...you will find:
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
What are YOU Reading?
{In Review}
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
This was a re-read for me (as well as for Peter), but it was every bit as enjoyable the third time around. As someone who has small aspirations of writing for a living, I am in complete and total awe of Tolkien and his ability to create worlds and languages that are so lifelike and believable, yet exist solely because of his imagination and creativity. During the same time that I was reading The Fellowship out loud to Peter, I was also reading The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton (review to come) for myself. Both stories contain worlds which do not exist, and both were written with the idea that children (as well as adults) would read them, but that is where the similarities stop. While Mount Majestic is a nice little story, it will never have the staying power of The Lord of the Rings because the world which Trafton created simply isn't believable. On the other hand, I can totally accept the fact that Middle Earth is a real place because Tolkien not only gave it a name, he gave it a history and beings and languages. Trolls? Of course they exist, and if they see sunlight, they turn to stone, and everyone knows this because they read about it in Bilbo's journal. Want to know more about Elrond and Galadriel? Pick up a copy of The Silmarillion to find out all about the elves in the First Age and the original battle for Middle Earth. If you've seen the Peter Jackson films - which are good - but you haven't read the books (they had to cut a lot of great stuff for the films), then I highly recommend that you pick up a book and see what you've been missing.
On a slightly different note, and this is just my opinion, I think that J.K. Rowling was on the right track with the Harry Potter series (creating a believable secondary world that somehow related to the known world), but she lost her way around book #4, which is why I don't foresee Mr. Potter and his friends standing the test of time in the way that Frodo and Sam have since they first arrived on the literary scene in 1954.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
This was a re-read for me (as well as for Peter), but it was every bit as enjoyable the third time around. As someone who has small aspirations of writing for a living, I am in complete and total awe of Tolkien and his ability to create worlds and languages that are so lifelike and believable, yet exist solely because of his imagination and creativity. During the same time that I was reading The Fellowship out loud to Peter, I was also reading The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic by Jennifer Trafton (review to come) for myself. Both stories contain worlds which do not exist, and both were written with the idea that children (as well as adults) would read them, but that is where the similarities stop. While Mount Majestic is a nice little story, it will never have the staying power of The Lord of the Rings because the world which Trafton created simply isn't believable. On the other hand, I can totally accept the fact that Middle Earth is a real place because Tolkien not only gave it a name, he gave it a history and beings and languages. Trolls? Of course they exist, and if they see sunlight, they turn to stone, and everyone knows this because they read about it in Bilbo's journal. Want to know more about Elrond and Galadriel? Pick up a copy of The Silmarillion to find out all about the elves in the First Age and the original battle for Middle Earth. If you've seen the Peter Jackson films - which are good - but you haven't read the books (they had to cut a lot of great stuff for the films), then I highly recommend that you pick up a book and see what you've been missing.
On a slightly different note, and this is just my opinion, I think that J.K. Rowling was on the right track with the Harry Potter series (creating a believable secondary world that somehow related to the known world), but she lost her way around book #4, which is why I don't foresee Mr. Potter and his friends standing the test of time in the way that Frodo and Sam have since they first arrived on the literary scene in 1954.
No comments:
Post a Comment
A reminder: there are more than 400,000 words in the English language, please use them wisely.