Happy Hobbit Day! Celebrating 75 Years in the Shire

~ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Telegraph UK: The Hobbit Turns 75

The American Tolkien Society first proclaimed Hobbit Day in 1978, where celebrations including Hobbit feasts and parties will take place among fans of the children's books.

September 22 is also the birthday of Frodo Baggins, the main character in The Lord of The Rings played by Elijah Wood in the film franchise.

Bilbo and Frodo were both said to be born on the same day of different years, Bilbo in the year 2890 and Frodo in the year of 2968 in the books' 'Third Age'.

~ "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favorite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.


From ABC News

J.R.R Tolkien, was a British World War I veteran who became a professor at Oxford’s Pembroke College. The book was published in 1937, receiving much praise and selling out in months. It would continue selling until the outbreak of World War II, when paper rationing limited printing until 1949.

However, when Tolkien wrote first wrote the Hobbit, it was never meant it for the public’s eyes. “The Hobbit was a children’s book. It was written in the first instance for his three sons,” Hammond told ABC News. “It was not written originally for publication.”

The book’s popularity, and that of its sequel, “The Lord of Rings,” has not faded over the last 75 years. “The Hobbit” has been translated into over 40 languages, gone through numerous re-printings, and spawned several film adaptations, most recently Peter Jackson’s. The Jackson film, a follow-up to his widely successful “Lord of the Rings” adaptations, is due to be released in three parts, the first of which is slated to come out in November.

~ As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes.

From Collider Movie News

A new trailer for director Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has been released. This trailer shines an interesting light on the conundrum of the The Hobbit. It has to look even bigger than what came before, but what came before what a quest to save the entire world. The new trailer breaks down the plot, which is about the dwarfs reclaiming their homeland. So the stakes are smaller, but the adventure is somehow bigger. Putting that conflict aside, the trailer still makes the movie look like a fun time, and perhaps the best thing about The Hobbit is that we’ll get to return to Middle-Earth.

. . . The film stars Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Mark Hadlow, Graham McTavish, Dean Ogorman, Peter Hambleton, Aidan Turner, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Adam Brown, Ken Stott, William Kircher, Andy Serkis, and Richard Armitage. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in 3D on December 14th.

Rowling's New Middle-Class Characters are not Magical, but Monstrous

pic: happiness-in-a-box

J. K. Rowling is starting her publicity push as her new book The Casual Vacancy comes out on September 27, which is next Thursday.


The Casual Vacancy Hardcover from Amazon
The Casual Vacancy for Kindle on Amazon
The Casual Vacancy Audo Book on Amazon

Guardian UK has an in-depth article about Rowling's views on just about everything, including the book. I find it very interesting that a book about small-town politics is timed perfectly to coincide with the elections in the U.S. right now, where the vast majority of Rowling fans happen to live. No real surprise though, LOL.

Some excerpts:

Rowling: "Obviously I need to be in some form of vehicle to have a decent idea," she laughs. Having dreamed up Potter on a train, "This time I was on a plane. And I thought: local election! And I just knew. I had that totally physical response you get to an idea that you know will work. It's a rush of adrenaline, it's chemical. I had it with Harry Potter and I had it with this. So that's how I know."

. . . "I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society," Rowling says. "We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a satisfying thing to do, isn't it?" But it requires obliviousness to the horrors suffered by a family such as the Weedons, and the book satirises the ignorance of elites who assume to know what's best for everyone else."

. . . "We're a phenomenally snobby society," Rowling nods, "and it's such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny, it's the class I know best, and it's the class where you find the most pretension, so that's what makes the middle classes so funny." The book is so funny I was halfway through before noticing that every character is, to a varying degree, monstrous.

. . . Whodunnits are her literary guilty pleasure – "I love a good Dorothy L Sayers" – but then again, she doesn't really feel guilty about that: "There's no shame in a Dorothy." She hasn't read Fifty Shades Of Grey, "because I promised my editor I wouldn't." She doesn't look as if she feels she's missing out. "Not wildly," she agrees drily.

~~~

Reporter Decca Aitkenhead: I am required to sign more legal documents than would typically be involved in buying a house before I am allowed to read The Casual Vacancy, under tight security in the London offices of Little, Brown. Even the publishers have been forbidden to read it, and they relinquish the manuscript gingerly, reverently, as though handling a priceless Ming vase. Afterwards, I am instructed never to disclose the address of Rowling's Edinburgh office where the interview will take place. The mere fact of the interview is deemed so newsworthy that Le Monde dispatches a reporter to investigate how it was secured. Its prospect begins to assume the mystique of an audience with Her Majesty – except, of course, that Rowling is famously much, much richer than the Queen.

. . . When I tell her I loved the book, her arms shoot up in celebration. "Oh my God! I'm so happy! That's so amazing to hear. Thank you so much! You've made me incredibly happy. Oh my God!" Anyone listening would take her for a debut author, meeting her first ever fan.

~~~

J.K.Rowling on her personal life:

Rowling grew up near the Forest of Dean in a community not unlike Pagford. "And this was very much me vividly remembering what it was like to be a teenager, and it wasn't a particularly happy time in my life. In fact, you couldn't give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it."
Her mother, a school lab technician, was diagnosed with MS when Rowling was 15. "But it wasn't just that – although that did colour it a lot. I just don't think I was very good at being young."

. . . fame has had its upsides; meeting Barack Obama and the legendary Democrat speechwriter Bob Shrum were the two greatest starstruck moments of her life.

. . . Having always longed to be a writer, she now found herself in charge of a business empire stretching all the way to Hollywood, as the Harry Potter films began smashing box office records. "And it's a real bore. Should I be more diplomatic? Oh, I don't care. No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn't sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours' writing. Nothing. That sounds hideously ungrateful because it's made me an awful lot of money, and I'm very grateful for that. But it's not something that interests me, and there have been lots of opportunities to do things that make more money, and I've said no."

Hmmm . . . I'll be glad to take some money and power off her hands so she can have more time to write. LOL

But what about the book? If you don't wish to see SPOILERS then skip the following excerpt from Decca Aitkenhead's synopsis:

The pompous chairman assumes the seat will go to his son, a solicitor. Pitted against him are a bitterly cold GP and a deputy headmaster crippled by irreconcilable ambivalence towards his son, an unnervingly self-possessed adolescent whose subversion takes the unusual but highly effective form of telling the truth. His preoccupation with "authenticity" develops into a fascination with the Fields and its most notorious family, the Weedons.

Terri Weedon is a prostitute, junkie and lifelong casualty of chilling abuse, struggling to stay clean to stop social services taking her three-year-old son, Robbie, into care. But methadone is a precarious substitute for heroin, and most of what passes for mothering falls to her teenage daughter, Krystal. Spirited and volatile, Krystal has known only one adult ally in her life – Barry – and his sudden death casts her dangerously adrift. When anonymous messages begin appearing on the parish council website, exposing villagers' secrets, Pagford unravels into a panic of paranoia, rage and tragedy.

Pagford will be appallingly recognisable to anyone who has ever lived in a West Country village, but its clever comedy can also be read as a parable about national politics.

Fighting the Anti-Literates of Society

There's plenty of political stupidity to go around these days, and many city and county governments are at the mercy of anti-intellectual politicians who cut library services without giving it much thought.

Here's a story about the city of Troy, Michigan, and the way they fought back to save their library. They had to shock people into awareness in a grassroots effort. I'm glad their story had a happy ending!

Poetry Passion: September Memories

Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadow let the winds throng.

Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them further two more summer days
to bring about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will establish none,
whoever lives alone now will live on long alone,
will waken, read, and write long letters,
wander up and down the barren paths
the parks expose when the leaves are blown.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke
Translated by William Gass
 

Exuent

Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field's edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.

All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer's final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.

~ Richard Wilbur


Pickthorn Manor: 43

Daily they met. And gravely walked and talked.
He read her no more verses, and he stayed
Only until their conversation, balked
Of every natural channel, fled dismayed.
Again the next day she would meet him, trying
To give her tone some healthy sprightliness,
But his uneager dignity soon chilled
Her well-prepared address.
Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying
Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying
Whirred overhead for days and never stilled.

~ Amy Lowell


Crystal Moment

Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

A wooded island rang with sounds
Of church bells in the throats of hounds.

A buck leaped out and took the tide
With jewels flowing past each side.

With his head high like a tree
He swam within a yard of me.

I saw the golden drop of light
In his eyes turned dark with fright.

I saw the forest's holiness
On him like a fierce caress.

Fear made him lovely past belief,
My heart was trembling like a leaf.

He leans towards the land and life
With need above him like a knife.

In his wake the hot hounds churned
They stretched their muzzles out and yearned.

They bayed no more, but swam and throbbed
Hunger drove them till they sobbed.

Pursued, pursuers reached the shore
And vanished. I saw nothing more.

So they passed, a pageant such
As only gods could witness much,

Life and death upon one tether
And running beautiful together.

~ Robert Peter Tristram Coffin


Roads Go Ever On 

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journety new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still 'round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.


~ J. R. R. Tolkien

Rowling in New York at Lincoln Center in October

J.K. Rowling will be center-stage at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City on October 16.

For those who purchase tickets, which will be available beginning September 10, Little, Brown and Company announced, they will get a free copy of Rowling's first post-Harry Potter book, that the author will also sign. Jo will be joined by author Ann Patchett during the conversation, and will also be answering audience questions.

Please note that this will be her ONLY public appearance in the U.S. to promote the book.

Tickets: $43 if purchased online, $44 if purchased via phone, $37 if purchased at the Jazz at Lincoln Center Box Office
Ticket Information Here

The Casual Vacancy Hardcover from Amazon
The Casual Vacancy for Kindle on Amazon
The Casual Vacancy Audo Book on Amazon

Bin Laden Bestseller Loaded with Controversy

CBS Sixty Minutes will be the first to interview the ex-Navy Seal who penned the controversial book No Easy Day about the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan.

The book is number one right now on the Amazon Best Seller List, although it's not available until Tuesday, September 4, 2012.

The book is shrouded in controversy because it was not cleared with the Obama Administration who oversaw the killing of Bin Laden. The worry is that this book might contain secrets that could compromise other missions or the Seals themselves.

From CBS News

The former SEAL Team 6 member, who uses the pseudonym Mark Owen, will appear in his first interview on 60 Minutes, Sunday Sept. 9 at 7:00 p.m. ET/PT.

As a security measure, CBS News will not identify "Owen" in any reports about his account of the raid; his face and voice were disguised for his 60 Minutes interview. His book about the raid, "No Easy Day," will be available next week.

. . . Owen's book was to be released on the anniversary of 9/11, but the release has been moved up to next week. There's been criticism that the book is timed to influence the election.

Mark Owen: My worry from the beginning is, you know, it's a political season. This book is not political whatsoever. It doesn't bad mouth either party, and we specifically chose September 11th to keep it out of the politics. You know, if these-- crazies on either side of the aisle want to make it political, shame on them. This is a book about September 11th, and it needs to rest on September 11th. Not be brought into the political arena, because this-- this has nothing to do with politics.

When word of the book was announced last week, a few news organizations discovered Mark Owen's real name and published it. As a result, he's a marked man -- in hiding -- probably for the rest of his life. We will not reveal his true name.