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Moving on

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(Image found here)

Umm…”hello?”….is this thing on?

Okay then, let’s begin.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I was not abducted by covert government operatives for indoctrination into a super secret black ops program designed to replace water-boarding with sweet pickles as the preferable method of torturing suspected terrorists. No, not at all. Sweet pickles have been torturous (to me anyway) from the moment some demented soul decided to subject an innocent cucumber to their sick and twisted experiments. Nope, they didn’t need my help with that.

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Capital Idea…let’s award some prizes!

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Sorry for the absence, I spent last week rushing around trying to get my work done for this week’s trip to our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. I am attending a youth conference this week. That coupled with a loss of power at home during a storm over part of the weekend means that I’ve been absent from my site, and everyone else’s, for several days.

I just wanted to take a moment to let everyone know where I was and to announce the winners of last week’s Once Upon a Time IV Wrap Up drawing.

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book news, Challenges

Au Revoir to Once Upon a Time IV (don’t cry, there are presents)

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“The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy.”
~Anonymous

Could a quote be any more perfect for the wrap up post of the Once Upon a Time IV Challenge, an event that ended more than a week ago? I didn’t think so either. “Untidy”, when it comes to blog-related timeliness, is me to a “t”.

That being dispensed with, let me begin the wrap up for the 4th annual Once Upon a Time Challenge with the most important part of the proceedings: thanking all of you wonderful fellow bloggers for signing up, for spreading the word, and most importantly for taking journeys into fantastical, mythological, fairy tale places and sharing those journeys with the rest of us. I tip my hat to you and offer sincere thanks for being such an encouragement to me, and to each other, in your love of the literature which this challenge encompasses and in your willingness each year to allow me to be your host for a few months out of the year. It is a real pleasure.

Before summarizing my own personal experiences with this year’s challenge, I wanted to make an announcement. I quite literally had my head buried in a book throughout much of this challenge. When work wasn’t interfering with my reading (*wink*) I also did some science fiction journeying through Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2 on the XBox. Which means that this challenge was uncharacteristically devoid of regular giveaways and artist profiles. With apologies to our artist host, Melissa Nucera, I will be posting an interview and giveaway with her soon. To make up for this derth of challenge goodies, I have included some prizes at the end of this post.

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Book Reviews, Non-genre fiction

Juliet, Naked ~Nick Hornby

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Juliet, Naked ~Nick Hornby

–published/recorded 2009
–Riverhead Books, Audible Audio
–416 pages, 8 hrs-52 minutes CD
–3.5/5 stars

I won’t pretend to be a Nick Hornby aficionado. Though I have enjoyed his work, most of what I have read have been the three collected editions of his Believer Magazine columns, a recent reading of Slam, which I thought was very well done, and about half of the book Fever Pitch. It would probably be more accurate to say that I am a big fan of the films made from Hornby’s fiction. Juliet, Naked, Hornby’s most recent novel, is being hailed as his best work by some, while being held aloft of an example of how he has lost his touch by others. I cannot compare it to About a Boy, or High Fidelity, or any of his other celebrated works. What I can do is report that Juliet, Naked is evidence that Nick Hornby is a talented writer, despite my ultimate disappointment with the end product.

Juliet, Naked is a glimpse into the lives of a middle-aged couple, Duncan and Annie, who have spent the better part of the last 15 years living together. Duncan is obsessed, to put it mildy, with a reclusive ex-rocker, Tucker Crowe, who, for all intents and purposes, disappeared off the face of the earth twenty years ago. Annie is interested in Crowe, has a deep affection for his magnum opus, the album titled Juliet, and is beginning to see that the last 15 years have left her in a dull, perhaps loveless, and certainly childless relationship. When a soon-to-be released copy of an ‘unplugged’ version of Juliet comes to Duncan for review, thereafter dubbed “Juliet, Naked”, both Annie and Duncan have wildly different reactions to it. Each posts a review on the Tucker Crowe fan website, an act that begins the process of unraveling their lives while at the same time providing an opportunity for Tucker Crowe to re-emerge.

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Book Reviews, Fantasy, Nonfiction

Defending Middle-earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity ~Patrick Curry

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Defending Middle-earth, Tolkien: Myth and Modernity ~Patrick Curry

–published 1997, revised 2004
–Houghton Mifflin Company
–157 pages (198 with references, bibliography, and index)
–4.25/5 stars

I first became aware of Patrick Curry, as well as a number of other Tolkien experts, via the author-related documentaries on the extended editions of the three Lord of the Rings films. Each time I view them I am fascinated with the insights these men and women offer and I long ago determined to read the Tolkien books of those who were published authors. I began this quest a few years ago reading Tom Shippey’s superb book, The Road to Middle-earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology. It is a deeply academic work, particularly the first part of the book dealing with philology, but one I highly recommend, even if a person were to skip to the latter half of the book to read Shippey’s brilliant and well-reasoned debunking of Tolkien critics.

My recent return to high fantasy via George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones not surprisingly put me in a Tolkien mood, so I decided to indulge this whim by purchasing and reading Curry’s book. While not as in-depth as Tom Shippey’s work, and certainly not a perfect work from where I stand, Defending Middle-earth is an excellent and relatively quick read in defense of a work that has defied all odds and abundant criticism to become one of the most beloved pieces of literature ever written. As a personal bonus, Defending Middle-earth has gone a long way towards helping me to coalesce my thoughts on ecology/conservationism and Christianity to the point where I am feeling an urge to actually write about it. But more on that later.

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Eclectic Musings of a Renaissance Geek