I made all the teachers laugh in the prep room. I said I had 4000 kindle books, and I couldn't find anything to read. See, I wanted to read this. Thankfully, when Jackson released the Hobbit movies, this kindle version was on sale for under $2. I figured why not. I don't usually double buy unless you count freebies (such as classic lit), but it was too good a deal to pass up. So I have the kindle version, the hardback version, the audio tape version, the BBC version on Audible, the Jackson movies, the cartoon, and the cartoon's album. (It's pretty much the same for LOTR, except I don't own the cartoon version of Return of the King. We don't talk about that movie). My real book version of this, if you know what I mean, has the Hague illustrations and this one seems to have the Tolkien illustrations, which was cool. What is also neat about the kindle version is that when Elrond translates Thorin's map, the book has in text links back to the map. That was cool. Yet, it is not the same as reading my real edition if you know what I mean. That is the drawback of kindle books. A real book is just the text, it also is in many ways a memory of you reading the text. There are prints in the book - whether just memories or actual stains. You don't get that with a kindle. It's more impersonal. So it wasn't quite the same re-reading it this time. Not the prof's fault by any means. Smaug is still a Dark Sith Lord well before Lucas invented them, offering truths and half truths. It was so nice to see the Thrush that was deleted from the Jackson movies. And thankfully, we didn't have dwelfs. And the songs. I missed the songs in the movies. A classic as always.

Nice look at the design that went into various central characters to the Hobbit movies. It includes quotes from the designers.

Thanks to Bettie for this audio book.

 

Jacobi is wonderful reading these poems.  Love!

 

The Hoard is my favorite.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley.

                The most interesting part of this book is the essays by people who knew Lewis.  Those make it somewhat worth reading.  The rest of the book is essays, mostly about his non-Narnia works and his Christian philosophy.  While those could have been interesting, they tend to be worshipful.  This doesn’t mean that they are bad or un-informed.  They are quite good, but the essays do not deal with any negative aspect of the work.  The closest you get is an oft quote from JRRT and then a comment about how we shouldn’t judge him for it.

 

Spoilers Ahoy for both the movie and the books.

 

                So if I thought Desolation of Smaug was better than I thought it woul be, then I have to admit that I watched a good portion of Five Armies (hence forth BoFA) with the my arms crossed and slightly slumped in the seat.

 

                It didn’t help that there was like 45 minutes of trailers for nothing I wanted to see either.

 

                Okay it was more like 30. Still, I heard people snoring.

 

                No, I am not joking.

 

                Luckily, BoFA is not the type of movie you can sleep though.