11
Followers
23
Following
Reading Slothfully
I was told in elementary school that I only could read at half the speed for success in college. Oh well, one benefit of slow reading is you get to live with the characters a longer period of time. I read in a vain attempt to better understand people. At my other homes, I'm known as a spouse, pop, guy in the choir, physical chemist, computer/web dilettante and child-care provider. In theory, I'm a published author, if you consider stuff like Quenching Cross Sections for Electronic Energy Transfer Reactions Between Metastable Argon Atoms and Noble Gases and Small Molecules to count as publications. I've strewn dozens of such fascinating things to the winds.
Currently reading
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
The Spirit of the Border
Ramona the Brave (Ramona, #3)
The Underground Man (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)
Delilah of the Snows
Mrs. Miniver
Betsy-Tacy Treasury (P.S.)
A Christmas Carol
The Way Some People Die
Envy of Angels
The Two Towers
I've read this before, I think twice before, but both times were many years ago. The part I remembered best was about the Ents, and I still liked them the best. I'd forgotten that the book is not really self-contained. It ends in a place requiring additional explication, which of course, happens in the third book of the trilogy, The Return of the King. Presumably I'll get to that one soon. Just after I finished, my spouse made me watch the video. Just as in the first video, much was left out and much was added. I'm less and less a fan of Peter Jackson's adaptations of the Tolkien stories. They seem to be turning more and more into fan fic. That's ok, I suppose, but we get more violence than is in the book, and much less human nature (not that hobbits are human, but in many ways they behave like the better parts of us). I realize that violence sells better to most people than does ruminations on human nature, but not to me. I'm rather sick of the glorification of killing other creatures. We've become insensate.
update:
Whoa! Talk about fan fic. Part 2 of The Hobbit film trilogy, named The Desolation of Smaug, bears virtually no relationship to the book. OK, I guess, unless you wanted to relive the actual story in film version.
