Category: Books and Reading
If you’ve ever wanted to read Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings in chronological order, you might want to check out my Chronological MiddleEarth Reading List. It’s available in pdf format. This reading list is a guide for those who want to read Tolkien’s works in the order in which they took place in Middle-earth, rather than in the order Tolkien originally wrote them. The reading order is NOT recommended for those who have never read any of Tolkien’s works before. The reader should have already read The Hobbit, The Lord...
I’m a voracious reader. You have to read to survive. People who read for pleasure are wasting their time. Reading isn’t fun; it’s indispensable. –Woody Allen What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright?…Without moving, you walk through the countries you see in your mind’s eye; and your thoughts, caught up in the story, stop at the details or rush through the plot. You pretend you’re the characters and...
I found a real gem at the used book store yesterday: Quiet Places with Jesus by Rev. Isaias Powers, C.P. I’ve been looking for a prayer book to help me concentrate more on the person of Jesus as I pray. I tend to be a bit too intellectual when I meditate and I wanted something that would help tap my imagination. Fr. Powers wrote these guided meditations in the 1970s and they’re very much in the Jesuit tradition of using the imagination to help one pray. What I’ve...
I don’t often understand Gene Wolfe’s books, but I’m always captivated by his characters. Wolfe is one of those authors whose books leave me feeling a bit like an alien abductee who’s been returned to his home: I know something important just happened, I just don’t quite know what it was. Fortunately, The Knight seems more accessible to me than other Wolfe novels I’ve read (which, admittedly, haven’t been many). And Wolfe still has the power to create compelling, likeable characters. Like Severian in The Book of the...
I just started Gene Wolfe’s novel The Knight, and the first thing I encountered was this epigraph by Lord Dunsany which just happens to mention my favorite knight: The Riders Who treads those level lands of gold, The level fields of mist and air, And rolling mountains manifold And towers of twilight over there? No mortal foot upon them strays, No archer in the towers dwells, But feet too airy for our ways Go up and down their hills and dells. The people out of old romance, And...
I finally had to abandon Tim Powers’ supernatural spy novel, Declare. I read over 200 pages into it and just couldn’t go any further. I really enjoyed Powers’ earlier novel, The Anubis Gates, and I had high hopes for Declare after reading reviews. But the book didn’t evoke any emotional reaction from me at all. I never really connected with Hale, the main character, and I didn’t care for the way Powers’ narrator alternated back and forth between the 1940s and the 1960s. I think part of the...
Be the life of the party by learning this funny clown routine using books:
Simon Vance does a superb job reading every character in Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander except one: the central character Jack Aubrey. I just finished listening to Blackstone Audio’s unabridged version of Master and Commander, and the book keeps getting better each time I experience it. I first read it about ten years ago, then a few years after that I listened to Patrick Tull’s unabridged audio recording from RecordedBooks.com. This time around I didn’t get so bogged down trying to understand the naval jargon, so I was...
From Matthew at Gizmodo: This toy is shaped like a row of books, and includes a sensor that triggers spooky noises and pushes out one of the books when someone walks past. Read more about the books or order them at Things You Never Knew Existed.
I was looking at my commonplace book and was again struck by the eloquence of Henry David Thoreau. Here are some of my favorite Thoreau quotes, most of them from Walden: I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. …to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. In short, I am convinced, both by faith...
I’ve known some bibliomaniacs in my time, but Archdeacon Meadow has got to be one of the worst afflicted: Archdeacon Meadow accumulated so many books that he was forced to sell a considerable portion of his collection. But as their auction proceeded he experienced such passionate anguish that he left the room and returned again in disguise to begin bidding for his own books. –Otto L. Bettman, The Delights of Reading: Quotes, Notes and Anecdotes
As you’re relaxing today, why not try your hand at making this really cool origami mini-book:
