Rachel Kovaciny's Blog, page 40

"Woman in the Dark" by Dashiell Hammett

After rereading Trouble is My Business  by Raymond Chandler last month, I began to crave more hardboiled detective stories of that same era.  But I have a strict rule about only reading one Chandler book a year that I only fudge on in the must extreme circumstances.  And this didn't feel extreme.  So I had the happy thought of rereading Dashiell Hammett's books.  I read all his novels and short stories in one fell swoop almost 20 years ago, with the result that I can only remember the ones that I...

"Hamlet" by Alexandre Dumas

No, the title of this post is not a typo.  Alexandre Dumas, the guy who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo  and The Three Musketeers and so on, also translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into French.  And then I read a translation into English by Frank Morlock of his translation into French.  Which sounds like a waste of time, since I can just read Hamlet in English any time I want to, and have often done so.  BUT.
But Alexandre Dumas didn't so much translate Hamlet as retell it.  He trimmed it considerabl...

"Trouble is My Business" by Raymond Chandler

This is a collection of four long short stories, or maybe four short novellas?  They have chapters, which inclines me more toward calling them novellas.  Whatever.  This book collects four different cases for Philip Marlowe to solve, how's that?
In "Trouble is My Business," Marlowe is hired to protect a wealthy playboy from a gold-digger, but he discovers that a much bigger, nastier crime than that is waiting just offstage, and he'll have to clear that up too.
In "Finger Man," Marlowe is hired to ...

"Little Town on the Prairie" by Laura Ingalls Wilder

I remember really liking this book as a kid, mostly because it meant the Long Winter was over and I didn't have to worry about the Ingalls family anymore.  This is a very upbeat, hopeful book in which Laura turns from child to almost-an-adult.  I wish I had navigated that transition as gracefully as she does.
I hadn't remembered just how shy she is, and how much she wrote about being socially awkward, especially when she first began to make friends with other teen girls.  But no wonder I identifi...

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J. K. Rowling

It took me a couple of months to read this book.  Not because it is hard to read, or because it's 870 pages long, but because I knew what was coming at the end and I just kept dragging my feet about getting there.  Also, I was loving how much Sirius Black gets to be in this one!  He gets more page-time in it than in the previous two books combined, and I adore that.  So much Sirius.
(Spoilers in this paragraph if you haven't read this book or seen this movie.)  Of course, Sirius is also why I did...

"The Little Paris Bookshop" by Nina George

Well, that was charming, if ultimately kind of hollow.
I picked this book up at an airport bookstore on my way home from visiting my parents earlier this month.  I'd seen it on Instagram a few times, and it sounded really enjoyable.  I generally like books about people who like books.  No surprise there, right?
And I did like this book pretty well, overall.  It's all about Jean, a 50-yr-old man who learns the real fate of the woman he loved and lost 20 years earlier, and works through his grief by...

Wrapping Up the 2021 Tolkien Blog Party

Well, here we are at the end of another Tolkien Blog Party.  Thank you so much for participating!  If you've still got a post or two you want to contribute, it's not too late!  You can add your link to the widget below any time still.  And if you haven't had a chance to visit everyone's posts yet (like I haven't -- but I will read them all eventually!), here are all the links again, to make it easier for you to find them:

I've had such a wonderful time discussing J.R.R. Tolkien with you, playing ...

Winners of the 2021 Tolkien Giveaway

This year's Tolkien blog party is winding down.  Since it's the last day, it's time to pick the giveaway winners!  Congratulations to these nine Tolkienites:
Prize 1 (mug) -- CCPrize 2 (leaf pin) -- Samantha B.
Prize 3 (cards) -- Stephanie BMMRPrize 4 (bookmark) -- Shire RosePrize 5 (sticker sheet) -- Eva S.Prize 6 (3 b&w stickers) -- Kathy EyrePrize 7 (3 color stickers) -- Olivia R.Prize 8 (Hobbit Companion) -- Ivy MirandaPrize 9 (Letters of Tolkien) -- Mary H.
I'll be emailing all of you in a few...

Answers to the Middle-earth Food Quiz

Here are the answers to this year's quiz with everyone's scores below!  How did you do?

1. Apples -- YES
2. Bacon -- YES
3. Blackberries -- YES
4. Butter -- YES
5. Cheese -- YES
6. Chocolate -- NO
7. Coffee -- YES
8. Eggs -- YES
9. Garlic -- NO
10. Honey -- YES
11. Mushrooms -- YES
12. Pickles -- YES
13. Potatoes -- YES
14. Salad -- YES
15. Tomatoes -- NO

Most of these appear in the first chapter of The Hobbit, "An Unexpected Party."  The others appear elsewhere either in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings.  

B...

"The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" by J. R. R. Tolkien

I did not realize this is a collection of poetry!  I thought it was going to be short stories like Smith of Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham, but about Tom Bombadil instead.  But it's not, it's poetry.  

The edition I read, which is the one pictured here, contains the poems that Tolkien published under this title in the '60s, plus a whole lot of commentary on the poems, earlier variations of them, explanations of their history, discussions of how they fit into his Middle-earth world, and so ...