John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 186

The January Butterfly

So, a piece in the local paper here reports that, all arguments about Global Warming by politicians aside, the people who really pay attention to such things, gardeners, have no doubts that spring is coming sooner. The proof of which is that the little map of the U.S. with different colored zones representing where to plant a given seed in March, or April, or May, is being revised to represent 5-degree shift since the last time the map was undated twenty-two years ago. As a biology professor cited in the piece is quoted as saying, "People who grow plants are well aware of the fact that temperatures have gotten more mild throughout the year, particularly in the winter time . . . There's a lot of things you can grow now that you couldn't grow before"
A case in point: here it is, the end of January, and I've been walking around outdoors in my shirtsleeves, often with the sleeves rolled up. This is the third day that temperatures have been around 70 degrees. Yesterday I saw a yellow butterfly go by, confirming that this wasn't a one-day fluke.
A butterfly. In January. Granted, winters are milder here in SW Arkansas than the Seattle area or (God knows) Milwaukee. But still, seventy degrees? It won't take a groundhog later this week to tell me winter's basically over, whatever cold snaps might intrude between now and true spring. The narcissus are already blooming, the pansies are thriving, and it won't be long till the daffodils join them.
Tomorrow I set out iris at Williamson St. We'll see how they do.
--John R.current reading: THE WOBBIT, AFTER LOVECRAFT: THE COLD CASE OF ROBERT SUYDAM (sequel to THE HORROR AT RED HOOK), MURDER IN CANTON (the final story in the Judge Dee series).

So Far Today . . .

So far today I've--gotten a car assessed--gotten car tabs (one day ahead of the deadline)--gotten a local Newspaper subscription re-started--paid rent--visited a slightly odd gift shop on the courthouse square--gone to the post office--gone to the bank--eaten out for lunch--and finally gotten online again, for the first time since returning to Magnolia (two days ago).
Now we'll see how many things off an expensive 'to-do' list for the week I get through in the afternoon. Replacing my ailing, failing cell-phone wd be good, but it's not even near the top of the remaining list, alas.
--John R.current book: POETS & MURDER by Rbt van Gulik (third reading: 1990, 1993, 2012)

The Greenwood Tea Room

So, since I had several days in Shreveport this week, I decided that if I found myself with any spare time at all I shd try to find a little more about the city, where I stay for a night or two once or twice a year but never get a chance to poke around in outside the hotel, since I only come here on family visits. This time, I decided to try to find at least one good restaurant and one interesting walk.
Between various touristy booklets in the hotel lobby and some online searches, I found several places that looked potentially interested. Some turned out no longer to exist when I went there, or at least not at their listed locations. Some were too far away (i.e., not actually in Shreveport but in the outlying area). Some I simply didn't have time for, since most of my stay is devoted to a family crisis. But one I did try out was the Greenwood Tea Room on Line Avenue.

http://www.glenwoodvillagetearoom.com/
I admit I had reservations about the place, since it's inside a gift shop, and Janice and my's experience with a similar set up in Portland (or, actually, in the Portland area) last year had been a little disappointing. Also, looking at their web site, I discovered that the owner-operator is a big fan of Glen Beck,* so I knew her views and mine on many issues wd be worlds apart.
In the event, I'm glad I went: it turns out to be a really neat shop. I was particularly taken with some contemporary angel art that reminded me of the art in Gaiman's THE DAY I TRADED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH (wish I knew the name of the artist). I was at the wrong time of day for High Tea (given the chance, I'd have chosen what they call their Scone Tea), so I had an early lunch followed by late breakfast. That is, I had two cups of soup: one of their Victorian Soup (which was new to me) and one of their tomato basil (wh. also had a lot of other things in it, like carrots). This I followed with a freshly baked blueberry scone with lemon curd and whipped cream, all accompanied by a small pot of strong black tea kept nice and hot by a tea light.
Yesterday being my last full day in Shreveport, I stopped by one last time, and yet again found them going above and beyond. I'd thought they served until four, but it turns out this is when the shop closes; the tea room part usually shuts down at three. However, finding out that all I wanted was a pot of tea and a scone, they insisted I come in and sit down while they got together tea and scone for me. It was a comforting touch to be so welcomed by strangers: a reminder that Southern hospitality really does exist.
So, many thanks to the tea room folks for a quiet, calming moment in an uncertain week.
And now, on to Magnolia!
--John R.





*cf. for example her post re. her trip to the holy land to attend his rally last October ( http://host.pappapak12.com/~glenwood/article_21/Ancient-Israel-October-2011.htm ). I was particularly puzzled by the statement that of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims, only "one to two percent" were fanatics who hated America, which totals "91 million" radicals. It's been a long time since I took a math class (12th grade!), but I'd thought 1% of 1.2 billion was 12 million, making 2% twenty-four million. Don't know where the 91 million figure comes from (that's about seven and a half percent, by my reckoning). In any case, more projection on our part than any correlation to reality.

My Week

So far this week, I've--flown half-way across the country, and driven several hours more--gotten a brief get together with fellow Tolkienist Jason Fisher--spent a lot of time in Shreveport visiting hospitals--walked along the Red River--eaten far too many meals at Cracker Barrel (the only restaurant night-blind me can find in Shreveport after dark)--seen a hawk, and a heron (large & white), disturbed sunning turtles, heard (but not seen) a kingfisher, saw some mourning doves, and puzzled mightily a mockingbird--been a bit surprised by seventy-degrees in January--bought a box of 'Promise Tea' (which comes with a scriptural quote on each tag, but unfortunately doesn't seem to come in tea flavor)--found a v. friendly tea shop down on Line Avenue,* which I visited not once but twice--and prepared myself for the hardest part of the trip, which is yet to come.
More later
--John R.
current reading: THE EMPEROR'S PEARL by Rbt van Gulikjust finished: BOOK GIRL AND THE CORRUPTED ANGEL (the Phantom-of-the-Opera entry into this enjoyable but disturbing series)current ebook: THE WOBBIT (a parody of THE HOBBIT) by Paul Erickson

Tolkien Among the E-Books

So, one of the v. first (indeed, I think THE first) e-books I bought when we first got the Kindle, several years ago now, was THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT, quickly followed by THE SILMARILLION and THE BOOK OF LOST TALES (vols. I & II).
I'd been wanting a searchable copy of Tolkien's books for years, and here they were, available at last. At that time there were relatively few books on/about Tolkien available either as e-books or as audio-books. And, oddly enough, they tended to be not the great classics of Tolkien scholarship -- Carpenter, Kocher, Shippey, Flieger, &c -- but Xian interpretations of Tolkien's work (Kreeft, Wood, Rutledge, Arthur). By and large that still seems to be the case, but a quick check of Amazon's Kindle store shows that a lot more titles are becoming available, both by (SIGURD & GUDRUN) and about (the Jason Fisher collection, to which I'm a contributor).*
Which made the following paragraph appearing in the newest BEYOND BREE particularly interesting. Coming at the end of a piece about e-books and Tolkien, David Brawn (who oversees Tolkien publishing at HarperCollins), while not divulging sales figures, says that
". . . THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGSare . . . two of the best-selling backlist ebooks on the market . . . Tolkien's books are once againexperiencing a period of growth as we approachthe 2012 HOBBIT movie . . . while ebook sales areincreasing, so are the sales of the physical books",
concluding that while for some authors ebook sales come at the expense of their tradition books, this does not seem to be the case with Tolkien, whose ebooks seem to be selling both to those who already had the book as well as new readers -- "which is good news for the author".
--BEYOND BREE, current issue, p. 8
So, taken in conjunction with my last post about Tolkien having written not one but two of the best-selling books of all time, add in that for the present sales show no sign of slacking; he remains ubiquitous in our culture, for now and hopefully for a long time to come.
--John R.still in Grand Prairie, Texas
*indeed, some Kindle-only books on Tolkien can be found there now; I'll have to check some of these out to see if any are worthwhile. Some look potentially interesting, while about others I am doubtful. We'll see.

Tolkien Among the All-Time Best Sellers?

So, many thanks to Allan G. who sent me the link to a blog (Punkadiddle*) which is doing a countdown of the ten best-selling books of all time, as determined by Wikipedia.** Both the blog entry, on THE HOBBIT (which ranks #4 in their listing) and the list itself (and the means by which they determined it, leaving out giveaway books like Gideon Bibles) are of interest. But what particularly struck me was not the gob-stopping news that JRRT wrote the fourth best-selling book of all time (keeping in mind the disclaimers just mentioned) but that he also wrote the third all-time bestseller as well!
That is: THE HOBBIT ranks fourth on their list, with 100,000,000 copies sold. That's one hundred million copies. Which is a lot of books. But it's a distance second among Tolkien's works on the list, THE LORD OF THE RINGS having sold half again as much: 150,000,000 copies (whether sets or individual volumes they did not say). That's a quarter of a million copies altogether for those two books.
I'm reminded of something Janice said, years ago as we were leaving a Half-Price Books up on the Brown Deer Road in Milwaukee, about imagining how our civilization wd appear to archeologists of the distant future, who wd decide that we had v. few books but really, really liked them.
I'm also reminded of the famous Locus poll (circa 1987/88, I think) of all-time favorite fantasy works, in which Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS came in first. Followed by J. R. R. Tolkien's THE HOBBIT as number two. Followed, I think by Le Guin's A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA as a rather distant third. The poll's compiler I remember went to lengths to point out that the winner of the fantasy poll outperformed the winner of the science fiction poll they ran at the same time (this being after all a science fiction journal) by a magnitude of degree.
The dual placement of both books on the Wikipedia list, which together take up a third of the list of all books that have sold 100 million or more copies, is what's really staggering, and re-inforces once again that THE HOBBIT has an audience of its own. If Tolkien had written only THE HOBBIT, I'd argue, he wd still be remembered as one of the great writers of his time.
Not just King of the Mountain: without him, there'd be no recognized genre of fantasy literature, and the people who wrote what we'd call modern fantasy wd be talented eccentrics following their individual muses, like James Branch Cabell, E. R. Eddison, and Hope Mirrlees.
All hail not the King Under the Mountain but The King Up On The Mountain, for letting us share the view.***
--John R.--writing from what turns out to be Grand Prairie, Texas

*link: http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/2011/12/top-ten-all-time-best-selling-books-4-j.html

**link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books#More_than_100_million_copies
***(cf. Tolk's allegory of the tower in The Monsters & The Critics).

1st Edition Returns!

So, the best news I heard today is that the original 1st ed. AD&D hardcover rulebooks -- the PLAYER'S HANDBOOK, the DMG, and the MONSTER MANUAL -- are being reprinted. Since this is the best version of my all-time favorite roleplaying game, it'll be good to see it available again after so long. Granted, it's only a limited release according to this article, but for the finest rpg rules set ever written to be back in print is definitely a good thing. And it's also for a relatively good cause, the Gygax project, which is trying to build a statue of the (co-)creator of rpgs in Lake Geneva. Here's the link:
http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/21954.html
Having only recently learned of the 'Old School Revival', I'd been somewhat baffled that fans of 1st ed. AD&D were rewriting the rules and publishing their own variants of them (e.g., Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess), rather than hunting down any of the thousands of used copies of the original books that must still be out there at Half-Price Books and various online sites. Now I find the originals are finally coming back into print, albeit briefly, and I cdn't be happier. I suspect most copies will be snatched up by longtime gamers for the nostalgia, but I hope at least some sets find their way into the hands of younger gamers who decide to give the classic game a try. Here's hoping.
--John R.

Hobbits in Bloemfontein

So, I was waiting in the dentist's office today for a follow-up visit, and glanced through the latest issue of TIME. Noticing a piece on the African National Congress's 100th anniversary and its having been founded in Bloemfontein, which I hadn't known before, I thought it a pity they'd left out mention of Bloemfontein's most famous onetime resident, JRRT.
Turns out I spoke too soon. Turn the page, and there's the following paragraph:
"The short drive to Maphikela House [where the ANC was supposedly founded] crosses South Africa's divide. I start in leafy all-white suburbs, home to cafes, bookstores and the Hobbit Boutique Hotel, modeled on the fantasies of Bloemfontein's most famous son, J. R. R. Tolkien. Then I cross the railroad track, and I'm in the township: no trees, full of potholes and all black. Where my tourist map indicates Maphikela House should be is instead an abandoned warehouse, the windows smashed, graffiti by its broken door announcing THUG MANSION."
--"How the ANC Lost Its Way" by Alex Perry, TIME January 16, 2012, page 36

--the part about no trees, wh. suggests Haiti-style endemic poverty, wd particularly horrify Tolkien, I thought.

I'd heard of various Hobbit-hotels and Tolkien-themed houses in California and New Zealand and Montana, but this is the first time I've heard of anything commemorating him in the country where he was born. Poking about a bit on-line, I found a pretty good description of the place here:
http://www.booking.com/hotel/za/hobbit-boutique.html?tab=1&origin=hp&error_url=%2Fhotel%2Fza%2Fhobbit-boutique.en-us.html%3Faid%3D311088%3Blabel%3Dhobbit-boutique-DPmj1RS9LLe38V3FkC8r8wS2179725843%3Bsid%3Dc5d75be287ef5d82e33b673e7baf137a%3Bdcid%3D1%3B&do_availability_check=on&aid=311088&dcid=1&label=hobbit-boutique-DPmj1RS9LLe38V3FkC8r8wS2179725843&sid=c5d75be287ef5d82e33b673e7baf137a&checkin_monthday=24&checkin_year_month=2012-1&checkout_monthday=27&checkout_year_month=2012-1
--sounds like a nice place, although their mention of a pool and doing things BEFORE breakfast makes me wonder how hobbitish it can be (Janice points out that perhaps they mean Second Breakfast, wh. wd indeed fit). For a four-star guest house, their prices are pretty reasonable: 330 Rand for three nights in the more modest rooms (about $42) and 450 Rand (about $56) for the more expensive ones.
Poking about a bit more, I found the hotel's own website:
http://www.hobbit.co.za/new/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=57
The emphasis on food and comfort here does indeed show the Van der Westhuizens, who run the place, got it right, on this point at least. Must admit I'm curious about the 'historical items' they mention. There seem to be twelve rooms, each named for a LotR character. It's an interesting list, including seven of the Fellowship (no Boromir, and more surprisingly no Gandalf):
ArwenBilboElrondEowynFrodoGaladrielGimli* MerryPippinSamwiseStrider
I doubt that I'll ever find myself in Bloemfontein, but if I did I'd certainly want to stay there, and wd try out their high tea if we were just passing through (assuming I'd be admitted to a "women's tea").
*they actually have Gimli's name as "Gimley" on the website, but since they also have "Pippen" on the same list but correctly spelled (Pippin) in the slideshow, I suspect this is a typo on their website, not for the room itself.

Crow in the Snow

So, thanks to Janice for sending me the following link (which she in turn got from Steve Brown's site: thanks, Stan!). It shows a crow playing in the snow with a game obviously of its own devising. That is, it's taking some kind of lid it's found, flying with it to the top of a steep roof, and then tobogganing down, wings flapping all the way. Then once at the bottom, it fishes the lid back out, flies back to the roof-peak, and does it again. Notice how it takes care to get the lidright-side-up. From the voices of the people recording this, it must be taking place in Russia (though it cd also be Ukrainian for all I know).
So: as impressive as it is seeing how smart crows are as shown by their ability to make tools to get food, somehow it's even more human to see one inventing a game with its own rules.
Here's the link. My wife insists I made hee-hee-hee noises all through watching it, which I deny.
--John R.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUBMSnHH7hc

The New Arrivals!

So, Friday brought some long-awaited arrivals: three boxes filled with four copies each of the new, improved, one-volume second edition of THE HISTORY OF THE HOBBIT. These are my author's copies, mailed to me from Glasgow near the end of October; I assume they got delayed by all the holiday mail in-between. At over 5 kgs each,* they're a pretty hefty bundle.
Two are already spoken for, and the rest go on the smallish stack downstairs of my remaining copies of the first edition (the trade paperback version).
Horray!
--John R.

........................
Here's what Janice had to say about it, reposted from her Facebook:

Thump: The sound of John's author copies of the 1 volume The History of the Hobbit arriving on the door step. We've now got 13 hobbits. I wonder where we can find a dwarf to make up our lucky number?




*each box that is, not each book