I read The Jaunt recently too, because Patton Oswald was on the Kingscast to talk about it. Really great short story, lots of little details that flesh out the world without overdoing it. And the ending... Jeez.

(shameless self promotion here! avert your eyes!)

My signed authors copy of Martial Arts And Your Life arrived today.

Big thanks to Lawrence A Kane and Kris Wilder for the honour of including me and allowing me to be part of such an awesome book. It's such a brilliant and comprehensive study into why we do the things we do.

So proud to have been a part of it and it shall live on my coffee table for all guests to see!

(book looks cool though - great stuff! I need to be more famous.)

The Daddy wrote:

Ooh, that looks like a cosy sweater.

It really is. I love cosy

No. He really won’t.

acemuzzy wrote:

I would definitely have you in a fight

You'd be beat up by a jolly guy in a cosy jumper.

Congrats wook!

27. The Fall of Gondolin by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

The third and final of Tolkien’s Great Tales of the Third Age. In this one the man Tuor is chosen by the sea god Ulmo to find the secret and last great stronghold of the elves, the city of Gondolin, and convince its people to depart for the sea before Melkor, chief villain of the First Age, finds it and destroys it utterly.

Tolkien wrote and completed a version of this story in 1916 that, while not exactly brief, was quite archaic in style and lacking in detail. I still really enjoyed it, but it feels like something of a sampler that only hints at the true epic. He went back to it over the years, creating even shorter versions while evolving elements of the story. But it wasn’t until 35 years later that he started telling the story as it deserved to be told. But he never finished it, and it’s a damn shame because what is there in this final version is amazing and choc-a-bloc with beautiful prose. Christopher Tolkien surmises, based on his letters to his publisher Stanley Unwin, that he lost heart in it because the publisher was disinterested in publishing The Silmarillion, of which this would have formed a part, and was only interested in a sequel to The Hobbit. The completed The Lord of the Rings was already sitting on Tolkien’s shelf by then, but he was desperate to publish it together with The Silmarillion. What a shame he never got to see it happen in his lifetime. Anyway, all the versions of the story are here included along with some very interesting commentary by his son, and I enjoyed it all immensely. Here’s a snippet:

But Ulmo bore her up and gave unto her the likeness of a great white bird, and upon her breast there shone as a star the shining Silmaril, as she flew over the water to seek Eärendel her beloved. And on a time of night Eärendel at the helm saw her come towards him, as a white cloud under a moon exceeding swift, as a star over the sea moving in strange course, a pale flame on wings of storm. And it is sung that she fell from the air upon the timbers of Wingelot, in a swoon, nigh unto death for the urgency of her speed, and Eärendel took her unto his bosom. And in the morn with marvelling eyes he beheld his wife in her own form beside him with her hair upon his face; and she slept.

28. The Drowning Girl by Caitlín R. Kiernan

One day India meets a between-homes trans girl called Abalyn and in the spur of the moment invites her to stay at her apartment. They quickly fall into a comfortable relationship with each other and so Abalyn decides to stay. But then one night India goes for a drive and comes across a naked, spaced out woman betwixt the road and a river, and India being India, she picks her up and brings her home. The story is relayed to the reader as India’s memoir, and here’s where thing get strange, because India is absolutely certain she picks this girl up twice and brings her home; once in the summer, and then again in the winter. The big wrinkle in the story is that India suffers from schizophrenia, and so is a very unreliable narrator.

I liked it a lot. The writing is never less than excellent, and Kiernan has a way of writing very natural dialogue. I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what to make of the very last part of the book; I’m not really sure what’s real and what’s not, and maybe that’s the point, but it doesn’t feel like it. Also, writing a convincing inside out view of schizophrenia is no mean feat and the author aces it. It’s not for everyone, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

29. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Perhaps unsurprisingly I have read this quite a few times before, but this is the first time I have ever read the original version of The Hobbit. Before the publication of The Lord of the Rings Tolkien went back and made some changes to The Hobbit so that narratively speaking it would link up more cohesively with its sequel. The most important change is made in chapter five, Riddles in the Dark. Originally when Bilbo plays the riddle game with Gollum and wins, the creature is relatively happy about handing over his precious to Bilbo. Clearly the One Ring as he wrote about it then was just a magic trinket with no wider significance, and that’s how it stayed for almost twenty years, until The Lord of the Rings was finally complete.

I really enjoyed reading through this again, and it was made all the more pleasurable by reading from a faithful facsimile of the original publication.





Have also just worked my way through the BBC radio plays of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings for an extra potent shot of nostalgia. Love them still.

Yep, certainly the Gollum performance gave Serkis something to jump off from.

Heh. In the midst of that one right now.

Have heard of that tale. I'll put that on my to read list.  It's a pity Amazon don't do stuff like this instead of some half warm prequel bollocks.

Gremill wrote:

11. Evil is a Matter of Perspective (various) An anthology of short stories in the genre of 'grimdark' fantasy. As with any compilation quality varies and despite the frustration of the briefness of the form, it's a good way to find new writers that I might like who are creating worlds that merit further exploration.

Did you find any?

I’m doing something Arthurian at the moment; The Once and Future King. It’s absolutely massive and not at all what I was expecting.