Beth's Bookish Thoughts

The Sunday Post

The Sunday Post is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

September 21 was my birthday. I didn’t get around to mentioning it because I wasn’t online much that day. Sept. 21 also happens to be the birthday of H.G. Wells!

I had a great day. I had chocolate cake and my mom took me out to a restaurant called Sauce. I had a bowl of rice, vegetables and dahl that was very good.

What I read this week:
I finished Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, a group read in the Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Club on GoodReads. This was a reread for me. It was great! I’ll write a review soon.

I started The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates. I like it so far. I’ll have more to say later but for now, here’s the official synopsis: “This eerie tale of psychological horror sees the real inhabitants of turn-of-the-century Princeton fall under the influence of a supernatural power. New Jersey, 1905: soon-to-be commander-in-chief Woodrow Wilson is president of Princeton University. On a nearby farm, Socialist author Upton Sinclair, enjoying the success of his novel The Jungle, has taken up residence with his family. This is a quiet, bookish community – elite, intellectual and indisputably privileged. But when a savage lynching in a nearby town is hushed up, a horrifying chain of events is initiated – until it becomes apparent that the families of Princeton have been beset by a powerful curse…”

I’m still following Jeff La Sala’s posts for The Silmarillion Primer at Tor. The most recent is:
Morgoth Is Rendered Null And Void In An All Out War of Wrath — the end of the Quenta Silmarillion. He has some interesting thoughts; I think I’m going to reread this post later.

Hamlette at Edge of the Precipice (on my blogroll) has posted the questions for the Tolkien Blog Party 2018. I’ve started to fill them out, so I’ll probably post tomorrow.

Back to the Classics update with links to reviews

The link to the Back to the Classics Challenge 2018 is on the sidebar to the right.

8/12 read so far

1. A 19th century classic: Manfred by Lord Byron planned
2. A 20th century classic: The Man in the High Castle
3. A classic by a woman author:
4. A classic in translation: Njal’s Saga
5. A children’s classic: The Owl Service
6. A classic crime story, fiction or non-fiction: The Moonstone
7. A classic travel or journey narrative, fiction or non-fiction: The Aeneid 
8. A classic with a single-word title: Utopia
9. A classic with a color in the title: Sir Gawain & the Green Knight planned
10. A classic by an author that’s new to you: The House of the Wolfings
11. A classic that scares you:
12. Re-read a favorite classic: The Iliad

Review: If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wanted to review this but didn’t get around to it last month.

This is the third Italo Calvino book I’ve read, after Cosmicomics and Invisible Cities. I might recommend starting with one of those first. Both are short story collections, but the stories in Invisible Cities are very short, like fables. This novel compiles chapters from ten different (fictional) novels within the book, each of them breaking off after the beginning. These chapters alternate with the frame story where two readers, a male reader and a female reader, try to find the original text of “If on a winter’s night a traveler,” the first novel they started reading.

There are some wonderful reflections on reading in this book. The opening chapter, in which the anonymous reader (whose perspective is narrated in second person) goes into a bookstore and is confronted by “the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read,” is hilarious. I think that on GoodReads, my favorite quotes will show up under the review.

some other reviews I liked:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show…

View all my reviews

The Friday 56

The Friday 56 is a meme hosted by Freda’s Voice

“This was the evening of the last day of Gordon Way’s life, and he was wondering if the rain would hold off for the weekend. The forecast had said changeable — a misty night tonight followed by bright but chilly days on Friday and Saturday with maybe a few scattered showers toward the end of Sunday when everyone would be heading back into town.

Everyone, that is, other than Gordon Way.

The weather forecast hadn’t mentioned that, of course, that wasn’t the job of the weather forecast, but then his horoscope had been pretty misleading as well. It had mentioned an unusual amount of planetary activity in his sign and had urged him to differentiate between what he thought he wanted and what he actually needed, and suggested that he should tackle emotional or work problems with determination and complete honesty, but had inexplicably failed to mention that he would be dead before the day was out.”

— Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams

Review: The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Silmarillion is not an easy read, but on the other hand, I don’t want Tolkien fans who might be interested to be unnecessarily scared away from it. I definitely had a rough start the first time I read it, but eventually it won me over.

I followed along with The Silmarillion Primer at Tor.com during this reread, and I highly recommend it. It’s intended for first-time readers and does a great job of explaining things, focusing on one chapter at a time. That said, avoid reading the comments at Tor if you don’t want spoilers. Each post includes maps, art, family trees, and flowcharts. Also, it’s surprisingly hilarious.

And speaking of art, one of my favorite Tolkien artists Jenny Dolfen, who focuses on The Silmarillion, has a book out, Songs of Sorrow and Hope: The Art of Jenny Dolfen, which I’ve added to my TBR. Much of her art is available online, as well.

The book is divided into 5 sections. I’ve decided to put the main narrative last, it simplifies things a bit.

The Silmarillion starts with two prologues:
The Ainulindale, Tolkien’s creation myth and an examination of how fate works in these tales. This is 10x more interesting on rereads, because of the way it ties in with everything else. But it’s really not very representative of the book as a whole. It’s ok to skip this, in fact, but probably don’t skip the next part.

The Valaquenta, which introduces the Valar, the semi-divine characters of Tolkien’s legendarium. And also the Maiar, who are sort of a level down from them — the same kind of beings as Sauron, Gandalf, and Saruman. Gandalf has a line in LotR about Sauron being “a servant or an emissary” but doesn’t bother to explain whose servant. The main antagonist of The Silmarillion, Melkor, was Sauron’s boss and is pretty clearly analogous to Satan.

The book also ends with two short sections:
The Akallabeth: the tale of the fall of Numenor. This is a very compressed account considering how much happens in it. It is not quite as engaging as some of the more fully fleshed out tales, but there are some wonderful passages.

Of the Rings of Power: sort of a historical essay that links The Silmarillion with The Lord of the Rings, (covering the Second and Third Ages).

The Quenta Silmarillion (“Tale of the Silmarils”) makes up the bulk of the book. It starts out telling of the beginning of time and the origins of the Elves. Some of the stories in these chapters have a Lord Dunsany-like feel to them, but the narrative is building up to something significantly darker than that.

At this point the Noldor, who are the main players in most of the book, are introduced. The index notes that their name literally means “the Deep Elves,” and explains that

The name… meant the Wise, but wise in the sense of possessing knowledge, not in the sense of possessing sagacity, sound judgement

…. LOL. I mention this because it tells you pretty much what you need to know about the Noldor. Their greatest craftsman, Feanor, invented the Silmarils, the three jewels that are central to the stories that follow. Some of these events have a pretty obvious Genesis/Paradise Lost influence. The Noldor — and really, the First Age Elves in general — often seem to have more in common with legendary human characters (in the sagas, for example) than with Elves in folklore, as far as their basic motivations are concerned.

The Feanorian arc — the tale of him and his sons — both starts and ends the main story, but it is somewhat in the background during the “Three Great Tales,” Tolkien’s collective term for the stories of Beren and Lúthien, The Children of Húrin, and The Fall of Gondolin. (The narrative compression of The Silmarillion means that quite a lot from the extended versions is left out. I’ve put a hold on The Fall of Gondolin at the library, but I’d really like to reread The Children of Húrin, eventually.)

a few of my favorite things:

favorite of the Valar: Nienna! I have rather mixed feelings about the Valar as a whole, but that would probably take an entire essay to sort out properly.

favorite chapter: The Nirnaeth Arnoediad, probably.

favorite character: Maedhros!!! On rereads I’ve come to appreciate many or even most characters, but he’s still my favorite. Without a doubt, he has one of the most compelling character arcs in the whole book; it was one of the few things that really stuck with me the first time I read it.

View all my reviews

The Lark Now Leaves His Watery Nest

Sir William Davenant, 1606-1668

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica} p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Helvetica; min-height: 14.0px}

The lark now leaves his watery nest

And climbing, shakes his dewy wings;

He takes this window for the east,

And to implore your light, he sings,

Awake, awake, the morn will never rise,

Tis she can dress her beauty at your eyes.

The merchant bows unto the seaman’s star,

The ploughman from the sun his season takes;

But still the lover wonders what they are,

Who look for day before his mistress wakes.

Awake, awake, break through your veils of lawn,

Then draw your curtains, and begin the dawn.

from the anthology: Davenant (also called D’Avenant) was said to be Shakespeare’s godson, and rumors persisted that he was Shakespeare’s natural son as well. He was a busy and varied man of letters, producing comedies, tragedies, and the heroic poem Gondibert, which is still readable. He was made poet laureate and knighted by Charles I. A loyal Cavalier [i.e., a Royalist in the English Civil War], he was imprisoned in the Tower [of London] in the early 1650s, saved supposedly by Milton. Davenant returned the favor during the Restoration, when Milton was jailed.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; line-height: 14.0px; font: 12.0px Times; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}

Readers Imbibing Peril

I’ve just joined this for Peril the Second: read at least 2 books

my plans:
a classic: Manfred, Lord Byron (Gothic) and/or The Moonlit Road (19th c ghost stories)
a contemporary: The Accursed, Joyce Carol Oates (Gothic novel)

Review: The House of the Wolfings

The House of the Wolfings by William Morris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like the upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream.”

“… they worshipped the kind acres which they themselves and their fathers had made fruitful, wedding them to the seasons of seed-time and harvest, that the birth that came from them might become a part of the kindred of the Wolf, and the joy and might of past springs and summers might run in the blood of the Wolfing children. And a dear God indeed to them was the Roof of the Kindred, that their fathers had built and that they yet warded against the fire and the lightning and the wind and the snow, and the passing of the days that devour and the years that heap the dust over the work of men. They thought of how it had stood, and seen so many generations of men come and go; how often it had welcomed the new-born babe, and given farewell to the old man: how many secrets of the past it knew; how many tales which men of the present had forgotten, but which yet mayhap men of times to come should learn of it; for to them yet living it had spoken time and again, and had told them what their fathers had not told them, and it held the memories of the generations and the very life of the Wolfings and their hopes for the days to be.”

This is the first book I have read by William Morris. I already had The Well at World’s End on my reading list, but I was in the mood for something with a bit more action in it, so I decided to start with this one instead.

This novel is historical fiction and also to some extent fantasy, although the fantasy elements tend to stay in the background. Morris includes some excellent poetry as well. It is a fictionalized portrait of the lives of the Germanic Goths and their war against imperial Rome. There are prophecies and battles and women who take part in defending their homes, although only men fight on the battlefield. The main character, Thiodolf, falls in love with a woman who is a seer and a daughter of the gods.

The Wolfings and their allies, the Laxings, live by a river in the forest of Mirkwood in a land called the Mark. If I hadn’t already known that J.R.R. Tolkien was influenced by Morris, that would make it pretty obvious. (Tolkien mentioned this book and The Roots of the Mountains as influences on Lord of the Rings.)

I have read a couple of short essays about this book that I found insightful:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/morr…

http://morrisedition.lib.uiowa.edu/Ma…

View all my reviews