I was seized by a desire to re-watch Fellowship of the Ring for the first time in some years. Possibility out of a sense of disappointment with how Peter Jackson has taken my beloved children’s book, The Hobbit, and made it unnecessarily epic in scale.
There is a wonderful book of historiography called Inventing the Middle Ages. It is a series of portraits of prominent medievalists and how they combined to shape our idea of the what the middle ages was. Was it a time of darkness? Of surprising richness? Was it a time of kings? Or of commoners.
Among the portraits was one of J.R.R. Tolkien. It acknowledged his work in translating and examining Anglo-Saxon epics like The Pearl and The Green Knight. But it also looked at Middle Earth and how it captured a very important aspect of the time, which was the great journeys taken by so many ‘little people’ – commoners and peasants – over great distances. Pilgrimages across continents and journeys like the Crusades even.
While not mentioned, for me, also, it was a differing idea of love. Courtly love was a later invention, something from the middle ages, but not from the early middle ages that Tolkien studied. Love was the love between friends.
My mother and I have differing favorite moments from the first movie, but with similar meaning.
Mine is early in the movie, when Frodo tells Merry and Pippin that he has to get to the town of Bree, after it has become clear that something big, bad, and scary is nearby and hunting them. Merry’s response is to say, ‘Right – Buckleberry Ferry.’
He doesn’t ask why or what the heck is going on. He responds in instant solidarity to a fellow ‘little person’ who is being threatened by the big forces of the world. He never asks himself if he will help or how much help he will offer – only what the best thing for his fellow man (well, Hobbit).
My mother likes towards the end, when Frodo tells Sam, ‘I’m going alone,’ and Sam replies, ‘I know you are and I’m going with you.’ Again, the absolute solidarity of ordinary people to accomplish great, yet little noticed things in the face of world changing events they can barely understand and hardly even see.
There are some warning signs. Sanderson is adding too many characters who get their own third person limited chapters. It’s not George R.R. Martin levels, but it’s also not being used the same way. Martin uses the massive scope of the characters to illustrate the gray morality of the world (yes, Jamie crippled Bran, but Jamie did it to protect his own children and the people he loves, which is surely understandable, if not exculpatory), but this is epic fantasy that is much more black and white – which is not a criticism, but part of the genre. As a result, the accumulation of characters starts to feel more like clutter.
I’m still not sure about Sanderson’s insistence of unique magic systems (and if a key part of it is going to be faerie like creatures called ‘spren,’ you can’t make some of them evil and expect me to frightened of them if they’re still going to be called ‘spren;’ too close to ‘sprite’). It’s impressive world building, in one sense. In another sense, sometimes it’s okay to write, ‘the wizard raised his wand and then something cool happened.’ It’s magic. I don’t expect it to be science. He did reduce the number of key locations, so the new ecosystem he build for his world didn’t throw me off as much.
Like it’s predecessor, The Way of Kings, Words of Radiance culminates in a big ol’ action set piece. Unfortunately, it’s not as cool as the one its predecessor ended with. He also likes to load players up with suffering, but I just finished reading Balzac, so I read and I think – that’s not suffering! You want some mystery, pick up a book by a nineteenth century French novelist! Balzac! Hugo! Zola! And in the meantime, bring it on – pile on some misery on those barely suffering bastards, Sanderson!
But… despite all my criticism. I liked it. He’s a good writer. He’s caught me. I’m going to be excited to read the next book in the series. Sanderson, you win.
My first Jules Verne was Journey to the Center of the Earth, but I was too young (middle school) to properly appreciate what I was reading. Yes, Verne writes rollicking yarns, but they’re also wrapped up in nineteenth century novels.
So, after a fashion, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is my first Jules Verne. And it is thrilling, but also terribly didactic.
If you watched the Kirk Douglas, James Mason, you might be surprised to learn that Captain Nemo (James Mason) saves the life of Kirk Douglas (Ned Land) from the squid, not the other way around, as in the movie (though there was an earlier incident where Ned slays a shark en route to eating to Nemo). Also, it’s not a single, giant kraken, but rather a school of large, but not outlandishly, never before seen large squids.
The description of live underwater and the workings of the Nautilus are interesting, but it is Captain Nemo who holds the reader’s attention. As he loses his equilibrium, the captain’s mysterious revolutionary anger and search for some obscure vengeance becomes more compelling. He becomes less of a distant, cold killer and becomes someone whose motives maybe hidden, but whose emotions are eminently relatable.
the coffee philosopher 