Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Book #16: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Since I read the LOTR trilogy earlier this year, I wanted to read The Hobbit. But I just plain forgot about it, until I was searching at the library for a book on CD for Tommy and I to listen to on our drive down to Charleston this weekend. This was such a great choice. We both were so hooked we had to spend the last two evenings listening to finish it after we got home from our trip. I read The Hobbit first when I was in high school, and I always loved it, but I had basically forgotten most of the storyline. Tolkien's style of writing seems so friendly in this book, especially when you're listening to it, and it's not quite so descriptive about the surroundings or landscape like I originally thought LOTR was. The action moves fast in this book, and Bilbo is a really great character to become attached to.

We also redboxed the movie (part 1 of 3) while we were in Charleston, because I hadn't seen it yet. It was really, really good. I kind of doubted it because I was bugged that they were turning one book into THREE movies (seems so unnecessary) but the movie was awesome. And we both can't wait for the next two to come out... but unfortunately, we'll have to.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Book #15: Writers on Writing, Vol. II (More Collected Essays from the New York Times)

I haven't been reading very much the last few weeks--mainly because I put in an old Season 2 episode of The Office a few weeks ago while I was folding laundry and I got hooked. I'm re-watching all of the seasons now, haha. I feel like revisiting this old TV show is almost like rereading a favorite book--going back to this old story and these old characters that I remember so fondly. (I'll just give my two cents on The Office: the first seasons are so much better.)

But anyway, I have been in the middle of a bunch of books lately, not really progressing on any of them because of my show-watching, but I finally finished this one. I really liked it--I love the meta-ness of reading about writing and how it works and hearing from writers about how they approach what they do. Whenever I read these things, I always feel tempted to write my own novel--I think of a fantastic idea and mull over it for a few days, but the execution still seems way far out of my league. Like it's far too much work for me to really write something and make it GOOD.

But anyway (I keep rambling about random things and needing to get back on track--one reason why it would be hard for me to write something good), I really loved reading these essays. I've read and loved books by a lot of these authors (and then of course I hadn't ever heard of most of them), so it was really neat to hear from them in their own voices. And I always love reading really good writing, which all of these essays were, so that was a treat as well.

I would totally read Volume I of this collection but the library doesn't seem to have it (although it does have Volume II for some reason). I bought this book at the friends of the library sale at NCSU last year, and just now made it through it. Haha. (Although I still have plenty of other books I bought there that I haven't even touched. . . . Oh well.)