The Fireside

Today is a sad day for the field of fantasy - legendary author Ursula K. Le Guin has passed away at age 88. Le Guin has a staggering bibliography, with novels, novellas, short stories...you name it, in various areas of fiction. However, I think it safe to say that she is best known for her Earthsea books. In publication order (novels and short stories), they are: ~ The Word of Unbinding (1964) ~ The Rule of Names  (1964) ~ A Wizard of Earthsea  (1968) ~ The Tombs of Atuan  (1971) ~ The Farthest Shore  (1972) ~ Tehanu  (1990) ~ The Other Wind  (2001) ~ Tales From Earthsea  (2003 for the collected edition under that title) -  It contains the novella "The Finder," and the short stories "The Bones of the Earth," "Darkrose and Diamond," "On the High Marsh," and "Dragonfly." Concluding with with an account of Earthsea's history, people, languages, literature, and magic. ~ The Daughter of Odren  (2014) It was initially a trilogy, th...

As of this writing, I have not read some of the other more "traditional" KING Arthur stories (Le Morte d'Arthur by Malory, the one by Roger Lancelyn Green, etc) however I quite enjoyed it.   It is a traditional Arthurian story (no Saxons, etc here) that is all "flowery" style (thou, hast, etc) that goes into the adventures of King Arthur (and how he became King), Merlin, and some of his Knights.  You can definitely tell that both Tolkien and Martin must have read (and enjoyed) this book, as there different types of echoes from it that 'ripple' into their writings; which you can pick up if you knew what Tolkien enjoyed, and read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; for instance. The different lords, kings, knights etc definitely appealed to Marin, which you can detect if you've read some of his Ice and Fire books.  Going onto this edition - the book paired well with the ACTUAL book itself: I enjoyed that it was a hardcover of slightly different di...

One item that sometimes, in my experience, that gets overlooked in the field of Tolkien scholarship, as well as overall importance, is The Annotated Hobbit  by Douglas A. Anderson. The book was published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Hobbit . That is, of course, nothing ill against Anderson, The Hobbit  or what he has done. In a field so varied and vast as Tolkien scholarship, it oft gets overlooked, I mean to say. In a sense, I consider it to be "an underrated piece of genius." Of course, in terms of thinking it could be overlooked, I could be completely off the mark. I remember when the revised edition of the book was brand new. I was getting into Tolkien, and checking out various titles by and about him. I saw the book and thought it was a bit unnecessary for my needs at the time. Plus, it didn't match any of the other books in terms of size dimensions etc. More on that later. I thought it was a neat concept, but at the time, I was casual normal reader, ge...

Good day all! Yesterday evening, TheOneRing.Net hosted a live session with Doug Adams, 'musical scholar' for Howard shore's Middle-earth movie scores. He has assisted Howard tremendously with The Complete Recordings (even going so far to do the liner notes, which were expanded into its own book called The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films ). Last night, I asked my question (twice - once at the beginning of the session and properly during question time). I had asked: "Doug - can you provide any updates on either 'The Music of the Hobbit Films' book *OR* 'The Hobbit Complete Recordings?' His answer, to paraphrase is this: The Book: - it is already completed in some form. (My guess is rough version, first draft etc.) He said "I'm looking at it right now, actually." This was during a live video session, so it most likely only exists digitally at this point. Either way, this is great news - the book is underway to some degree, and will be ...

Well, it's now official - Game of Thrones: Season 8  will be coming in 2019. I had been hoping for later this year (2018) but alas.... I admit to being curious for what that will mean for the publication of Book 6, if anything. Will we get it before or after Season 8 (which will be the final season) in 2019? Oh - I'd love  to get Book 6 sometime this year....but I'm not sure that's likely. It's pretty much a garuntee it should be out next year. Of course, there's always the wait between Book 6 and Book 7, the final one..... As I stated previously, regardless of when Book 6 will be published, I am going to re-read the books the day after the final episode of Thrones . If Book 6 is not out by that point, it is my hopes that it will be very close to when I finish reading Book 5 of that re-read.   

Hey all, Another long-awaited update! Things have been busy - went away for most of the holidays (so there was packing, travelling, merry-making and then travelling back home and more merry-making), finishing up some work, etc. I had intended to post this before going away, but now it seems that it needs to be posted at the end of the holidays, as opposed to before. I hope Santa was good to you, and you got lots of goodies plus had some great time with friends and family etc. Once again, the holidays have come and gone so crazy-fast, I could hardly believe it. I vividly recall typing up my previous blog post - and then the first 2-3 weeks of December just disappeared. So, some highlights of my haul include: - PJ Pants - Mario Kart 7  for 3DS - assorted booze and beer - chocolates and sweets - some books - much more.... So now that I've finished reminiscing about the holidays, it's time to look forward to this year - 2018 - for what I'm looking forward to in terms of geeky...