I hope you all enjoyed 2012. We actually spent the whole year in one place, a place we like living in, so that alone was good for us. And Thomas is having a much better time now at the end of the year than he was having during the start.
So, if you come to the blog to read about Thomas and to follow what he’s doing, we’ll try to keep updating it in 2013 as much as we can. Meanwhile, now that Veronica and I both have iPhones, we’ll be trying to put more videos of him up on YouTube. If you keep watching after the first video, it will keep playing them. Or you can find them all here.
But, if you are here for the posts about film and literature and other random things that I feel like writing about, keep reading after the jump. (more…)
Well, it’s Christmas. I suspect you might have already known that.
That pile under the tree has now pretty much been devoured. We have eaten our eggs, coffee cake and sausage and we have our croque monsieurs and chicken cacciatore to come. We are watching Pixar Shorts Vol II (though last night we watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street and we watched Mickey’s Christmas Carol while opening presents), which Thomas got for Christmas. And tonight it will be all about the new companion on the Christmas episode of Doctor Who. Though before that, we’ll go out in the snow (yes – we actually have received the gift of a white christmas – at least it’s a gift to Erik).
Thanks to everyone who sent Thomas things – except for the pile in the back, everything under the tree was pretty much for him. And he has been enjoying it all this morning.
Reading J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t teach me a love of reading. Even at the age of 5, I already had that. But, in the summer of 1980, after I had made it through the Chronicles of Narnia, my brothers decided to hand me The Hobbit and then The Lord of the Rings and see what would happen. What happened, of course, is 33 consecutive years of reading both (sometimes more than once a year).
For a long time, this was a love that I had, but it wasn’t necessarily an overwhelming passion. I had The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and a few reference books (The Complete Guide to Middle-earth and The Atlas of Middle-earth). And I knew a lot about Middle-earth. But it could all easily fit in a shelf. Now it can’t even fit in a single bookcase.
“This tale grew in the telling . . .”
What happened? Well, a passion for collecting that began to focus happened. And the films happened, at a time when I was working at the world’s largest bookstore. There was suddenly a lot of Tolkien books (and Tolkien related books) around and suddenly I had more money than I had before for this kind of collecting. So, this took off, slower than Faulkner, but at a good pace.
And what has happened in the years since I left Powell’s? It has only continued to grow. In fact, I now own more copies of Lord of the Rings than I own of The Sound and the Fury. And it continues to grow because they continue to release new editions of the books and I just can’t resist. (more…)
Publisher: George Allen & Unwin (U.K.), Houghton Mifflin (U.S.)
Pages: 1137
First Line: “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
Last Line: ” ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”
Acclaim: 3rd Best-Selling Novel of All-Time; Le Monde’s 100 Books of the Century
Michael Fassbender makes, shall we say, a costly error, in Inglourious Basterds.
My Top 20:
Inglourious Basterds
The Hurt Locker
A Serious Man
An Education
Broken Embraces
Up
Up in the Air
The White Ribbon
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
District 9
The Informant
Sin Nombre
Crazy Heart
Coraline
Revanche
Precious
(500) Days of Summer
A Single Man
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Duplicity
note: There has been a slight change since I first posted this, because I finished re-watching film for Best Picture and dropped District 9 a few spots and moved Up up a few spots.