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Category Archives: Literature

Parade’s End

Sunday, November 5, 2023

Benedict Cumberbatch and Adelaide Clemens By accident, in the trashy wilderness of HBO Max, I discovered “Parade’s End,” a lavish five-part series from BBC Two that was broadcast in 2012. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Christopher Tietjens, a character in four novels by Ford Madox Ford published between 1924 and 1928. I’ve watched only the first episode […]

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The Name of the Rose

Monday, September 11, 2023

1986 While scouring for watchables, I recently came across the 1986 film version of The Name of the Rose, on Netflix. It’s truly a classic film and always worth watching again. Back in the 1990s, I read Umberto Eco’s novel on which the film is based. The novel, too, is worth reading again, now that […]

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A new edition of Tolkien’s letters

Saturday, September 9, 2023

A new edition of Tolkien’s letters (from William Morrow in the U.S. and HarperCollins in the U.K.) will be released in the U.S. on November 14, and in the U.K. on November 9. The new edition, in hardback, contains 150 new letters since the previous edition of Tolkien’s letters in 1981, bringing the total number […]

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Scapegoats 2, Republicans 0

Sunday, August 13, 2023

The political death wish of the Republican Party is mind-boggling. Why do they go on fighting battles that they’ve already lost and that accelerate their slide toward permanent minority status and the contempt of history? — at least, in civilized places as opposed to places such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. Banning books, and threatening […]

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Oxford India paper

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Click here for high resolution version. Once again, unable to find any newer fiction that interested me, I’m reading another Sir Walter Scott. It’s The Fortunes of Nigel, and I believe this will be the eighth or ninth Walter Scott that I’ve read. Though Scott’s works are available at Gutenberg and can be read on […]

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John Scalzi

Monday, May 1, 2023

I meant to buy the hardback but accidentally ordered the large print edition. The machine in the background is an IBM Model D typewriter in pretty rough shape. It’s out of its case while I try to determine if it’s restorable. The Collapsing Empire. John Scalzi. Tor, 2017. This is part one of a three-part […]

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The Bulletin of the Tolkien Society

Thursday, April 20, 2023

A few weeks ago I mentioned having joined the Tolkien Society. Today I received in the mail a welcome letter and a copy of the April 2023 Amon Hen, the Bulletin of the Tolkien Society. The packet was hand addressed, with nice U.K. postage stamps. International mail always looks so exotic! Amon Hen is very […]

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A strange book about fairies

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

Source: eBay The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. W.Y. Evans Wentz, Oxford University Press, 1911. Gutenberg.org edition The English historian Ronald Hutton has persuasively argued that there is no continuous history of paganism in the British Isles. Rather, during the 19th Century there was a revival of, and a romanticization of, interest in Celtic paganism. This […]

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The Tolkien Society

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to an American fan. The letter was posted recently to the Reddit group /r/typewriters. After I saw this letter in the Reddit /r/typewriters group, I Googled for Tolkien’s address to have a look at the house. In that search there was a link to the Tolkien Society. A Tolkien Society! Now […]

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Great Expectations, but not what we were expecting

Monday, March 27, 2023

It’s certainly not my intention to be so contrary in my taste in books and films. It seems I just can’t help myself. While everyone is raving about The Last of Us, with its 96 percent RottenTomatoes rating, I thought (at least after three and a half episodes, which was all I could endure) that […]

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