If you ever wanted to muck about in a picture book, ustwo games’ Assemble with Care does this beautifully. With oil pastel digitalized graphics and a move-along arrow, the story unfolds with large crisp font and syntactic structure that reminds one of a child’s book. The underlying story behind the little tasks though hints more at of the troubles hanging over many adult heads’ that can’t be fixed as easily as a tapedeck or a rotary phone.
The music is calming and the color palette meditative for solving small scale puzzles. There are enough hints that make it relaxing, rather than frustrtaing. It does not require a full on side-by-side wiki to accomplish tasks. It is exceptionally rail heavy, and that’s okay when you don’t want to go adventuring around.
My singular complaint is in the use of the screwdriver within the mechanics. I tried this out on my laptop without a mouse, just the trackpad, and that doesn’t always work that well for this application. I found that if I *very* gently pulled my index finger down on the left side of the trackpad I could unscrew the screws and if I then pushed my finger back up on the left side, it would rescrew – wish a lot of work. That was a few fixes in before I figured it out without just brute forcing the thing. I would like to say it is probably either easier with a mouse or maybe a joystick…depends on if it would require you to rotate the joystick or move it up and down. The initial thought I had when trying to fix the tape deck was to swirl my finger in a spiral on the trackpad – that did not yield results. So, there’s the one heads-up. But, it really isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of the story.
I picked it up on a Steam sale for $4. Knowing the amount of work that went into the art and voice acting, it’s hard to feel like that’s about all the game is worth, but I really wouldn’t pay much more than that sales price. It’s usually $8, and that’s probably more fair to the game designer and all the other people who went into making it, but it doesn’t feel like it has much re-playability and the overall mechanics feels…simple? Is simple the right word?
Anyways. It’s pretty in a storybook kind of way. It didn’t keep me engaged for more than about 4 ‘jobs’ at a given time, but that’s probably alright if you’re only killing 20 minutes. I would say, if I were to play it in a killing time mode, that the typography is at least large enough to be comfortable on a SteamDeck. Haven’t tested that. I would imagine this would be easily compatible.
Suggest it? ….ehhhh? It’s not bad. But being reminded of all the grown up stresses underlying all the broken things that the main character is able to fix isn’t something I find escape worthy. If you’re looking for a very subtle amount of drama, this might be up your ally. I mean, the game is titled Assemble with Care after all. It’s hinting not only at being gentle with the items you are fixing, but also empathy and care for the people you are helping when fixing those items, and knowing that there are just some things you cannot fix.
I’m testing out games that are more towards my aesthetic, rather than just the basics everyone has heard about (looking at you Bethesda and Nintendo). Bad Viking is a new-to-me company that I stumbled into because of the idea of this game.
First of all, Strange Horticulture is a perfect slow, rainy day, fall game. A warm drink is suggested. It carries the aesthetic across the board. It doesn’t have much in the way of changeable imagery to it. It’s primarily text and clue based – more on that in a minute, but it’s the saturated dark colors, the costumes for the handful of characters and the general layout of the working page that I am enamored with. The music is also decent for that dark academia feel.
The story follows you along as you re-establish an odd greenhouse with a variety of plants you ‘go looking’ for. You really don’t ever leave the main screen, it just gives you information on you having found or not found something. The characters come to you each day looking for a plant to cure an illness, lift or set a curse, or a few number of other…dealings, shall we say?
There are also a handful of different endings depending on your actions throughout the story (did you join or destroy a cult or things like that), which makes the game replayable for quite a while. Not bad when I got it on steam for, I think, $5? It was on a sale. Looking at it not on sale, looks like it’s $15. I would add it to the wishlist and wait for it to ping on a sale, but I don’t think you will be disappointed at the $15 price tag either for the replayability hours.
Now. Here’s the caveat. This thing, if you don’t feel like offing your characters in the first couple acts and incurring bad stuff, needs to be played with a side-by-side wiki opened. One that names all the plants so that you can label them appropriately, and the other as a lead through on what the characters want. You can press your luck and do it the hard way. I know there are more than plenty of y’all out there who think playing with the cheats open as not real gaming, but I honestly like playing that way. It makes it relaxing and I can take more time to appreciate the artwork and the storyline, rather than stress about randomly offing someone with deadman’s fingers fungi. There is a book in game that is supposed to give you hints and help you figure out the botany, but I found it less than helpful once I started getting deep into the plants.
This one is definitely one I would suggest for folk who like the dark academia vibe, cottagecore vibe, a bit of Victorian drizzle, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mystery. My one suggestion is watch your screen size. The words get difficult on a smaller screen, like on a SteamDeck or Switch. I would suggest it as a monitor game if you can tolerate sitting at a desk or have a larger laptop. Otherwise, there is an in screen magnifying glass you can use, but that gets tedious.
Amazon affiliate links are in this post. I earn a small commission if you use the link to buy stuff, which helps keep the blog going. I don’t collect your info, that’s Amazon’s business.
The Titan’s Bride is a mature content boys love manga written by ITKZ, with it’s original release run in 2019. I read the first couple chapters as they released and then forgot about it, as one does when flicking through lots of just-starting manga. I ran back into recently and finally plowed through all the chapters I could get hold of.
It has the coercion problem that a lot of boys love tends to have. I do wish that would be addressed in the genre. After a handful of chapters, the characters are less ‘coercion through obligation’ to genuinely seeing each other as thinking, emotional beings and develop feelings for each other. So, there’s your heads up warning if you were looking for a coercion free read…this one isn’t going to tick that box.
The setting is magical royal fantasy. I do enjoy this type of scene setting, and it is used as the justification behind many of the compromising interactions that take place in this oh so very spicy piece.
The pacing can linger a bit in spots and sometimes rush in others where it would have been nice to expand. But those areas where I feel it should have been expanded are often forgone for the sake of the chapter page limit and the obligatory spicy scene that readers come to expect with these types of manga.
I would say there is a solid story in this, but it really is more of the subplot to the main purpose of an on page explicit manga. If you are looking for more plot than not, this isn’t going to sate your appetite. If your desire is more towards the raunchy side of life, this’ll probably do a bit of a trick.
This isn’t necessarily one I would add to my shelf, but I’m still reading the ongoing chapters every once in a while when I remember it’s there. If someone bought it for my through My Amazon Book Request List, I would write a very happy thank you on here for doing that because that would be absolutely awesome to get something off my list, but that’s about the closest way that I would go about getting the book on my shelf.
As it is, if you’re enjoying what you’re reading, might I point you at the button? It goes to an Amazon wishlist of books and a bit of tea and tea cups for my book reviews. If you buy something off it, Amazon will send that item to me, and then I get to squee and feel really well liked.
There are affiliate links in the post. I make a small commission off sales from the links that keep the blog going. I don’t collect your info.
Natsu Hyuga’s The Apothecary Diaries, originally released in 2014 is an ongoing manga with about 63 chapters as of my reading at this point. I found the first three books at my local library and the rest of the volumes elsewhere to read. I am now caught up on the story and incredibly frustrated that at where my cliff hanger hit. I need more.
The illustration work is beautifully rendered, sometimes with a couple panels of colorwork. I like those. It informs me as to how the illustrator views the characters compared to how I fill in their hair and clothing.
The pacing has been closely managed. The mysteries are handled with good timing so that it isn’t drawn on past about 3-4 chapters from what I’ve gathered, while there is a few larger mysteries tying everything together. I like this type of build up. It keeps the continuity of the story.
The relationship between the MC and LI is also just *chef’s kiss*. It’s the frustrated one-individual-is-pining type and the other has just written them off completely because they are ‘unreachable’ so to speak. It’s giving me raging Sebastion voice “just kiss the girl” vibes but the pacing still makes me want to just enjoy the slow burn frustration. That’s how you know the author, illustrator, and editors have done their jobs right. They make you want conclusions, but you’re not mad at the build up.
Let’s just go with I was giddy by the time the cave scene came up, and not mad at how it concluded either. It felt correct how it was handled. I’m looking forward to the next chapter update.
If you like knowledgeable characters who are not perfect Sherlock Holmes, you want a long slow burn for romance, and you enjoy historical scene setting, this’ll do the trick nicely. I like historical scene setting. It let’s there be something else outside of just current drama. I want to escape current social and political convention when I read, and these types of stories do it for me.
Sadly, if I had all the manga I love reading as physical books, I really would need to buy a different house. I would not have the room. I can justify stand alone books, but manga series need to be kept to kindles and rentals for me. If it wasn’t an issue, yes I would have the whole set of this and consistently buy them when new ones released.
There are affiliate links in this post. If you use them, I make a small commission that helps fund this blog. I do not collect your info, that’s Amazon’s business.
The quintessential Victorian horror novel, most people within English speaking western society recognize the name Dracula and some recognize the author Bram Stoker. Published in 1897, I still find it suprising how much closer it was to the 20th century rather than the regency period. Often times when I think of it, I picture peasant clothes, cloaks, and hay wagons, not eleven years after the first automobile, or during the U.S. 25th presidency with McKinley. It almost feels like the story should take place in the 17th or 18th century, not the 19ths.
Then again, the way the prose are lined out, it reads like someone had a great love of Doyle. In saying that line, I had to go look it up. In fact, the Irish writer, Stoker, was in a habit of letter correspondence with Doyle. So, there might be some overlap in style through shared common writing.
Looks like Stevenson was also known between the two of them, so that explains some things. Looks like there were shared classes. Maybe the prose pattern is something to blame on a particularly well loved professor’s predilictions.
The story gives raging frustrated bi feels. Both from the solicitor’s impression of the Count’s lingering and fixations and from the solicitor’s observations of the women. In a way, I’m surprised any publisher would take Stoker up on the manuscript in the end of the 19th century for how he portrays the moment one of the women goes to suck the solicitor’s neck before the count intervenes. I feel like that would have left a certain segment of the female readership searching for their hand fans.
I did cringe at the use of the term ‘gypsy’ used in it. So, heads up if that one gets to you. If you aren’t aware, it is a derogatory term for Romani people in the same way the n-word is derogatory for African people and really should be avoided. It has been recently that the Romani people’s request for people to stop using it is making it to the main stream. I was raised using the word, but in talking to an author I worked with who was raised in the Romanian/Transylvanian area, I learned more about this problem and I have made a great many efforts to stop with the term. Now it makes me cringe.
Now…
The setting is dark and restrictive – the character trapped in a castle keeps the setting from roaming about and losing the reader, well devised and keeping to a wonderful autumn theme. The characters are kept close and small, which allows their personalities to develop with time and keep engagement. It pairs quite well with an Irish Breakfast tea, and not just because Stoker was Irish. It’s that foggy vibe it gives, where coffee would be a bit too heavy to relax with, but you still want a robust, dark tea. It makes me wish for early evenings and a crackling fireplace.
I would say, if you like Doyle’s style, you’ll probably find Stoker’s piece a similar feel. I rented my book, and will probably be finding a copy for my bookshelf. Honestly, it’s one I’ll probably need to buy new if I want to find a copy at all, let alone hardback.
This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I make a small commission if you use the links, which helps support the blog. I do not collect your information, that is Amazon’s business.
A childhood classic originally published in 1881, Heidi by Johanna Spyri is a perfect little afternoon of nostalgia waiting to happen. Often intended for children, I found reading it as an adult to be an interesting investigation on certain societal conceptions about children.
Often, I describe whether I liked the characters, the world build, the dialogue and prose, and all of those are to be lauded in this easy reader.
However, I am more keen to look at the story outside of those usual themes and insteadat how the adults in this story treat Heidi. More to the fact three women in particular: Deta – Heidi’s aunt, Mrs. Sesemann – Clara’s Grandmother, and Miss Rottenmeier – Clara’s housekeeper.
Deta, having been responsible for Heidi since she was about one, fobs the girl off on the Alm-Uncle, Heidi’s grandfather, when the girl is around five years old, telling him the girl is now his responsibility and she would not be responsible for any harm to the child after. Seems rather cruel. Deta was practically the girl’s mother at that point. Then again, the explanation was that the girl was trapped in doors with her sick grandmother otherwise and spent very little time with the rest of the world. Deta’s priorities fell in line with social expectations that if she were to become a housemaid in a well off family’s residence that she couldn’t possibly look after children. In that day and age, she would have probably had her reputation tarnished for the perception of having a child outside of wedlock, when in fact she was fostering her niece. Being financially responsible for caring for her own aging mother, it socially made sense to just dump the girl with a guy everyone in the village thought was a cruel hermit. Wait….
So, Deta reappeared a few years later, just popping in unannounced claiming the girl was her responsibility, nabbing her in front of Heidi’s grandfather and taking her off to Frankfurt where she ditched the girl at Clara’s house because apparently just giving children to wealthy families so wealthy children could have live-in ‘friends’ was a thing. Deta didn’t treat Heidi as either a child or an adult, but an inconvenience or a method by which to gain accolades and raise her socially perceived position in life.
To Miss Rottenmeier, the housekeeper thus saddled with a random little girl from the mountains whose soul purpose is to entertain her own sickly charge, we come to. The woman is brisk, dismissive, and quite hard hearted in a different manner. She takes no time to get to know the child, let alone find out where she came from. If she had, she wouldn’t think Heidi out of her mind when describing the goats and the mountains. What her position and interaction reflects is something between the concept of children should be seen not heard or that children were viewed as little adults and were expected to just understand all the cultural and social nuances that real grown ups still fail at regularly. She couldn’t grasp that a child from the mountains would not interact with the servants in an ‘appropriate’ manner. Etiquette in relation to class structure wasn’t necessary out on the mountains. Games rich people play in town wasn’t something Heidi needed to know. The woman had not sympathy or empathy for the girl’s many different plights and depression, instead labeling her innocent actions as scheming and plotting. Her character was almost written like she had never interacted with a child before. There was no indication if she had been around while Clara was growing up, or had just recently taken up the position as housekeeper shortly before Heidi showed up, so I can’t make a judgement on if the character’s actions would be considered believable, but it is reflective of how adults do look down on children without thought to a child’s own logic.
Lastly we’ll look at the well meaning religious grandmother, Mrs. Sesemann. Clara’s grandmother comes in for a while to oversee the house while her son is away on business. In this time, she honestly sits down with Heidi, get’s to know her, takes time to sympathise and learn about the girl’s wants and desires. She finds Heidi’s wavelength and treats her with care. She doesn’t force Heidi to stop crying like Miss Rottenmeier. She does instruct an impressionable child to believe in an invisible overseer to take care of all the problems (even if it’s with the excuse that everything comes with time, but don’t stop believing) she’s having…but that’s cultural. To be expected for this time period. It makes an easy excuse for the book to help re-engage the grandfather back into the community with prodigal son imagery and all that. I think the story could have survived without that interlude, but that probably wouldn’t have been the point Spyri was trying to make with the telling.
Still, in looking at the three women and their view on Heidi, one can see a social expression. Deta needed a job to survive, therefore Heidi was an object to be moved about as necessary. Miss Rottenmeier was also responsible for her own wellfare and was distressed at the concept of taking care of a child that was not planned for. Mrs. Sesemann, financially secure and with little to stress over in the way of career future, saw the girl as just a girl, one to be interacted with rather than shifted about or expected to perform.
I cannot entirely fault any one of these women in their character presentation, especially with regard to time frame. Each represented a facet by which to explore the world of child-adult interaction in Germany/Switzerland in the late 1800s.
This is one of those stories that I have as a hardback on my shelf. I might find religion cringy personally, but those still within the faith would probably find great enjoyment in re-reading this from their earlier years and seeing the metaphors. To me, it is nostalgic. I had a cartoon of it as a very young child and still remember bits and pieces of the animating style that let me love the story from back then. VHS has gone the way of the dodo, though, and now I couldn’t tell you which version of it it was.
I think there is value in revisiting childhood novels. It might feel like low effort, but sometimes that’s the best way to go about things. You see more as an adult and will pick up on certain actions within the story that you otherwise really wouldn’t have taken much notice of when you were younger.
This post contains Amazon links. I make a little commission if you use my links, which helps keep this blog going. I don’t collect your information, that’s Amazon’s business.
One of my newer books to read, Hester Fox brought out The Last Heir to Blackwood Library in April of 2023. An interesting blend between historical fiction, the supernatural, psych horror, fantasy, and soft romance, this gave me all the right vibes for an author who writes outside of the box. Initially I grabbed this from my library because it was listed in the romance section and I thought a bit of historical fiction of a woman inheriting a library sounded like a pleasant weekend read with hopes of a decent handful of smutty scenes – standard fare.
This was not that. The romance came softly and developed as a chaste subplot. Perfect for people who like sweet, not spicy material. Wasn’t what I set out for, but it was nice. As I said though, subplot. It was not by any stretch of the imagination the main plot.
I do not want to give away this plot, but the overaching theme is haunted estate with occult follower themes. A slight taste of Jumanji, maybe a touch of Indiana Jones, it sets out to cast a wide net in a resticted setting that transforms beautifully into a blended genre book.
The characters were believable in their speech patterns and body language development. I prefer seeing characters that are individualized, rather than when an author makes all of them talk and act the same to force the story on a designated tragectory.
Now, to admit it, there were sections where I was able to skip over paragraphs and miss nothing, just scene setting. I like a well developed world, and some people would probably enjoy the prose in those sections, it was more to the effect of timing. To me, those sections could have easily been scrapped and it would have read perfectly without missing anything essential.
Towards the last handful of chapters, the plausibility of certain character actions felt a bit stiff, maybe a little overdone, but I think that has a lot to do with me having grown up on black and white noir detective movies and the popularity of occult secret rites by bad people theme. I would say people who haven’t been exposed to a lot of that will enjoy the execution.
I’m not sure that I would reread it or add it to my bookshelf. I liked that I found it in the library to give it a try. I could see it being very popular for people who need a bit of historical supernatural horror and prefer soft romance as a subplot rather than main.
Pride and Prejudice, written by Jane Austen and published in the Regency year of 1813 boasts to be one of the earliest Romantic Comedy and Satire writings by a woman. It is often advertised as one of the top need-to-read stories for women alongside Middlemarch, Vanity Fair,Beloved, and others of that nature.
Is it worth a read? Quite a great many people have thought so since it’s first publishment. There are now even a number of chapters for the Jane Austen Society and a resurgence in Regency era history – the movie form of Pride and Prejudice alongside the televised series Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte.
I have avoided these with a vengence if only for the fact that they sounded like social drama, which I find difficult in the best of circumstances to grasp. I do love a good smutty historical romance. I would not say otherwise. However, this is not the same. This is classic.
Or just petty drivel.
In talking to my spouse about it, I expressed disdain for the overall theme, but a confusion as to why I did not have particular fondness for the story when a love-to-hate relationship is fairly common in smutty historical romances and I do just fine with that. I was trying to grasp the concept that there are actual chapters, memberships of people who get together to dress the part and play at theater with a script. I understand the Society for Creative Anacronisms and LARPs. I can fathom that. So, I had to press as to why it felt odd that there would be such a deep interest in a story where the characters had very few redeeming characteristics. He suggested that it might be that there is a segment of neurotypicals that get into cosplay just like the neurodivergents and that this is probably one of those spheres. I was eating breakfast and expressed my disbelief that a neurotypical would become obsessed in this way. To which, as I was drinking my orange juice, he responded “did you forget about fantasy football”…and I had the disgrace of spitting out my juice. “I had hoped to never think of it.”
I don’t think it is entirely fair to suggest that neurodiverse people would not get into Pride and Prejudice. It just feels that way because I am neurodiverse and do not understand the fascination with it’s representation of society. Certain social circumstances tend to be outside of my grasp. This being one of them.
It is advertised as a romcom, satire, wit, etc. I never found a single instance within it funny and found the lack of honest conversation confusing at best, irritating at worst. I fully grasp that there is a lot of societal etiquette layered within the test, and I could follow that along just fine. Two summers of etiquette school taught me that much. I still find the whole concept of deception and subtext in order to be perceived as polite while demeaning someone strange.
At the very least, I understand the title. Darcy was Pride and Elizabeth was Prejudice. Both of them had to work on their character. One needed a bit of humility the other needed to not judge every person by first impressions. Congrats, that’s called character building and maturity.
Now, it was written in the regency period when it was not entirely uncommon for one to marry their cousin. Darwin did that. It was…mildly distressing to read it in text for a romance novel. Darcy is not Elizabeth’s cousin, I state this to reassure any reader who might be considering the book. There was a different cousin interested in marry Elizabeth for a half-hearted moment, but that resolved with him marrying someone else who he was not blood related to thankfully.
The prose are not outside of the sphere of understanding for anyone exposed to classical literature for more than a couple of books. Some of the dialogue felt uncharacteristically wordy for real people to partake in. Then again, with a lack of perpetual entertainment, maybe people really did take more time to formulate paragraphs worth of discussion in a contrived, verbose manner.
It was an interesting read that left me with more questions than answers. It left me more to question it’s popularity and following really. I cannot honestly say if I would suggest it or not. I have the hardback on my shelf and intend to revisit it in a couple years time. Maybe after some rumination, I’ll find in it what some instinctively understand of the subtext. I would like to know what is comedic about it to be labeled a romantic comedy. Maybe I just don’t find people condescending towards each other funny and never will. I will have to see.
At the very least, I enjoyed the illustrations within my particular copy. I found it in the annex section of Barnes and Nobles for $10 on a buy one get one half off sale. I am building my library and one of the policies I had made for myself was to buy hardbacks but to also wait for them to be on sale. There was a copy of Sense and Sensibility that I had pondered over, but instead ended up picking up Robert Frost, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Thoreau, and Mary Shelley.
If anything, there are a great number of audiobooks on youtube of the book, and some through Libby/Overdrive that you might be able to find through your local library if you are interested in reading the book to form your own opinion by without paying for it until you know if it will be a pleasing addition to your library. That would be the route I would suggest. It seems quite subjective on who will like this one and who will not without too much middle ground.
There are Amazon links in here. I collect a small payout from them for advertising things. I don’t collect your information, that’s on Amazon to do. If you’ld like to support me in other ways and encourage me to do more reviews, please check out my book wishlist:
This post has Amazon links. I collect a small percentage if you purchase using that link. Those pennies help me continue making this blog. I don’t collect your information. That’s Amazon’s business.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, originally published in 1902, is one of the author’s most prominent stories involving his infamous Sherlock Holmes, though Watson’s presence is felt more throughout the story than Holmes himself – then again, that is the standard presentation of the detective. Quite a number of spin-offs have been made from both the overall theme of Sherlock Holmes, and on The Hound of the Baskervilles specifically.
Honestly, it had not been on my radar to read until this last year when I was introduced to the manhua: Revenge of the Iron-Blooded Sword Hound, where some of the names used within it utilize the macabre name, but otherwise has very little to do with Doyle’ story. I am partial to overpowered, revengeful main characters in manga and anime and ended up thoroughly enjoying the manhua.
This led me over to picking up Doyle’s text.
It has a place in the autumnal reading category. It can also feel mildly cringy when considering the town doctor (not Watson) has a hobby of skull study – you know, the eugenics thing that Nazi docs used when studying minorities and how to use those studies to pick people out of the crowd who should be looked at more closely for placement in concentration camps. This study was, for the time that Doyle was writing, an acceptable hobby past time for a man of intelligent means. It world builds and sets the time period, just jarring in this day and age.
Thinking on character building, there were a number of well timed descriptions of both the physical attributes and the body language of individuals outside of the speaking style that individualized the different characters from each other.
The world build was closely kept, but provided several different closeby locations to create the feeling of a known local world. Not something that required ranging all over a country or continent, but still different between London and Devonshire to show the difference between the city and country – the hustle and bustle and the slow life.
I have a love of melancholic settings. Ones steeped in fog and drizzle. The type that will set up the hairs on your arms when you read of a wolf howling off in the distance. This one, for it’s syntactic patterning, still achieves that more than one hundred years later.
I find the grammatics are easier to follow comparatively to say, my last read, Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I’m not sure what it was about that story, but it wasn’t coming through as readily as this one did. I did not find it too complex in vocabulary, but it might do to have a smart phone at hand to double check some few meanings that haven’t been retained between Britain and the US.
This one has a place on my shelf now, and I’m quite enamored with the idea of reading the other Sherlock Holmes stories through this coming autumn. I would love to see similar settings to this, if only to enjoy a warm cup of Irish Breakfast with sugar and cream and a crackling fire as the leaves descend in swaths of gold and fire.
This post contains affiliate links. I do not collect your data. That’s Amazon’s business.
The Hobbit, published in 1937, has been a classic since almost the beginning. The influence it had on the development of modern society’s concept of what constitutes a dwarf, a wizard, and an elf has had far reach affects into everything from DnD to cinema and manga.
I purchased the illustrated edition back in 2021 and finally took the time in the last few weeks to really absorb the artistry and listen to it as an audiobook as I went. I found a set on youtube where the guy has an absolutely fantastic range of character voices that made it all that more pleasant. It also helped me keep all the dwarves in my head straight.
I watched the movies back when they came out and remember being quite perturbed that the ‘handsome one’ got killed. I distinctly remember a certain section of Tolkien fans having that resentment with the casting.
The book though had some sections in it that there was not time in the movie to handle and I think it suffers more for it. Then again, that is always the nature of converting a book into a movie.
The grammatic structure can be slightly unwieldy to me at times. It did not seem so perturbing to follow when listening to the nuance in the audiobook, but on it’s own, I have struggled with the cadence before. If you have a younger reader you think would enjoy Tolkien’s stories, they seem eager, but just keep putting the book down – the old writing style might be going over their heads a little bit. Easy fix is the audiobook. I would point you to the channel Ironwolf Studios. They have a 19 chapter playlist that makes it really easy to follow along.
I do quite love the fact more of these types of classics are coming out in illustrated hardback. One I still wish to get hold of is the Illustrated Lord of the Ring to go along with my Illustrated Hobbit book. I haven’t gone about poking around for the audiobook for that, but I can hope when I do finally get the book to listen and read along with it. I struggled with the last two books in the series back when I was in high school. It had to do with the syntactic structure and cadence patterns. His writing style is just a touch strange to me for some reason.
I do love the world build and the character development. Having Bilbo be the primary character while there are a myriad of other characters to provide him with a story makes for an intriguing read. I don’t think I care so much for books with many characters and what is affectionately known as head-hopping, where the author provides the reader a partial-omnipotent viewpoint of all characters in order to share all sides of the story at once. Certain books can do that quite well, but I am glad this one does not do that.
I didn’t find much objectionable about the format or the content. There is some inference on segregation and perception of ‘the other’ by way of different beings reactions to certain creatures vs. others. I don’t sense that much of the plot depends on it, but it does make it feel like it’s a common sentiment that is part of day to day life and not the primary focus of the book to address. It’s worldbuild rather than plot build.
Would I add this to my shelf? I already did. I owned a paperback in highschool that ended up who knows where, and I bought it again. I found my work around for enjoying it without as much struggle, which has made me love it that much more. So yes, I would suggest it.
Drink suggestions? I’ve been into chamomile tea with homegrown honey (we keeps bees and were able to harvest our first two dozen bottles this year from the hives) for this read. For the driving adventure in the story, the presentation reminds me of sitting on a rock in the mountains watching the river slithering through the valley while I waited for my cousins to get done chasing squirrels. It’s that tranquility of place with dappled sunlight and a sudden interest in a flitting butterfly or a zipping bird catching your attention for an exhilarating second.