The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy Previous Posts: FOTR: Part One Part Two Part Three Bonus One: Photos of Books TT: Part One Part Two Part Three Bonus Two: TOYS! ROTK: Part One Part Two Welcome to Part Three of Return of the King! It's the end of the Read-Along! I'm sad to see it end, but it's just in time, as the holiday blog that I run with my husband is going to be taking up a lot of my blogging energy for the next month. Come visit us there: Mainlining Christmas! Due to time and what I actually have to say, I might skip some of the prompts this week, because mostly I want to talk about the fact that we finally got to my favorite chapter. Yay! What did you think of the two weddings? Do you think Eowyn will eventually find happiness with Faramir? I talked about this a bit last week: I think Eowyn and Faramir are well matched in background and temperament and will balance each other nicely. Holy Cow I was not expecting t...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by  Little Red Reviewer  and  Geeky Daddy Previous Posts: FOTR: Part One Part Two Part Three Bonus One: Photos of Books TT: Part One Part Two Part Three Bonus Two: TOYS! ROTK: Part One (PS: For more fantasy, come back this Mon-Wed for a short string of Discworld reviews, culminating in a review of  Snuff , the newest one, on Wednesday. But back to Tolkein for now...) Welcome to Part Two of Return of the King! This section took us through the main plot climax, and into the actual returning of said king. I love the whole sequence on Mount Doom, always have, although I'm still looking forward to the rest of the book! 1. After witnessing the events of Denethor's demise, what are your thoughts on him as a father and as a ruler, especially when compared to what happened with Boromir and the Ring. Denethor is a pretty sad character. I mean, he's arrogant and foolish, but as the leader of a city under siege (and I don't ...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy Previous Posts: FOTR: Part One Part Two Part Three Bonus One: Photos of Books TT: Part One Part Two Part Three Welcome to Part One of Return of the King! If you missed my Bonus Post last weekend, here's a link: LOTR Bonus: TOYS! Man, I am having a harder and harder time only reading the assigned chapters as the plot speeds up in this final volume. This week focuses on Return of the King Chapter 1-6, which brings us mostly through the Battle of Pelennor Fields, but not entirely. Some aspects of my answers may reflect the next few chapters, too, but I've tried to keep that down. Rather than answer the prompts directly (they're kind of vague this week), I'll just use each as a bit of a jumping off point. On the Paths of the Dead: I'm ashamed to admit that this is a section of the book I had forgotten about when I saw the movies, and I had to ask how much of it was from the ...

When the LOTR movies came out, of course there was merchandise! Some of the best was the action figure lines produced by Toy Biz. We (my husband and I) actually collected the entire Fellowship in 6 inch scale, but those are currently in storage. So really the only LOTR stuff on display in our apartment is this: Uh, yeah. That's still a lot of stuff, isn't it. Most of it is the smallest scale, figures that are less than two inches tall. They're from a series generally called "Armies of Middle Earth". The characters have a tiny amount of articulation, but are basically just statues. Here's the 2-inch Fellowship, coming out from between a set of Argonath bookends. Wow, that shelf is really dusty. Sorry about that... These sets and scenes were actually pretty nice for their size. Especially the ones that were playsets, like The Bridge of Khazad-dum:   Frodo hides from a Winged Nazgul in the ruins of Osgiliath: The Palantir chamber in ...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy This is the second part of The Two Towers. FOTR: Part One Part Two Part Three Bonus One: Photos of Books TT: Part One Part Two Here we are at the end of The Two Towers! It's kind of nice to be taking the time to savor each part of the book, because left to my own devices, I'd probably have kind of skimmed this section in my hurry to get back to the other characters. And that would be a shame, because following Sam and Frodo is wonderful. Discussion Topics: Faramir strikes me as a noble, intelligent fellow, especially concerning powers beyond his control.  Had he gone to Elrond's Council instead of Boromir, how might the story have changed?  Faramir is awesome. He goes on the short list of people who are not really affected by the Ring (and yes, they basically changed this up in the movies because they wanted the Ring to seem more dangerous). I think it's because he...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by  Little Red Reviewer  and  Geeky Daddy This is the second part of The Two Towers. FOTR:  Part One   Part Two   Part Three TT: Part One This was the middle bits, wrapping up the Isengard plot and the beginning of Frodo and Sam's attempt to get into Mordor. Let's get straight to the discussion questions: 1. The Glittering Caves of Aglarond; Fangorn Forest: Which of the two would you be most excited to visit once the war was over? No fair! I love both forests and caves. Especially forests that lead to caves. Of course, depending on who you are and how careful you are, Fangorn might be more likely to kill you, so that would have to be taken into account... 2. How did you like the reunion of at least part of the fellowship at Isengard? Did any part of it stand out to you? I really like that Gandalf and Theoden went off to talk strategy and news with Treebeard while Merry and Pippin treat Aragorn, Legola...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy Welcome to the first third of The Two Towers! FOTR: Part One Part Two Part Three I always forget, when I haven't read the books in a while, whether the two towers of the title are Orthanc (the tower of Isengard) and Bara-dur, Orthanc and Cirith Ungol, or Orthanc and Minas Morgul. It is technically the last one, but I think the only place I've seen that verified is in the very end of FOTR, and it's only there if you have a version that is split into three books. It could be any of them, or none, as far as the plot is concerned. The Two Towers contains all the middle bits of the story; I understand why it was hard to come up with a name for this volume. (In case you missed it, I did a bonus post on one of the off weeks: LOTR Bonus: Photos of Books !) I'm a little stretched for time this week, so I'm not going to respond to all the suggested questions. Selected discussion topi...

There's no Read-Along post this week, so I thought I'd share some pretty photos. While we don't have a copy of The Hobbit in our apartment (I had to get one from the Library last month) we do have a copy of The Hobbit Pop-up Book. It's quite pretty, and panels that pull out on the sides of each page have excerpts from the text. There's only about 6 pages in the book, though. (to spare Little Red Reviewer nightmares, I didn't take a picture of the Mirkwood spider battle 2-page spread...) Here's our copy of Lord of the Rings . The dust jackets feature an Alan Lee painting. While under the jacket each cover has this symbol in red and gold gilt. Fellowship of the Ring and Two Towers feature this big fold-out map in the back: And Return of the King has a map with more detail of the smaller area in which it takes place. However, I've been getting busy, and hard covers are heavy to carry on the subway, so I've also borr...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy Welcome to the Third and Final part of Fellowship of the Ring. Part One   Part Two I'll respond to a few of the discussion suggestions below, but first, another anecdote: Once upon a time, in 1999, in the lands known as Massachusetts, there was a shiny new college student who lived in a dorm. Many such students lived in single rooms in this dorm, and the halls were filled with bright decorations. One day this particular student was walking with some new friends, and they went one floor higher than they normally did, to stop at one particular door. On a piece of white paper, mounted on this door, was printed: Pedo Mellon a Minno. The student who lived behind this door asked if the others remembered the phrase, and joked that they had to know the password, which, of course, was "Friend". The new student thought this was marvelous, because while she loved Lord of the Rings, she h...

The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy Part Two of FOTR went much smoother for me than the first section. I think I may have just been in the wrong mood last week. Discussion questions are below, but first, an anecdote. The first time I read Lord of the Rings, I was probably in my early teens. I was already passably familiar with the Rankin-Bass animated versions of both The Hobbit and ROTK at this point; I literally don't remember not knowing the basics of this story. I took all three books out of the library one summer afternoon, and started in on Fellowship around dinnertime. At 5am, I closed the book after the last page of FOTR and went to sleep. I did nothing but eat, sleep and read (and the former two grudgingly) until I finished Return of the King in the middle of the third day. With all that in mind, I'll move on to the Discussion Topics, provided by Geeky Daddy (Clarifications/edits added by me) 1. What was were your...

Woo! It's time to start in on the meat of the LOTR Read-Along, with the first eight chapters of Fellowship of the Ring . ( The Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy ) It's been an interesting re-read for me so far; I find that I'm noticing different aspects of the writing. Of course, I'm also reminded that the beginning of FOTR is slooooowwww . I like these books, but they take their sweet time to ramp up. These are all the chapters that when I heard they were cutting a lot of it for the films, I said: "yeah, okay, I mean, I'll miss it, but that makes sense." (Unlike the big section at the end of ROTK, but we'll get there when we get there.) Discussion questions provided by Little Red Reviewer follow! 1. Hobbits seem to have songs for everything!  I didn't realize this was a musical. . . . how are you liking all the songs?  It's fine. I generally like poems with plenty of rhyme and rhythm, and memo...

This Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by  Little Red Reviewer  and  Geeky Daddy See Parts One and Two Here. The following discussion questions pertain to the last third of the book, so if for some horrid reason you haven't read The Hobbit, you are hereby warned: Spoilers Ahead. I'm battening down the hatches here for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Irene, but I think I have time to get this down. What were your thoughts of how Smaug was killed? If you did not like it what do you think Tolkien could have done differently? I absolutely love it. I love it on the story level and the thematic level. I love that it's a bit of a subversion of a fairy-tale or epic plot. There is a Hero, but he's not the main character of the story that you're following. Yet the heroic plot couldn't have happened without Bilbo behind the scenes. Were you satisfied with the ending of The Hobbit ? Yup. It's a bit of a left turn for the plot, but I li...

This Hobbit and LOTR Read-Along is hosted by Little Red Reviewer and Geeky Daddy . I'm playing a bit of catch-up here. When I signed up to be part of this read-along, I really thought I had a copy of The Hobbit in the apartment. Turns out, LOTR, Check, Sillmarillion, Check, but no Hobbit! It must be in storage someplace. No problem, I thought, I'll just pick up a copy at the library. However, when I got there, there were no copies to be had. It must be a summer reading book around here. Okay, I think, I have a copy of the BBC Radio Drama version that my husband won in a contest. I'll listen to that. And then we went out of town for a week. And I discovered that long radio drama isn't really my thing. (Short I can handle.) Went back to the library, and this time I found a copy. Instead of answering all the discussion questions from both weeks, I'll just touch on a selection for now: On Chapters 1-7: What were your expectations starting The...