musesfool | Entries tagged with books: lotr

I still feel shitty and also had a low grade fever, so I called out today (though I did staff a meeting at 4 pm and felt miserable the whole time), and slept for most of the day. I feel like I could sleep some more, but I'm afraid that when I get in bed to sleep for the night, I will not sleep at all. I guess we'll see. I may call out again tomorrow, though this time I will have to remember to put on an out of office email. Whoops.

Anyway, while I was awake, I finished TTT and started RotK. I have to say, it's been so long since I'd read the books (10 or 12 years, I think), that I forgot that Sam actually namechecks both the Silmarils and Earendil when he's talking about the Phial and that they're still in the same story. Oh Sam.

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Current Mood: sick
Current Music: Mets vs Nats on tv

This morning, I made chocolate banana bread with the super ripe bananas that were sitting on the counter. This is one of my favorite recipes because it's easy and delicious and you don't need a mixer for it. You can do it all with a fork or a spatula.

While I was waiting for the melted butter to cool, I threw some chicken into the slow cooker with some fire-roasted diced tomatoes, sliced shallots, garlic, and Adobo seasoning, and I plan to shred it and make tacos later (and for multiple days this week). Mmm... tacos...

I also dyed my grays purple again for the first time since Halloween, but it doesn't seem to have taken as well? Idk, I guess I can try again next weekend for the grays that stayed gray.

You know the last mile problem? I am like that. I do a thing and I get all the way to the penultimate step, and then I just...stay there until I finally get myself going enough to finish the job. I don't know why I'm like this, but I always have been. I have some things I need to finalize but I keep putting them off, and it's not going to be any better because of the delay (and in fact may be worse) and yet. Sigh. Next weekend. Errands. Finishing things. Yes. Maybe if I plan to do it rather than just think I'll make time to get it done around other things, it will happen.

On the other hand, I'm still waiting to schedule my air conditioner installation and that one is not on me. I called the guy on Thursday and forwarded him the instructions from my building manager and haven't heard back yet, so I guess I will have to call again tomorrow. I just would like this to happen before the weather gets really warm. Sigh.

Lastly, I posted a story yesterday, so here is the April writing roundup:

The Canons of Narrative Art (on AO3)
LotR; Bilbo & Frodo; g; 1,010 words
"It shan't make a good tale, I'm afraid."

"Nonsense!" Bilbo replied bracingly. "You just have to know how to tell it."

Rereading LotR - I've just arrived at Helm's Deep - and listening to that podcast made me think a lot more about the frame narrative, i.e., that Bilbo and Frodo (and Sam) wrote the story, and you know, writing is hard! And Bilbo prefers to write poetry at the end rather than prose, so you know he left a lot of it up to Frodo. And the narrative tone of The Hobbit is so different, so you can imagine that Bilbo wrote that one as a memoir but also based it on how he told it to the young hobbits, so it definitely comes across as a children's book, whereas LotR starts in the same register but then progresses to high fantasy as it goes on, both because the subject matter was weightier, because it was more tied to the Elves and the Elder Days, and also because Frodo isn't Bilbo, and also might have been more conscious that he was writing for a broader or more scholarly audience etc. All of that doesn't really matter to this story, but that is what I was thinking about when I started writing, and why I chose that title.

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Current Mood: productive
Current Music: I Wish You Would - Taylor Swift

Today's poem:

Everything Needs Fixing

in your thirties everything needs fixing. i bought a toolbox
for this. filled it with equipment my father once owned
to keep our home from crumbling. i purchased tools with
names & functions unknown to me. how they sat there
on their shelf in plastic packaging with price tags screaming:
hey lady, you need this! like one day i could give my home
& everything living inside it the gift of immortality, to be
a historical monument the neighbor's would line up
to visit even after i'm gone & shout: damn that's a nice house!
i own a drill now, with hundreds & hundreds of metal pieces
i probably won't use or use in the wrong ways but what
i'm certain of, is still, the uncertainty of which tools repair
the aging dog, the wilting snake plant, the crow's feet
under my eyes, the stiff knee or bad back.
& maybe this is how it is—how parts of our small universe
dissolve like sugar cubes in water—a calling to ask us
to slow our busy breathing so we can marvel
at its magic. because even the best box of nails are capable
of rust. because when i was a child i dropped
a cookie jar in the shape of noah's ark,
a family heirloom that shattered to pieces.
the animals broke free, zebras ran under
the kitchen table, the fractured lion roared by
the front door & out of the tool cabinet
i snagged duck tape & ceramic glue. pieced each beast
back to their intended journey. because that afternoon
when my father returned from work i confessed
& he sat the jar on the counter only to fill it with
pastries. how the cracks of imperfection mended by
my hands laid jagged. chipped paint sliced across a rhino's neck.
every wild animal lined up against the boat—
& a flood of sweet confections waiting inside.

--Karla Cordero

*

I don't have much to report for reading Wednesday - I finished FotR and started Two Towers, but I don't know how far into I'll get.

Today is the last day of my mini-vacation. :( I did get done some stuff I needed to get done, but a few days is never enough.

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Current Mood: sleepy
Current Music: Mets vs Giants on tv

I've repeatedly said that I can't do podcasts, because I fall asleep five minutes in, and that is in general true, but over the last few months, I have been listening to the Prancing Pony Podcast, which is a LOTR reading/canon analysis podcast that was linked from that Tor.com Silmarillion primer I found so useful, and while I have fallen asleep more than once, if I listen while I'm doing other things (cooking, folding laundry) I can mostly make it work. (I skip over all the interviews with their listeners and various "special" episodes.)

Do I recommend this podcast? Not particularly. It's very white, straight, middle-aged dad in its point of view - the hosts are about my age, I guess, and even then, sometimes I expect a reference and don't get it (there have been several times I expected an AtLA reference [e.g., "everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked!"], and more than once a Discworld one, and yet, no).

I've definitely learned some about the linguistics (have I retained any of it? probably not) of the languages of Middle-Earth, and some of the influences on Tolkien, and they quote a lot from his letters, which is interesting, and the History of Middle-Earth, with the different iterations of the story Tolkien worked through. However, they adhere slavishly to "what Tolkien intended" and seem firmly planted in "collector" rather than "transformative" fandom, which I sometimes find irritating. Like, I don't care about other people's headcanons either, but there is room for reader interpretation on many occasions. (Also, if you are into the Feanorians, I would definitely not recommend it.) It does have some randomly hilarious moments, though - the Gollum GPS thing still makes me crack up whenever I remember it, and the Pooh bear impression one of them does is also pretty hilarious.

I still prefer reading to listening, though (and I do recommend the Silmarillion primer on Tor.com, which is where I first heard of this podcast), so I'm not sure how much longer I will continue, and I'm not really interested in starting any new ones.

*

Today's poem:

Translation
by Rowena Torrevillas

Into this moment
as into the deep
seasonless afternoon of
an old house standing
hip deep in the weeds,
the orchard gold-knotted
with strings of cicada song

The house empty of all but
the odor of ripening mango,
the absent owner a distant
relation of the friend whose name
is forgotten; a rope hangs windless
from a branch in the far
orchard held village town on the edge
of where you once lived across the world.
An instant lifted whole out of context

—but for the analogue
to mango, to cicada, the word
susurrating in its hot still air—
untying now the heart's vernacular
this chill October
when beyond the pines
the leaves are golden and dangle
on the stems of memory
just beyond reach.

*

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Mets vs Giants on tv

Today's poem:

New Brunswick Answers
by Shane Neilson

You are alone.
You were and were.
I am an altar.
I sing low of your body.
Our myths are compatible.
How could they not be?
Yes, I remember time, families, literature, and land.
I remember ghosts and their dreams.
That there was pain means that you can hear this answer, which is their answer.
Listen and understand.
You ask questions as commands, but I'm a silent refrain.
Hear the sail snap the headwind.
I am enough.

*

Got an email today that in light of the increased violence on the subway and the rising number of Covid cases in the city, we're going back to WFH until mid-May. I will take it! One less thing to stress about.

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Reading Wednesday!

What I've just finished
Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch, the 9th Rivers of London novel. I enjoyed it a lot. ( spoilers )

What I'm reading now
I put aside FotR for Amongst Our Weapons but I'll be back at it soon enough, with the Fellowship in Lothlorien. Will I continue once I finish FotR? I don't know but it's an omnibus ebook edition, so very possibly I will? Who can say? Which basically also answers What I'm reading next with as much clarity as I ever have for that question. *g*

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Current Mood: hungry
Current Music: Dog Days Are Over - Florence + the Machine

I went to the dentist this morning for my semiannual cleaning, and while their office is super easy to get to from my office, and was really easy to get to from my old apartment, it is not particularly convenient from where I live now, and so to avoid excessive transfers, I decided to take a car. And it was great - the ride took exactly an hour and got me there exactly on time (by which I mean, 10 minutes before my appointment, and they took me right in), but I don't know how people drive into the city every day. The traffic was awful and I don't think I'm claustrophobic, and I generally don't mind tunnels, but I did not like crawling through the Midtown Tunnel two feet at a time at all. *shudders*

Anyway, everything's fine - I need to floss more, as usual, and also the hygienist did not stop talking but like, she had her hands in my mouth so I couldn't respond, but she was so busy talking that at one point she caught my lower lip in the ~~sander~~ polisher (I don't know why I keep calling it a sander!) and that was really painful!

Then I went to the office and mostly worked, though the thing about being in the office is that people like to stop by the chat (also, people notice when the big boss comes in late and leaves early and spends the few hours she's in in a conference room rather than in the open office like the rest of us - they notice and they tell me about it like I didn't already know *hands*), and that breaks my momentum, so either nothing else gets done (if it happens after 3:30) or it takes me twenty minutes of futzing around to get back on track.

Anyway, reading Wednesday and I am still reading Fellowship of the Ring in a slow and meandering fashion. I'm at the Council of Elrond now and Legolas has just revealed that Gollum escaped his imprisonment.

I do want to say that for the first time in many, many years, I didn't just skip Tom Bombadil, and maybe I have more patience for him now? I still think he's a little annoying but he also reminded me of Paddington this time around, with his blue coat and yellow boots, so I just imagined him as Paddington and that made him less annoying (and more like Beorn, who is also a weirdo but with less rhyming)? But also GOLDBERRY. The River-daughter. Needs less Tom and more Goldberry is my thought this time around. Is she the genius loci of the Withywindle? Is Tom the genius loci of that area he lives in? Are they Ainur? Some form of Maiar? inquiring minds want to know! But not really that much because they are not particularly important to the story and I'm glad they didn't make it into the movies but Goldberry! I want to know more about her.

And in that spirit, here's today's poem:

The River

This is my formula for the fall of things:
we come to a river we always knew we'd have to cross.
It ferries the twilight down through fieldworks

of corn and half-blown sunflowers.
The only sounds, one lost cicada calling to itself
and the piping of a bird that will never have a name.

Now tell me there is a pause
where we know there should be an end;
then tell me you too imagined it this way

with our shadows never quite touching the river
and the river never quite reaching the sea.

-John Glenday

*

Current Mood: tired

Reader, I did not get any laundry done yesterday. Nearly everything I set my hand to went wrong in some way (liquids spilled, batter burned, etc. etc.) so it seemed wiser to avoid laundry given some of the weird encounters I've had in the laundry room on days when everything wasn't going wrong.

Instead, I began a reread of Fellowship of the Ring, which I hadn't planned on doing even though I just reread The Silmarillion and The Hobbit, but the book I had sort of desultorily started reading last week during lunch at work just wasn't calling my name, and I couldn't decide on any of the other hundreds of books on my iPad. *hands* I don't know if I'll continue past FotR - I think it's been at least 10 years since I last read LotR, possibly more. (I say at least 10 because there are bookmarks in my electronic copy dating to 2012, and I know I did a reread after the movies came out, but I can't remember if it was after the first movie or the third one. *meep*)

My plans for Friday fell through, so I've penciled in laundry for then instead. *g*

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Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Round Here - Counting Crows

I woke up in the middle of the night shivering and feverish again, and again around 6:45 am with a bone-deep conviction that I should not commute to the office today, so I worked from home. I don't know what it is, but it's happened to me before and it's not the usual morning grumbling - in the Before Times, I called in sick more than once due to such convictions, though not often enough to get in trouble for it - and the times I've ignored that feeling, I've regretted it. And usually, the next day I'm fine again. Idk.

I ordered some plastic bins to store my ever-growing collection of glitter and oil and lip balm containers, so I'll be working on organizing all of that in some way that can hopefully fit on the shelf in the closet, which also needs to be weeded through since there's some old clothes/coats hanging in there that I packed up when I moved and haven't worn since. I'm taking two days off in a couple of weeks to have a long weekend, so maybe I will sort through all that then.

I also made the appointment to have a professional come and measure my windows. Lowe's said they didn't have the service in my area once I put in my zip code, and Blinds to Go said the same, but Home Depot was able to schedule me for a week from Saturday (and then they called asking if I were available tomorrow, but 1. I'm working and 2. I have to shift a few things away from the windows before they come, so I said no). I hope the process is this: they come and measure, then tell me what I can buy from them blinds that can be custom cut (because I have a feeling my windows are not a normal size), and then they come back when the blinds are ready to be installed, which they do after they remove the current ones. If they can't, if they only provide the measurements, then I'll order blinds and a guy from Handy to come and hang them and remove the old ones, I guess.

Anyway, it's a beautifully sunny Wednesday and I finished rereading The Hobbit in time for Wednesday reading. I haven't reread it as often as I used to reread LOTR (which was once a year every year until my early twenties), and I always forget how different it is narratively, and how delightfully charming. I also forgot what a dick Thorin was to Bilbo, and how so few of the dwarves really get any personality. Overall, a highly entertaining read, and I'm glad I only saw the first movie - I think? Maybe I saw the second one? *checks DW* I did watch it while I was sick back in 2014, but I have no memory of it. Mostly what I remember is a coworker gave me an illicit copy of it to watch. *hands* I know I didn't see the third. So nothing from those films has overwritten the book in my head.

I don't know what I'm reading next. I guess we'll see!

*

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Electric Feel - MGMT

This is so cool: Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance found off coast of Antarctica - the pictures are so haunting and majestic.

This was also pretty interesting and confirms my feelings that what executives want is not what employees want: Making sense of why executives are eager to get employees back in the office (note: I couldn't get the site to show up in Firefox - it kept flashing the article and then whiting the page out even after I disengaged my adblocker for that page - but it works in Chrome). I shared that with my boss a little while after we did my review.

Yes, I had my annual review this morning and it was glowing. *g* We spent about 10 minutes talking about how awesome I am and then about 30 minutes chitchatting about the weather today, which is toggling between fluffy snowflakes and hard rain. Bleh. I hope it's all gone by tomorrow when I have to commute.

Anyway, Wednesday reading!

What I've just finished
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, and having read the Akallabeth now, I'm glad I didn't remember any of it and I hope to return to that state soon enough. Human sacrifice, really? And while I know it's supposed to be an Atlantis expy, I couldn't help but see all the biblical symbolism as well - Ar-Pharazon hardens his heart despite the Valar sending all sorts of curses and plagues upon Numenor?

I am glad I read it, though I continue to side-eye the Valar for their Elf-favoritism and their many mistakes in handling the Elves (and Morgoth). Like, clearly their mistakes with the Elves led them to be 99.98% hands off with Men, and maybe that was also not the best idea? IJS.

So all the Elf stuff is great and tragic and entertaining - I maintain my fondness for Earendil and now also love Tuor and Finrod (and Huan! Who was a dog not an Elf but he's such a Good Boy!) - and while I have heard numerous defenses that Tolkien's not racist - and I don't think he necessarily was beyond what a white English dude in his time was (and quite a bit less than some - I don't think the Dwarves are intended to be antisemitic, for example) - there's a lot in there about men of lesser blood and swarthy men and men who haven't been uplifted by exposure to Elves that I also feel is definitely hinky but not as in your face as, say, the racism in "The Horse and His Boy" re: Calormen. The Elves themselves are definitely kind of racist and the text supports their feelings of clear superiority, which make me like them slightly less even as it makes them slightly more #relatable.

I think mostly despite loving many of the Elves, I feel like Men get a raw deal here (death is a gift but we can't tell you how or why...sounds fake but okay), and only by being Elf-like can we overcome and not fall into darkness? And part of me feels like this is a comparison between pre- and postlapsarian people, but like, the Elves fell too! What else is the Kinslaying but a most grievous fall?

Anyway, I'm glad I reread it (and understood it this time!) - it has some fantastic stories in it - but there was also stuff that made me cringe a little (also, too much time on Turin! Not enough time on Tuor!). I'm also glad I read the Tor.com primer, which made it easier to keep track of who was who etc.

What I'm reading now
I didn't intend to start rereading The Hobbit, but it's kind of right there waiting when you finish the Silm, so, yeah, I started rereading it last night before bed. *hands*

What I'm reading next
I don't know. I don't intend a full LotR reread, but we'll see what happens.

*

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Ship to Wreck - Florence + the Machine (!!!)

Last night, I dreamt that the govt had finally recreated the super serum that worked on Steve, and had started creating super soldiers but they included in the new version something that disabled or even killed the soldiers if they tried to leave govt service, so Steve hired the Leverage crew to steal the formula and destroy it, while also working on a fix for the soldiers who'd already been given it/disabled by it. It was a pretty fun dream! Also for some reason Eliot recommended that Steve read "A Swiftly Tilting Planet." I'm not sure how that fit in but Gaudior got a shout out.

Because I had Monday off, it feels like Tuesday but is actually Wednesday, so books!

What I'm reading now
I am still making my way through The Silmarillion, which I must admit is a lot easier this time, probably because 1. I read that primer and associated essays, 2. I gave myself permission to skim the stuff that read too much like the biblical begats, and 3. I'm not 14. Good lord, why did I force my way through it at that age? (Because I still thought I had to finish every book I started - I'm glad I no longer believe that.)

Anyway, I'm enjoying it but I've just reached the story of Túrin Turambar and he is such a dumbass but not even the fun kind. Like, he could be a himbo (dumb of ass and pure of heart) but he's just so fucking emo it makes me want to slap him instead of feeling sad over how tragic his life is (and it is tragic!). Talk about self-inflicted wounds from terrible decision-making. Yes, I realize he's under a curse, and even if he made better choices he probably still would have come to a sad end, but oy. We spend so much time on him and so little with Tuor, who is much more sensible and mature and important* and also not under a curse!

*I may be biased a little because Eärendil is probably my favorite story in this book (and also my favorite of the poems/songs in LotR).

I also realized that I remember zero of the Akallabeth except how it ends so that's going to be fun to read.

What I'm reading next
As always, it is a mystery.

*

Current Mood: rolling my eyes forever
Current Music: Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell

I don't understand why vendors - mainly Amazon but also Stop and Shop does this too now - don't list the items you've ordered in the confirmation email anymore. You're not making me more likely to do more shopping by making me click through to your site to see my list of groceries - you're just annoying me that it's not easily accessible in the email the way it used to be. It's so dumb. I realize that I am very much old woman yelling at clouds here, but so many changes in technology are so terrible - things just get less useful with each update. It's so fucking annoying.

I sound cranky but I am quite well-rested - I went to bed late last night after a lovely zoom call with friends, and then slept for 10 hours without even using a benadryl! And then this afternoon at around 3:45 when we got a sudden emergency alert and it started snowing and being super windy (IT HECKEN WIMDY), I took a nap and slept for like 90 minutes and had very involved and lengthy dreams featuring Elves (nothing interesting - I made a grilled cheese sandwich while I waited for them to leave), because of course, it's all fucking Elves all the time when you're rereading The Silm. (I say this affectionately! I love the Elves! But if I were a denizen of Middle-earth, I would be a Hobbit. My sister and i have discussed this at some length and decided that the Shire also wins as the fictional place we'd like to spend a vacation. Eating, drinking, telling stories, parties in the backyard with fireworks - these are my people.)

Of course, that nap kind of put paid to my plans to make scallion pancakes for dinner tonight - they're not hard but they are a little labor intensive, so I just had quesadillas and I will make the scallion pancakes tomorrow. Probably. I also want to try out a small batch mac and cheese recipe, but I could do that on Monday as it's a three-day weekend! Right now, I'm thinking about making a mug cake again. Hmm...

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Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Can't Find My Way Home = Blind Faith

Last night after dinner, I had a craving for dessert, but I didn't want anything too big or time-consuming, so for the first time ever, I made a mug cake. I made the Pioneer Woman's chocolate mug cake and I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up. It was really good - I didn't even have any whipped cream or ice cream to go with it, but I did drink a glass of cold milk with it and I will definitely make it again and recommend it if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.

I still haven't used the mini-bundt maker, mostly because all the recipes that came with it make 5-6 cakes. Which is 4-5 cakes more than I want out of it, tbh. (Also, those recipes are all full recipes - an egg, some butter, etc. The mug cake used oil and milk and therefore didn't require anything coming to room temperature.)

As for reading Wednesday, I am haphazardly rereading The Silmarillion (in very small increments), but mostly reading about the things that happen in the The Silmarillion instead. *hands*

*

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Surface Pressure - Encanto soundtrack

Seeing the posters and reading about the Amazon Rings of Power* show made me start thinking about rereading The Silmarillion for the first time since, like, 1988. (Look, I barely made it through once back then, but I did make it.;) I know the show is drawn from the Appendices (which I would also reread), but I thought if I do it, I should do it from the start. I have a kindle version, so I would just need to set up tabs with various maps/lists of characters/genealogies etc. to refer to, since I've found it's not easy to do that kind of referencing electronically.

*I have few expectations of this show - I'd like it to look good and be entertaining - so I'm not going to fuss much about departures from canon.

In other TV show news, I haven't watched The Book of Boba Fett (yet, I guess) and I have no desire to revisit the disk horse that has recently been stirred up**, but I am excited about the Obi-Wan show. May 25th! The 45th anniversary of the release of the original Star Wars!

**I think some of it is due to bad faith arguing and some of it is due to people just not understanding things (to be more generous), but I also don't care what other people think anymore since I've chosen an interpretation that works for me, even if canon doesn't always follow through.

Speaking of anniversaries, as of this past Monday, it's been 4 years since I moved into this apartment! I kind of can't believe it's been that long, but given how little I've left the place in the last two years, I absolutely believe it. *g*

***

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Olympic skiing on tv

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the mermaid cafe

we'll laugh and we'll toast to nothing

Entries tagged with books: lotr

they have certainly dominated against their division

you say it's in the past

how parts of our small universe dissolve like sugar cubes in water

untying now the heart's vernacular

but i'm a silent refrain

with our shadows never quite touching the river

through myself and back again

she got the power in her hand

i can't help but pull the earth around me to make my bed

they paved paradise and put up a parking lot

somebody holds the key

see if she can hang on a little longer

showing his pedigree