Ever Bethany

Day 25

What authors do you most wish to have bring out a new book, right now? (Dead or alive, keep it down to five!)

sarahtales

I was thinking about NaNo and wondering if it's particularly good for me, as a year-long novelist. I'm not very sure that it would be a good idea this year.
I've just recovered from a 2 year slump as far as novels go, and I don't need to rush right back in by doing something taxing.

I'm going to observe, but not with as vigorous a word-count goal--and I'm going to try and write a poem a day. Because I need to get some more practice doing this thing if I'm going to keep having semi-successful quests to publish them...

So be my buddies, anyone who's doing it this year! Forgive me for lessening my achievements. 9_9



Day 15

How about *hates* along the lines of romantic interest?

Have you found a reading soulmate? Describe why someone would be yours.

I dunno, mate, but for manga rhinemouse  and I have freakishly similar weaknesses. Particular tastes skewed from each other enough she's read a lot of stuff I never clicked into in my searches, and it seems like the reverse is also true...


things I have infected her with, because that's kind of an interesting angle to put to this question...

It's really interesting to meet a whole circle of people who share some of your more obscure book-loves, like the sounis  people.
It almost takes the ground of your superiority out from under you, so you eagerly probe until you've covered all the things you've both read.

I don't yet know of a person who has been able to recommend to me, spot on even 80%, novels I would like, but I sure do love reading other peoples' reviews...some people, like rachelmanija , are good enough at articulating why they did or didn't like a book that I can know when I'll have the opposite feeling about it. The art of reading reviews is really in seeing the bigger picture even from the stupid drivel ones, and using the language as a code, to be translated to your own lexicon.


and these are the ones that she got ME reading

to be frank, these two little mini-libraries do say a lot about our respective areas of expertise [And why do hers have all the cool covers? Sheesh. ]
Basically, she finds the fighting ones, I find the ones with tons of interesting/odd characters. But I really like the (physical) fighting ones!
 

The Obsessive Book Lover's Month of Books Meme

Salient Points: 1) there are no demands for singular answers, 2) they are questions that don't bring all your favorite books to mind at once, causing bibliophiliac distress and mental implosion, 3) I think they'll be fun!

Day 1

Tell us about the first three things you come up with when asked the painful “What's your favorite book?” question.

(Obsessive Book Lover Friendly Version to teach your friends: “What book are you enchanted with recently?”)

Day 2

What characters did you read about and think, “Oh, I know what you mean”? Characters you feel you are like, inside.

Day 3

What books are the first you remember being read?

Day 4

What books are the first you remember reading for yourself?

Day 5

What books do you reach for on days when you're feeling miserable and ill?

Day 6

What books lift your mood when you don't want to talk to people?

Day 7

Make a mini-list of books that show cases your reading at its most eclectic (up to 5)

Day 8

Make a mini-list of the latest books you remember loving or at least liking (keep it to in the last year or so, or this could take all night)

Day 9

Make a mini-list of things you have pre-ordered (at the store OR library) or at least bought fresh off the presses. If N/A, why?

Day 10

Tell about your policy for asking to borrow books—are you a shameless mooch, tasteful alluder, or some other style? (Stand-and-ignore-your-host in-house reader and conscienceless temporary larcenist are two other common style—some of us use varying styles with different sorts of acquaintance, so by all means detail it out!)

Day 11

Have you found a reading soulmate? Describe why someone would be yours.

Day 12

Talk about a book or a few that made you go out and shamelessly foist it/them on all your reading friends. Moreso than usual.

Day 13

What type of character particularly draws you into their story?

Day 14

What type of character do you most like as a romantic interest in a story?

Day 15

How about *hates* along the lines of romantic interest?

Day 16

Any villains you think are too lame?

Day 17

Villains you think are awesome?

Day 18

What books have you read where you didn't expect to like them, and then were surprised?

Day 19

How about books you changed your opinion about (for better or worse) when you read them a second time?

Day 20

So spill...what do you read when you're in a junk-food mood?

Day 21

What books seem like spring books to you?

Day 22

How about summer books?

Day 23

Autumn books would be?

Day 24

And winter is the best time for books (unless they have too much ice in them), so what kind say winter to you?

Day 25

What authors do you most wish to have bring out a new book, right now? (Dead or alive, keep it down to five!)

Day 26

At this point no doubt you've been provoked to think of other books in answer to some of the earlier questions. FreeStyle Space! (Borrow this question again if your month has 31 days, and you're keeping track of that sort of thing.)

Day 27

If a book, with it's tone, dialogue, characters, setting, were to be a life you would chose, which would it be? Include the bad spots and why you'd chose those. This could be revealing...

Day 28

Is there a book that inspired you to try something new, or look at certain kinds of people a different way? Or perhaps their profession?

Day 29

It is time to write a love-letter to an author. If you write to more than one, keep it to 3 or so, and make your words count—mini-essay time!

Day 30

What are you reading right now? What are you thinking of it?

Merry End of this Meme!

Whooosh. I'd forgotten, not how Two Towers ended, but how much of a cliff-hanger it was! The emotional investment of the Tower of the Moon sequences is just really strong; I love how Sam just unfolds in that fourth volume. The way he mimicks Gollum is just a beauty to behold. Grim Sam=priceless.

I was much struck with how taking The Ring was "against his nature"...he thinks he's made a dreadful mistake, but that's when we have the inkling that while not quite so fey and fell as Frodo (take that alliteration and stick it in your hat), he's a fair stout Hero himself.* The foreshadowing of that talk they have before they come out of Ithilien (Tolkien, like good storytellers everywhere, knew the value of letting up occasionally), of the story they're in is so hobbit-like, yet very much suited to the high task, just as Pippin and Merry's banter is suited to the extremes of their natures. Can wear armor about the Shire without being ridiculous because they have a high sense of humor about it, you can tell. Back to Sam and Frodo's talk (I dearly love a digession or two), in the movie I don't remember it coming so early, so I was surprised it WAS a foreshadow.

And back to the beginning in a merry round of mummery,

I was surprised, the first time, how the Two Towers movie did not end on the slamming of the doors. To me, it seems a perfect ending to a Volume Two of Three. Then again, it had to tie things up. But the pacing there was pretty much the only thing that threw me into "Wait; the book was different!" mode. {Besides the Legolas stairs surfer/Oliphaunt slayer thing. But we won't talk about that.}

{I was thoroughly shocked to find the counting game between Gimli and Legolas in The Book, on that note. Pleasantly surprised, actually, to think the humor was to be credited to Tolkien.}

Tolkien r/labu-r/labu...

*Funny, how he thinks he's ruining everything—Heroes do tend to ruin things, if only for the antagonist, but realistically...that's a little simplistic. Sam is only ruining himself, though the whole mess with Gollum does come about. The fact is, the breaking of Gollum's trust is what ends up getting them rid of the One Ring after all. The trouble he causes in that way (taking the ring, and before that in his unsubtle suspicion) all serves the purpose. Ruining himself, in that wearing the Ring, for that time, means Havens for him after all, when I think...Sam should have been buried and become part of the soil of the Shire.

But prices must be paid. If the Gollum made everything right in the end, and if Frodo was always a little too elven for his own good, Sam is a price—for the Shire, and Frodo, and Sam himself.