Categories
Archives
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- “You should approach Joyce’s Ulysses as the illiterate Baptist preacher approaches the Old Testament: with faith.” — William Faulkner
- Happy Birthday, Vilmos Zsigmond
- Bloomsday past and present
- The Plaidcast Supernatural Rewatch podcast
- For Father’s Day:
- “That incident ruined my reputation for 10 years. Get one Beatle drunk and look what happens!” — Harry Nilsson
- “I’m not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be.” — Waylon Jennings
- Review: Prime Minister (2025)
- “That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats
- “Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński
Recent Comments
- mutecypher on “I am the most famous unknown of the century.” — Djuna Barnes
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 1
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 1
- Cassandra on Supernatural re-watch, Season 1
- sheila on “Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński
- Bill Wolfe on “Superfluous people in the service of brute power….” — Ryszard Kapuściński
- sheila on “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
- sheila on “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
- Jincy Willett on “Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
- sheila on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- Dan on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- sheila on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- Dan on Mike Doughty, if you’re out there …
- sheila on “Boredom is very important in life. It helps you feel when something is wrong.” — John Strasberg
- Bunky F. on “Boredom is very important in life. It helps you feel when something is wrong.” — John Strasberg
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- Lyrie on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 4
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 6
- sheila on Supernatural re-watch, Season 3
-
Tag Archives: The Hobbit
Happy Birthday, J.R.R. Tolkien
The German publishing firm of Rutten & Loening contacted Allen & Unwin in 1938 (the publishers of The Hobbit) and wanted to negotiate with them for a German translation of the book. But first and foremost, they wanted to know … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit
19 Comments
Review: The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014); directed by Peter Jackson
Mixed feelings. Thought “Unexpected Journey” was an unnecessarily elongated prologue, loved “Desolation of Smaug” (review here), and the final installment feels like a long-drawn-out closing paragraph. Should have been done in one film. Could have been done in one film. … Continue reading
Posted in Movies
Tagged fantasy movies, J.R.R. Tolkien, New Zealand, reviews, The Hobbit
42 Comments
Review: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
I thought the first installment was embarrassing and bad. Good news, though: the second one is pretty great! Still too goddamn long, Jackson, Jesus Mary and Joseph, but the real work that needs to be done is done here and … Continue reading
The Books: The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
Daily Book Excerpt: Memoirs: Next book on the Memoir/Letters/Journals shelf is The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m not a Tolkien fanatic, although I love The Hobbit (it’s my favorite), so this book is rather tough-going for someone not up to … Continue reading
The Books: “The Hobbit” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction: The Hobbit; or, There and Back Again, by J.R.R. Tolkien As a child, I was never a Tolkien fanatic. I was a fanatic about other books – all of Madeleine L’Engle’s “time” books, and I … Continue reading
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die
Jessa Crispin has an interesting interview with Peter Boxall, editor of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I loved what Boxall said at the end: Having benefited from an extraordinary number of emails and letters as well as … Continue reading
Posted in Books, James Joyce
Tagged 1984, A Prayer for Owen Meany, A Tale of Two Cities, A.S. Byatt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Alice in Wonderland, Amongst Women, Animal Farm, Annie Proulx, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, At Swim-Two-Birds, Atonement, Cat's Eye, Catch-22, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, D.H. Lawrence, Don DeLillo, E.M. Forster, Edgar Allan Poe, Edna O'Brien, Emily Bronte, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Finnegans Wake, Flann O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor, Frankenstein, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, George Orwell, Great Expectations, Gulliver's Travels, Handmaid's Tale, Herman Melville, House of Leaves, Hunter S. Thompson, Ian McEwan, In Cold Blood, J.D. Salinger, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Ellroy, Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, Jeanette Winterson, John Irving, John McGahern, John Steinbeck, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Heller, Kazuo Ishiguro, Leo Tolstoy, Lewis Carroll, Lord of the Rings, Margaret Atwood, Mark Danielewski, Mary Shelley, Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, Mikhail Bulgakov, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Notes From the Underground, Possession, Pride and Prejudice, Primo Levi, Sexing the Cherry, Stephen King, The Catcher In the Rye, The Country Girls, The Great Gatsby, The Hobbit, The Passion, The Shipping News, The Things They Carried, Thomas Mann, Tim O'Brien, Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, Ulysses, Underworld, Vladimir Nabokov, Wuthering Heights
9 Comments
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that … Continue reading
“The sequel to the Hobbit”
“I have begun again on the sequel to the ‘Hobbit’ – The Lord of the Ring. It is now flowing along, and getting quite out of hand. It has reached about Chapter VII and progresses towards quite unforeseen goals. I … Continue reading
“… and that means comfort.”
I have picked up The Hobbit again after, it must be 25 years. I haven’t read it since I was a kid. I am having the time of my life. I found that I still had the first paragraph in … Continue reading