The 'Currently Reading' Thread.

[Keith Houchen]

3 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

The songs are still shit, though.

In one of the LOTR films, Pippin sings to Denethor so that means the whole trilogy, and the whole of Tolkien extended universe, is a musical or something. 

[Chest Rockwell]

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

so revisiting The Hobbit it's quite refreshing to find a really warm, almost conversational way of writing, that really lends itself to a children's book.

Yeah, sorry to tell you but The Hobbit stands up, but Lord of the Rings is as clunky and dull as you remember it to be. You'll see when you get there....

[HarmonicGenerator]

12 minutes ago, Chest Rockwell said:

Yeah, sorry to tell you but The Hobbit stands up, but Lord of the Rings is as clunky and dull as you remember it to be. You'll see when you get there....

I’ve only read LOTR once and I got stuck about halfway through the second one, finished reading it eventually but Two Towers was a real slog.

 

[Carbomb]

I enjoyed LOTR, but I did very much prefer The Hobbit. Not just because the writing was a lot better, but also because personally I find "smaller" adventures more engaging than "stop the end of the world" ones. (Yes, Smaug was a huge fuck-off dragon, but he wasn't the threat Sauron was.)

[SuperBacon]

Thought some of you might like to know that Waterstones have 50% off hardbacks from today until the 28th, in store only.

Off to brave the rain for a bargain, but if I see that pissing Ghibli book I bought my eldest for half price, I will fume.

[BrodyGraham]

Just finished Leviathan Falls, the last Expanse novel. I've been an Expanse book wanker since Leviathan Wakes was in the 3 for 2's at Waterstones so it's a really bittersweet moment for me to put the story down after 9 years.

I can't recommend the series enough. It's testament to the Authors' planning and confidence that they stick the ending so well.

[BomberPat]

Got to the end (minus appendices) of The Return Of The King last night, putting my big Tolkien read almost to bed, unless I fancy having a crack at the Silmarillion as well.

I still think The Hobbit is the stronger book for its simplicity and the tone of the writing, but I have a lot more appreciation now for LOTR than I had the first time around. 

A lot of the things that I'd previously found quite irritating about it all - moments of being insufferably twee, Tom Bombadil, the constant obsession with what the characters are eating and drinking and when - I found myself having a lot more affection toward this time. Tolkien can't ride dialogue for shit, but once you get into the head-space of realising that he's creating a mythology, that doesn't really matter, and in that context I realise he's a far more skilled writer than I gave him credit for, with the odd excellent turn of phrase. All the hierarchical "X son of Y" and reference to older stories and myths still feels very clunky, and you spend half the booking trying to keep track of all the names, or just thinking "fucking hell, give it a rest", but again, it feels very authentic in terms of how ancient myths and legends would be related. And actually, what I found really quite endearing was the weird mix of those two extremes - the very folksy and twee world of Hobbit property disputes and second breakfasts, and the mythic time of the rise and fall of kingdoms and legendary battles - and it's somewhere in that mix that you find the heart of the thing, and that makes it all actually work where other fantasy "epics" just feel like overwrought nonsense. There's an authenticity to it.

Still not without criticism, though - I found the Two Towers excellent, but Return of the King a bit of a slog, largely because Tolkien simply cannot manage urgency at all. A comparison with the movies is that, in The Two Towers, the battle of Helm's Deep takes up fewer pages than any of the Hobbits' conversations with Treebeard. Big dramatic moments tend to be covered in a paragraph or less, with no real sense of danger or immediacy, because his style of writing and his tone utterly fail to convey any of that. The strength of The Two Towers is in the characterisation of Gollum, who feels considerably more complex and believable than any other character, largely because they're not written to speak in the same style as everyone else, whereas the heart of The Return of the King is in the relationship between Sam and Frodo, but to get there is a slog. That the book just keeps on going long after the natural ending to it all doesn't help. A scene that stood out far more than I expected was Sam & Frodo's encounter with Shelob, and Shelob is described as an almost Lovecraftian ancient horror, in ways that make her far scarier than just being A Big Spider. That one really stuck with me.

 

So....yeah. It's a project I'm glad I embarked on, and that has given me a newfound appreciation of books that I had previously thought just weren't really for me. 

[Carbomb]

Yeh, once you notice that Tolkien was pretty much trying to re-create the northern European epics that were part of his ASNAC academic background, a lot of things fall into place. Take into account the appendices, with all the extra "chronicles" and the detail on Sindarin/Quenya language, and he's essentially creating a facsimile of what would have then been a plausible academic history text at the time. However, because he's also trying to tell a story, it ends up flitting between simulating realism and artistic portrayal, and he doesn't always get the balance quite right.

[BomberPat]

8 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Yeh, once you notice that Tolkien was pretty much trying to re-create the northern European epics that were part of his ASNAC academic background, a lot of things fall into place. Take into account the appendices, with all the extra "chronicles" and the detail on Sindarin/Quenya language, and he's essentially creating a facsimile of what would have then been a plausible academic history text at the time. However, because he's also trying to tell a story, it ends up flitting between simulating realism and artistic portrayal, and he doesn't always get the balance quite right.

what I find fascinating is that he purposefully ensures that Hobbits just don't fit in. It's made clear by multiple characters that they've never heard of Hobbits, and that they don't appear in any of the old myths or stories.

At first I thought it was a bit of a meta-commentary on how he hadn't really envisioned The Hobbit as taking place in the same world he was building until publishers kept pushing him for a sequel, and he realised he could tie the two together with LOTR - sort of an open admission that they don't belong. But given how much he makes of the Shire as a kind of idealised middle class English province, and the ending where it's starting to become built up and industrialised, I think it's more that the Hobbits represent his particular kind of middle-class Englishmen, and their absence from the mythology is about how he feels England is lacking in that kind of myth-making compared to, say, the Norse or Germanic legends that more overtly influence the rest of the book. 

[Onyx2]

3 hours ago, BomberPat said:

That the book just keeps on going long after the natural ending to it all doesn't help.

Easily the best change made in the films. While the Scouring of the Shire would've been a cool scene (bro) you simply do not need one more confrontation to overcome after the McGuffin proper has been destroyed.

[BrodyGraham]

If the stuffiness of Lord of the Rings is a problem, don't attempt the Silmarilion. 

[Carbomb]

7 minutes ago, BrodyGraham said:

If the stuffiness of Lord of the Rings is a problem, don't attempt the Silmarilion. 

Yeh, The Silmarillion is basically him completing the mythology - it's done very much in the style of real creation myths, rather detached and no central characters as such. I like it, but then I always liked classic mythology.

[Onyx2]

Oh and I just found this on Reddit @BomberPat. Tolkien's manuscript was originally titled The Magic Ring. He crossed it out here on a page on display in a Milwaukee museum:

[BrodyGraham]

I'm nearly finished Jade City by Fonda Lee. In terms of putting a lazy definition on it, I'd sell it as a mix of Hong Kong Cinema, The Godfather and Dune. It's the most refreshing fantasy book I've read in years and has a proper sense of a lived in world and really well defined characters.

Strong Recommend.

[SuperBacon]

Just finished Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.

Absolutely beautiful, and probably the best novel I've read in a very long time. His imagery is so evocative of 1980s Glasgow, and for a first time novel I was amazed at how good it was.

I grew up with an alcoholic mum, so some of it hit a bit too close to home, and brought up some awful memories, but honestly a wonderful read. 

Next, Catch 22 which I've never read.