannister shirt as a gift for a friend of mine. I like them a lot. I sort of want to see if when I put on the Stark shirt I am killed instantly (just struck by lightning or hit by a truck), and I like the Baratheons a lot for no reason I can actually give you. Robert was one of my favorite characters, but I have no idea why. He just seemed so cuddly when he wasn’t raging at Cersei or talking about killing Targaryens.
Because I love Mad Men AND books!
To be clear, I did NOT write this, but I liked it a lot, so I’m sharing it. It was published here at Words and Film.
Unpacking the Literary References Informing ‘Mad Men’ Season 06
by Christine Spines“The Crash,” the latest aptly titled episode of “Mad Men,” is a runaway toboggan ride through the emotional wasteland of Don Draper’s psyche that’s been analyzed and dissected as much as the Zapruder film at this point. Love it or hate it, “Mad Men” has now entered the realm of myth with Don Draper doubling as an Orpheus-like tormented soul who has descended into the underworld under the illusion that he can reclaim his idealized woman (the mother he never had) only to discover he’s powerless over his desire for instant gratification, ultimately dooming himself to a life of misery. If Freud were on the case, he would have diagnosed Don with textbook repetition compulsion, a self-destructive pattern of behavior, described in Remembering, Repeating and Working Through, as repeating the circumstances of a traumatic event over and over again.
We’ll leave any further deconstruction of Don’s psyche to the professionals — the legions of bloggers who parse the show’s subtext in weekly recap posts that read more like the abstracts for a PhD dissertation on the moral degradation of American ideals in the late 1960s. But the proliferation of literary references (both implicit and explicit) peppered throughout this season, particularly in episode 8, bears further scrutiny. And because everything in “Mad Men,” from Roger Sterling’s streamline moderne office furniture down to the pile of cigarette butts at Don’s feet, is freighted with meaning, there must be something to be gleaned from reading into the featured books and myriad author quotes embedded throughout Matthew Weiner’s multilayered dialogue.
Literary Cameo: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
This season opened with Don splayed out on a Hawaii beach reading Dante’s Inferno, with a voiceover narration of the famous passage that remains the best and most succinct description of a midlife crisis ever written: “Midway through our journey I went away from the straight road and found myself in a dark wood.” There’s clearly more at play here than the garden variety midlife mortality panic behind Don’s descent into a state of sin-soaked anomie. Don is a man who manufactures his own despair, trapping himself on a treadmill of torment, even while vacationing in paradise with his smart, beautiful wife.Takeaway: Don is damned to a hell of his own making but it’s not inconceivable that he’ll find some sort of redemption since he’s still hovering in outer circles, between lust and gluttony.
Literary Cameo: Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the episode entitled “Man with a Plan,” Peggy Olsen concocts a fantasy in which her menschy boss is reading Emerson, the godfather of transcendentalism and great proponent of individuality and man’s inherent power to prevail over society’s corrupt influences.Takeaway: Emerson was an optimist and an ethicist. In other words, he was the anti-Don, which is precisely what Peggy was looking for when she fled her deteriorating mentor for her new boss’ high-minded ideals.
Literary Cameo: Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
“The Crash” quickly spiraled into a drug-fueled stream-of-consciousness trip into the messy creative process involved in straddling the line between art and commerce. During one of the copy team’s many incoherent brainstorming sessions, Stan, the show’s skirt-chasing art director, quotes Poe’s last published poem, Annabel Lee, about a man fixated on a beautiful woman he can never possess.Takeaway: This poem clearly has resonances for both Stan and Don and the rest of the dirty dogs working at SCDP. Romanticizing lost loves is an affliction we all suffer from in one way or another. But in the most recent episode, this compulsion to relive (and rewrite) the past has debilitated Don and endangered his family and professional life. It’s no accident Poe’s work continues to strike terror in the hearts of readers.
Literary Cameo: My Heart Leaps Up by William Wordsworth
In episode 8, the creative team continues to try to crack the code to the Chevy campaign with a half-baked idea about the nostalgia associated with a father giving his son his first car. Peggy then chimes in with an offhanded aside adding that “the child is the father of the son.” This line was cribbed from the above Wordsworth poem, about how our memories of childhood fill the well we tap throughout our lives to be reminded of who we should aim to be.Takeaway: In an episode overstocked with flashbacks to Don’s abusive childhood, this poem offers a kind of solace in its message that there are gifts to be found in an unhappy childhood if we submit to heeding the lessons embedded in our own pain.
Literary Cameo: Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin
Levin’s terrifying novel about a pregnant woman who is convinced the satanic cabal living in her building has targeted her baby is ominously introduced in a scene in which Sally Draper has been left alone to tend to her younger brothers. Placing this literary creep-fest in the hands of a child home alone signals that some of our fears actually turn out to be worse than we’d imagined.Takeaway: Both Don and Sally are more vulnerable than either acknowledges. And it also points to the fact that Don may feel like he’s become the grown-up version of satan’s spawn.
words in scarlet ink 