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Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Dec 19 2017, 3:55pm
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It's the solstice reading thread!
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Yes, we're only two days away from another solstice, although whether it's the winter solstice or the summer solstice depends on your hemisphere.
Here in Texas, I'm always a bit sad to see the days start to lengthen again. Not that we can't use some longer hours of daylight here, but those hours are going to keep on lengthening until we reach the baking/boiling/anvil of the gods heat of August, sigh.
I've been reading bits and pieces this week. On paper I finished Noise by David Hendy, the book version of a BBC radio show about how what we hear has historically been as important as what we see. Very interesting!
I'm now reading A Rumpole Christmas , a short book of Rumpole of the Bailey Christmas stories, little sugarplums from author John Mortimer about different Christmases in the life of one of my favorite fictional characters.
In audio I'm still listening to Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw. These are essays he originally wrote for the New Yorker, meaning they're long and discursive. In at least one instance, where he spends a great deal of time talking about radiologists reading mammograms, I'm not actually sure that was the topic of the piece! He might perhaps have been talking about statistics, or visual bias, or...
So what have you been reading?
Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow....
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Annael
Immortal
Dec 19 2017, 5:00pm
Post #2 of 15
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out of boredom. Sorry Robin Hobb, you should have stopped after the Tawny Man trilogy.
Picked up a couple of Ruth Rendell mysteries. Rendell always surprises you at the end, but then you go back and realize the clues were there all along, she's just so good at misdirection.
Tried reading "Night Over Water" by Ken Follett but I was so put off by how he made EVERY woman in the book out to be so horny she'd forget everything the moment a particular man touched her and immediately have sex with him (in 1940!) that I couldn't finish. Kept thinking about how writings like these have helped men think "I can touch her wherever I want, she really wants me to."
So I fell back on Nevil Shute who respects women and knows how to write a good story that is never boring. Presently reading "The Rose and the Rainbow."
I have the third book of Penric's Demon by Lois McMaster Bujold on my phone as well. Savoring these lovely novellas set in her Five Gods 'verse. She & Le Guin have both invented religions I find very appealing.
I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the words begin to move around … The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young.
-- Gaston Bachelard
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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Na Vedui
Rohan
Dec 19 2017, 8:18pm
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... various Jane Austens (very old friends) and also Cora Sandel's trilogy "Alberta and Jacob", "Alberta and Freedom" and "Alberta Alone". Do you know it? It follows a Norwegian girl from her growing up in the North of Norway at the start of the 1900s, through her life in Paris before, during and just after the first World War.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Dec 21 2017, 8:19am
Post #4 of 15
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Margaret Atwood is re-reading "The Lord of the Rings".
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(As am I. A couple pages, randomly selected, every day before bed.)
Follow the link posted here to see why the author of The Handmaid's Tale notes that "It's okay to have pointy ears".
She also comments on A Wizard of Earthsea and some other, er, irresistible works.
There are four lights.
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Tintallë
Gondor
Dec 21 2017, 4:21pm
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which won the Man Booker prize. It is about Lincoln's grief over the death of his young son and it is a decidedly different writing style from anything I've read before. (I had the same feeling when I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road.) It's actually quite good so far.
I also have Ali Smith's Autumn queued up on my Kindle. It was a Man Booker finalist. I was intrigued by an NPR interview with the author so I thought I'd give it a try. Historically I have not been a big fan of the Man Booker winners, though.
I finished Elantris by Brandon Sanderson. I guess I'm officially a fan, having really enjoyed his completion of Jordan's Wheel of Time series (I'm so ready for the screen version!) and his Mistborn books.
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Dec 21 2017, 6:50pm
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How has Beregond heard of activity beyond the Sea of Rhûn?
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Last night I read a bit from "Minas Tirith". Beregond mentions second-hand news of movement beyond the Inland Sea. How would such news reach Gondor? Yes, Denethor might know if it from the Seeing Stone, but surely that sort of intelligence is not shared so far down the ranks.
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squire
Half-elven
Dec 21 2017, 7:18pm
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I think we are allowed to imagine Gondor not being completely hopeless in the intelligence and alliance department, despite the reappearance of Mordor as the dominant power to the East. Sauron is paranoid about 'spies' during Frodo's and Sam's invasion of his land, and why shouldn't he be? I wouldn't put as much into the Seeing Stone - like the eagles, it risks becoming a 'device' that weakens the credibility of the empire absent Denethor's active involvement.
As to how Beregond has heard the info, as you say it's second-hand. He does work in the citadel's armed company, after all. Rumors are rumors, and the city seems to be fairly closely-knit, so that many people talk to many others of different station. How did Iorweth learn of her cracked account of Frodo's mission to Mordor? "At least that is the tale in the City", as she puts it (LotR VI.5)
Then again, looked at from outside the story, this could just be Tolkien inserting expository information into a character's mouth a little less deftly than usual!
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 21 2017, 7:50pm
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Military intelligence can come from a variety of sources both official and otherwise: Traders from Dorwinion; scouts; spies; informants; even casual conversations in a tavern with newly returned troops from foreign climes. Some of that intel can be kept secret, but some is sure to surface as rumor and second-hand knowledge. Tolkien must have understood that common soldiers often learn things through unofficial channels.
"I may be on the side of the angels, but do not think for one second that I am one of them." - Sherlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Dec 21 2017, 7:52pm)
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Dec 21 2017, 9:29pm
Post #9 of 15
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That's the sort of thing I had in mind, but doesn't it seem in the text of The Lord of the Rings that most lands are isolated from each other?
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 21 2017, 9:47pm
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That's the sort of thing I had in mind, but doesn't it seem in the text of The Lord of the Rings that most lands are isolated from each other?
Yes, but there are always exceptions to one extent or another. And we don't know what the situation is in Dominion at this point in time; it might be under Sauron's control through Easterling invasion or even simple capitulation. But, in any case, that was only one possible example. A lot of information from many places must have passed through Esgaroth and even through ports such as Pelargir.
"I may be on the side of the angels, but do not think for one second that I am one of them." - Sherlock
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N.E. Brigand
Half-elven
Dec 22 2017, 12:23am
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Tolkien later brought it back.
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I believe that when Pauline Baynes drew her "Map of Middle-earth" poster in the late 1960s, based on the map in LOTR, that Tolkien instructed her to add a few names, including Dorwinion, which he put on the shores of that inland sea.
But reading LOTR, it often seems to me, perhaps incorrectly, that most lands are empty. The Fellowship generally seems to travel through wilderness separating small population centers with little interaction between them, which perhaps wrongly makes the reader feel that most of Middle-earth is like that.
There are four lights.
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Aunt Dora Baggins
Immortal
Dec 22 2017, 1:56am
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I've been listening to Emma as I drive.
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It's the free audiobook from librivox with a full cast of characters. Unfortunately Harriet is almost unintelligible, between a bad mike and quiet, high fast voice, and Frank and Jane have foreign accents, but you get what you pay for, and the story's so familiar I don't mind. And the other characters are all fine. I keep finding myself laughing out loud between Mrs. Elton and Mr. Woodhouse and Emma and the narrator. Hearing a dramatic reading, even an imperfect one, brings new life to a familiar old story.
https://librivox.org/emma-dramatic-reading-by-jane-austen/
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GNU Terry Pratchett
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"For DORA BAGGINS in memory of a LONG correspondence, with love from Bilbo; on a large wastebasket. Dora was Drogo's sister, and the eldest surviving female relative of Bilbo and Frodo; she was ninety-nine, and had written reams of good advice for more than half a century."
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"A Chance Meeting at Rivendell" and other stories
leleni at hotmail dot com
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