Zelanator reviewed Above the Hush by Jacqueline Druga
Review of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Third time re-reading this and it gets better each time. The perfect way to cap off my goal of reading 100 books this year.
423 pages
English language
Published June 15, 1988
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first of three volumes of the epic novel The Lord of the Rings by the English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It is followed by The Two Towers and The Return of the King. It takes place in the fictional universe of Middle-earth. It was originally published on 29 July 1954 in the United Kingdom. The volume consists of a foreword, in which the author discusses his writing of The Lord of the Rings, a prologue titled "Concerning Hobbits, and other matters", and the main narrative in Book I and Book II.
Third time re-reading this and it gets better each time. The perfect way to cap off my goal of reading 100 books this year.
Professor Aldous Crane, knowledgeable about the occult, but a skeptic, is called to retrieve some rare bottles from a fanatic wine collector's cellar. With an exceptionally well-done ambience and a strong narrative voice, the book manages to be entertaining, funny, and chilling at times.
The plot itself is relatively simple and linear, with flashbacks of Aldous' life intertwined into the main narrative. Still, the descriptions are nicely done in a way that creates tension, anticipation, and suspense. The flashbacks are quite entertaining and serve as a way to back up Aldous characterization.
The Professor is the main character and the most well-developed one. The dialogues do a great job of characterizing him, and he was quite funny at times. Boudin, the wine collector, is the only other character we get to know, and his past is mysterious, weird enough to give him a dangerous and enigmatic aura, without going too …
Professor Aldous Crane, knowledgeable about the occult, but a skeptic, is called to retrieve some rare bottles from a fanatic wine collector's cellar. With an exceptionally well-done ambience and a strong narrative voice, the book manages to be entertaining, funny, and chilling at times.
The plot itself is relatively simple and linear, with flashbacks of Aldous' life intertwined into the main narrative. Still, the descriptions are nicely done in a way that creates tension, anticipation, and suspense. The flashbacks are quite entertaining and serve as a way to back up Aldous characterization.
The Professor is the main character and the most well-developed one. The dialogues do a great job of characterizing him, and he was quite funny at times. Boudin, the wine collector, is the only other character we get to know, and his past is mysterious, weird enough to give him a dangerous and enigmatic aura, without going too overboard to risk disbelief. Other characters serve as a great way to enhance both Boudin and Aldous' characters and history but are not really developed further than that.
I definitely recommend this book to anyone who would like a read with a great and chilling ambience. It is a bit short but feels like the right length for the story that is being told. The narrative has some humour intertwined that works really well to give some laughs between the tension — all in all, an entertaining read.
No sound should be there when you're alone."
Tapped out after page 162. Excessively prolonged hiking is unbearably boring to me, just like in real life—let alone reading about it. Similarly are the vast amounts of irrelevant details and repetitiveness: eat, sleep, walk, repeat. Do yourself a favor and watch the movies instead.
“It is better either to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few.” —Pythagoras (570 – 496 BC)
Tolkien did not read Pythagoras.
I forgot that Number of the Beast was my least favorite Heinlein...well, now it's tied for last place.
A whole lot of singing, walking, and hungry hobbits.
This is the first book I've read in 2020, the year I have the goal of reading longer books and those that intimidate me. I've read the Hobbit twice, once in fifth grade and then again last year, and I think it's a fun story, but I've never read the Lord of the Rings and haven't read much high fantasy.
I read this front to back, including the foreward and prologue - this made me very concerned that this book would be incredibly dry. It is noted that the trilogy is an attempt at "a really long story that would hold the attention of readers." Thankfully the meat of the story is usually not very dry.
I feel it reads well going into it thinking it will read like a DnD campaign rather than a "typical" novel - there are long journeys, battles, moments of rest, and I can imagine …
This is the first book I've read in 2020, the year I have the goal of reading longer books and those that intimidate me. I've read the Hobbit twice, once in fifth grade and then again last year, and I think it's a fun story, but I've never read the Lord of the Rings and haven't read much high fantasy.
I read this front to back, including the foreward and prologue - this made me very concerned that this book would be incredibly dry. It is noted that the trilogy is an attempt at "a really long story that would hold the attention of readers." Thankfully the meat of the story is usually not very dry.
I feel it reads well going into it thinking it will read like a DnD campaign rather than a "typical" novel - there are long journeys, battles, moments of rest, and I can imagine the successes, twists and turns, and failures as being controlled by a roll of the dice. (I'm not sure how typical this is for fantasy.)
There are slow moments, a lot of songs, and a lot of names of places and people, but I really enjoyed the importance of nature and the merging of human-like beings with the natural world.
Maybe it's just my current priorities in life that have colored my reading, but there were strong themes of stewardship of the land and immersion into nature. Nature is neither good nor evil in this text, rather it's shaped by the people around it. When nurtured and tended to such as Tom Bombadil and Galadriel have done, the land is abundant and nuturing back. In other regions, there is no steward for the land, and it is wild and is neither kind nor harsh.
The corrupt and imperialistc forces destory the natural world. Sam has visions of trees being felled in the Shire and smoke pouring out from a new brick building and he wishes to be home to protect it. Sam is also the character who is gifted soil with which he can garden when his journey is over. (And presumably rebuild.)
I wasn't really expecting the strength of this message of the goodness of working with the land to create bounty rather than its neglect and/or exploitation for one's personal power and gain. This message was a nice surprise because it isn't very well conveyed in the movies.
Overall, a different type of reading experience, but I enjoyed it.
The book is a collection of interviews from the brave fishermen involved in the rescue operations during the 2018 Kerala floods.
In the Lucid writings, the author narrates the events of bravery, reactions of the affected humans, how each one put their life on the boat leaving behind the economic distress with one mission to save lives, and how victims react in the most unexpected line of religion and caste.
Along with the incidents, the author mentions the history and background of the place, fishermen, society, and the state. As a result, the book reaches closer to any reader. The conditions these fishermen faced during the rescue is beyond normal human capacity.
The book is written in an accessible and straightforward manner. You can read it in a single sitting. The page after page, you can witness the generosity, humanness, dedication, simplicity, and bravery of the fishermen folks.
Kudos for …
The book is a collection of interviews from the brave fishermen involved in the rescue operations during the 2018 Kerala floods.
In the Lucid writings, the author narrates the events of bravery, reactions of the affected humans, how each one put their life on the boat leaving behind the economic distress with one mission to save lives, and how victims react in the most unexpected line of religion and caste.
Along with the incidents, the author mentions the history and background of the place, fishermen, society, and the state. As a result, the book reaches closer to any reader. The conditions these fishermen faced during the rescue is beyond normal human capacity.
The book is written in an accessible and straightforward manner. You can read it in a single sitting. The page after page, you can witness the generosity, humanness, dedication, simplicity, and bravery of the fishermen folks.
Kudos for the author for writing it. You can read complete review in this blog post: anthology.kracekumar.com/post/book_review_rowing_between_the_rooftops/
I tried three or four times to read this book but it fell out of my hands for as many times. I guess fantasy really doesn't appeal to me.
Ungeschlagen für mich das Beste der Mittelerdebücher ✨✨✨
This is my review of the entire The Lord of the rings trilogy.
It scarcely seems necessary to do a review of this work, it is so well known, and recently turned into a movie series to boot. It is the Platonic ideal of the epic high fantasy genre, and at the heart of Tolkien's work through his life. The first effort in this fantasy world was the children's book The Hobbit, but as it was successful Tolkien's publisher wanted more, and Tolkien obliged. Originally it was intended that the The Lord of the Rings would be the first volume, with the Silmarillion as volume 2, but the publisher decided to break it into three volumes (though each of those three has two parts, so one could as well call it a six-volume work). The overall summary is that the dark lord Sauron created Rings of Power: Three for Elves, …
This is my review of the entire The Lord of the rings trilogy.
It scarcely seems necessary to do a review of this work, it is so well known, and recently turned into a movie series to boot. It is the Platonic ideal of the epic high fantasy genre, and at the heart of Tolkien's work through his life. The first effort in this fantasy world was the children's book The Hobbit, but as it was successful Tolkien's publisher wanted more, and Tolkien obliged. Originally it was intended that the The Lord of the Rings would be the first volume, with the Silmarillion as volume 2, but the publisher decided to break it into three volumes (though each of those three has two parts, so one could as well call it a six-volume work). The overall summary is that the dark lord Sauron created Rings of Power: Three for Elves, 7 for Dwarves, and 9 for Men. Then he created the One ring to rule the others and to corrupt them. He loses this ring in a battle and is trying to get it back, and if he does his power will corrupt all of Middle Earth. The only way to stop him is to destroy the ring, and that can only be done in the fires of Mount Doom where it was originally forged. So a mixed group of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Men, plus the wizard Gandalf, set out to do just that. The work is about all of the adventures they have along the way.
The themes embedded in this work display the discomfort Tolkien had with the modern world, and much of that derives from his experience of World War I. Because of the subsequent World War II and the Cold War, the first World War has faded in the minds of many people. But it was a particularly searing experience to those who lived through it. For example, if you look at the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam over the entire course of the war, that is less than half of the number killed on both sides in just 6-day Battle of the Marne in 1914. Human life was of no account in this war, and the butchery was staggering. It was the modern industrial war, and even the killing was industrialized.. Tolkien displays in The Lord of the Rings a deep disdain for industrialization. And as is the case with so much fantasy, class structure is implicitly important, and some races are irredeemably evil. But it has won many awards, and in 2003 the BBC named it Britain's best novel of all time. Virtually all high fantasy traces its roots to Tolkien.
I imagine most people are familiar with this work, either from reading the original novel or from the recent film series. This book was written as a children's fantasy by Tolkien back in the 1930s, and set the stage for the later Lord of the Rings. The plot is about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins who is invited to join a company of dwarves who wish to recover their treasure from the dragon Smaug. Bilbo, who had been a pretty simple home-bound soul changes dramatically through the events he experiences and becomes someone much different.
This book was lauded on its publication and deservedly so.
It scarcely seems necessary to do a review of this work, it is so well known, and recently turned into a movie series to boot. It is the Platonic ideal of the epic high fantasy genre, and at the heart of Tolkien's work through his life. The first effort in this fantasy world was the children's book The Hobbit, but as it was successful Tolkien's publisher wanted more, and Tolkien obliged. Originally it was intended that the The Lord of the Rings would be the first volume, with the Silmarillion as volume 2, but the publisher decided to break it into three volumes (though each of those three has two parts, so one could as well call it a six-volume work). The overall summary is that the dark lord Sauron created Rings of Power: Three for Elves, 7 for Dwarves, and 9 for Men. Then he created the One …
It scarcely seems necessary to do a review of this work, it is so well known, and recently turned into a movie series to boot. It is the Platonic ideal of the epic high fantasy genre, and at the heart of Tolkien's work through his life. The first effort in this fantasy world was the children's book The Hobbit, but as it was successful Tolkien's publisher wanted more, and Tolkien obliged. Originally it was intended that the The Lord of the Rings would be the first volume, with the Silmarillion as volume 2, but the publisher decided to break it into three volumes (though each of those three has two parts, so one could as well call it a six-volume work). The overall summary is that the dark lord Sauron created Rings of Power: Three for Elves, 7 for Dwarves, and 9 for Men. Then he created the One ring to rule the others and to corrupt them. He loses this ring in a battle and is trying to get it back, and if he does his power will corrupt all of Middle Earth. The only way to stop him is to destroy the ring, and that can only be done in the fires of Mount Doom where it was originally forged. So a mixed group of Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and Men, plus the wizard Gandalf, set out to do just that. The work is about all of the adventures they have along the way.
The themes embedded in this work display the discomfort Tolkien had with the modern world, and much of that derives from his experience of World War I. Because of the subsequent World War II and the Cold War, the first World War has faded in the minds of many people. But it was a particularly searing experience to those who lived through it. For example, if you look at the total number of Americans killed in Vietnam over the entire course of the war, that is less than half of the number killed on both sides in just 6-day Battle of the Marne in 1914. Human life was of no account in this war, and the butchery was staggering. It was the modern industrial war, and even the killing was industrialized.. Tolkien displays in The Lord of the Rings a deep disdain for industrialization. And as is the case with so much fantasy, class structure is implicitly important, and some races are irredeemably evil. But it has won many awards, and in 2003 the BBC named it Britain's best novel of all time. Virtually all high fantasy traces its roots to Tolkien.
Okay, so this gets a 3 stars. I'd go 2, but I'm feeling charitable. I finished it - but I'm out on medical leave, so I've got literally nothing else going on, and it's got a great voice actor, so it's great background chatter while I'm playing video games.
This is a basic male power fantasy.
The one woman who features in with any sort of regularity is put through hell - her family dies, and the inn they own and she works at, burns down. She's set up as a courtesan - because of course that's all women in this world seem to be good for. It seems to be a trend for her. And only a single line in the story acknowledges that maybe - MAYBE? - she might have some thoughts about that. She's given no agency, no will, no desires (except to take back the asshole …
Okay, so this gets a 3 stars. I'd go 2, but I'm feeling charitable. I finished it - but I'm out on medical leave, so I've got literally nothing else going on, and it's got a great voice actor, so it's great background chatter while I'm playing video games.
This is a basic male power fantasy.
The one woman who features in with any sort of regularity is put through hell - her family dies, and the inn they own and she works at, burns down. She's set up as a courtesan - because of course that's all women in this world seem to be good for. It seems to be a trend for her. And only a single line in the story acknowledges that maybe - MAYBE? - she might have some thoughts about that. She's given no agency, no will, no desires (except to take back the asshole that happened to condemn her for doing what she needed to do to survive?) and absolutely no backbone.
There are a few points where there was some potential for the story to really blow me out of the water - and it totally dodged the interesting points so the Larry Stu can then go on yet another adventure that he doesn't seem to take anything away from.
I finished it, but generally wouldn't recommend it unless you, like me, have literally nothing else to do with your time.
I regret waiting this long to read this book. The imagery was wonderful and immersive. It's hard to believe such imaginative world creating happened in the 1930's and 40's. Love it!
Amazing if you like the world building / scene setting.