Started Lord of the Rings. (Do I need to specify that I'm reading it?) I can never quite hold out until September 22nd, but figure that Bilbo's birthday preparations begin in earnest a few weeks prior to the event itself, so I'm right on schedule. I took last year off both because I'd had my fill of the mania and because I wanted to let my reeling sensibilities recover from Peter Jackson's dope-induced, D&D interpretations.
Maybe this will be the year that I grow some balls and start tinkering artistically with the book. But I doubt it. Not after my nineteenth read of the Forward where he smashes his critics, bashes allegorists, and upbraids anyone without the sense to "buy Ballantine". The man loved his work, loved his own editions. For chrissakes, he illustrated his own stuff. Not well, mind you, but with a confidence that comes only from overweening pride. That and, as far as I can tell, a childish refusal to let anyone else touch his shit. And he was right, considering that he's been so often reduced to blue skinned elves and bitch-slapping wizards. So I'm a little daunted. I'm also rambling.
Did anyone know that Christopher Tolkien was in the RAF? How did I miss that bullshit? Now he's turned from a pasty bespectacled literary lamprey into a young british man, brooding in the sands of North Africa, reading his dad's letters, draped in his bomber jacket, and sexy as all hell. Great.
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