Middle Earth Characters Crossword Puzzle

I love crossword puzzles, so I created this one for the party because, well, what's a party without a few games?  All the answers are character names from either The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit.  I think most of them are pretty easy, but I threw in a couple that I hope might make you think a bit.  If you have only seen the movies, you won't get one of them, as it's a character that's only in the books.  But it's one of my husband's favorites, so I had to toss him into the mix.  

I'll post the answers on Friday.  Meanwhile, enjoy!  Oh, you'll have to either print this page, or else copy the image and print it out from a program like Microsoft Word or something.

(Created on CrosswordPuzzleGames.com.)

Don't forget to join the other festivities here and enter the giveaways here!

A Tolkien Blog Party of Special Magnificence

It's finally here!  Bilbo and Frodo's birthday!  Huzzah!

Here are the questions for you to copy onto your own blog or website any time this week.  Answer them there, add a nice button or banner, add the link to that post to the Linky thingie here, and then cut yourself a big slice of birthday cake to eat during the speeches.  You know how long-winded Bilbo gets once he's had a mug or two of the Gaffer's home brew!  And young Master Frodo isn't much better.

(If you don't have a blog or website, but you do have a Facebook account, you can still participate!  Just create a "Note" on your profile page and set the privacy setting to "public" so that we can all read it and get to know you.)

1.  Have you read The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit? If so, how many times?

2.  Have you seen any movies based on them?

3.  Who first introduced you to Middle Earth?

4.  Who are your three favorite characters?  (Feel free to elaborate on whys.)

5.  What's your favorite Middle Earth location?

6.  If you could belong to one of the races of Free Folk (Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Ents), which would you choose?

7.  Would you rather eat lembas or taters?

8.  If you lived in Middle Earth, what weapon would you prefer wielding?

9.  What draws you to Tolkien's stories?  (The characters, the quests, the themes, the worlds, etc.)

10. List up to five of your favorite lines/quotes from the books or movies.


Use any of these banners and buttons to spiff up your post:

Finally, don't forget to add a link to your post here, and then follow the links to read other people's posts and celebrate with them!  And go enter the giveaways here!

There will be more fun all week long, so please check back!  Even follow this blog if you don't want to miss anything.

The Giveaways!

The giveaways are over :-(  Congratulations to our winners, and thanks to all of you for participating!  See you next year, and may our swords shine brightly together!  Or our keyboards, anyway.

Here they are!  The giveaway portion of the Tolkien Blog Party of Special Magnificence!  There are two of them, as some of the donors said they could only ship to US addresses.  Since they're giving this stuff away absolutely free, I am not going to argue with them!  I hope our international participants understand.  Of course, if you live outside the USA but happen to have a friend or relative who lives inside it and is willing to have your prize shipped to them, I'm perfectly fine with you doing that, as long as you have their permission.

Quick Edit:  The main way to enter these is to participate in the party, in other words, to copy the questions I posted here and answer them on your own blog, then add your post's link to the Mister Linky widget at the bottom of my party post.

I should also note that, with the exception of the bookmarks, these are not being sent to the winners by me.  They're being sent by the donors.  The winners will give me their mailing address and I'll give it to the donors.  I promise that I will then discard those addresses, and you'll never get junk mail from me at your mailing address or your email address.  

Okay, enough ado.  Here they are:

US Only Prizes:

Doors of Durin mug from Caesar's Forum

Tea and Tolkien mug from The Ring and the Lion

Welcome mat from Perfect Phrases -- she will personalize it for you!

Gandalf quote print from Celebrative Design

Set of six buttons or magnets from The Buttonator

A set of 3 LOTR bookmarks illustrated by Emily Marie Drews

a Rafflecopter giveaway


World-wide Prizes:

Gandalf quote tea towel from Aspie Tees

Illustrated Tolkien quotes notecards from Erika Rae Heins

Aragorn-themed Tote bag from The Book Fiend

Lord of the Rings word search (pdf download) from Virgo Sunlight Studios

A bar of "Shire" soap from Moss Hollowe

A set of 3 LOTR bookmarks illustrated by Emily Marie Drews

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Thank you so much to all the donating shops!  And good luck to all participants -- thank you for making this blog party such fun!

Both of these giveaways end at 12am EST on Saturday, September 28.  I will choose the winners that morning and post them as soon as I can.

"Death in the Air" by Shane Peacock

Since I enjoyed Eye of the Crow so much, I decided to try the second book in Peacock's Boy Sherlock Holmes series.  I didn't like Death in the Air quite as well, but on the other hand, I did stay up late one night to finish it, which I very rarely do.  And I'm not sure why I didn't like it as well, as this book has a taut plot, good dialog, an impenetrable mystery, and good character development.  It does have a slightly more episodic flavor to it, and lacks that central tie of crows that the first had, so I think that's probably why I liked the first better.  But I'll definitely be reading more of this series!

Death in the Air begins when a famous trapeze artist falls to his death during a performance, landing almost at Sherlock's feet.  Sherlock has been honing his observational skills, and he notices several things that make him believe the daring young man on the flying trapeze was murdered.  He sets out to prove this, aided by a kindly apothecary who has semi-adopted him now that Sherlock no longer has a home.  Once again, we meet up with his semi-rival Malefactor and his almost-friend Irene Doyle, though they are less central to this case.

Peacock makes some shrewd character observations, particularly about Sherlock Holmes.  At one point, Irene Doyle says, "You have no interest in most people, it seems to me, other than those whom you can put in jail in order to make you feel better about yourself" (p. 109).  While I'm not saying that the original Sherlock Holmes has self-hatred issues exactly, it's definitely something to turn around in my mind for a while, see how it fits with him.

Once again, there were a few things that were a bit too cutesy for my taste, for instance, when his new mentor tells him, "Should you go again... the Force should be with you!" (p. 180).  The character's referring to the police force, but it's an obvious Star Wars reference that made me roll my eyes and jerked me out of the story.

So, not a perfect book, but an enjoyable one.

If this was a movie, I would rate it:  PG for some violence and some language.

The Long-Expected Blog Party...

...starts one week from today!

To get in the mood, try visiting one of these links:

The American Tolkien Society
The (U.K.) Tolkien Society
Middle-Earth News

Also, I'm calling this a party, "but it [is] really a variety of entertainments rolled into one."  (The Fellowship of the Ring, p. 26 in my copy).  There'll be the set of questions for you to answer on your own blog, of course, and the giveaways.  I'm also organizing a few games, and we'll be kicking off the Lord of the Rings read-along next week too.  But I'm afraid you'll have to provide your own refreshments, as I haven't figured out how to send food over the internet yet.

About those giveaways... most of the prizes have been donated by Etsy shops, and I want to list them here so you can check them out and see if you can figure out what they might be donating.  Thanks so much to each of these shops:

Aspie Tees
Book Fiend
The Buttonator
CaesarGJ
Celebrative Designs
ErikaRaeHeins
Moss Hollowe
Perfect Phrases
The Ring and the Lion
Virgo Sunlight Studio


I should mention that there will be two giveaways, with six prizes each -- one open to worldwide participants, and one open only to people with mailing addresses in the US.  This is because some of the prizes are large and/or heavy, and the shop owners donating them requested they be US-only.

"Hondo" by Louis L'Amour

I'd only read this once before, maybe eight or ten years ago, but I've seen the John Wayne movie based on it probably close on a dozen times.  Its screenplay takes most of the dialog straight from the book, so reading this is like watching an expanded version of the movie in some ways.  The movie also sticks very faithfully to the book, except there's a bit that happens at the end of the book that I think comes along earlier in the movie.  Minor, though.  I can read this book and see and hear the actors very clearly, especially Geraldine Page as Mrs. Angie Lowe.

Okay, so the story is about a guy named Hondo Lane who lives in the southwest.  He rides dispatch for the cavalry sometimes, he once lived with the Comanche and had a Comanche wife, and he travels with a dog named Sam.  It's also about a rancher named Angie Lowe, her son Johnny, and her no-good husband Ed.  The Comanches are preparing to go to war against the whites, and one day Hondo stumbles on the Lowe ranch while making his way back to the fort with some messages for the cavalry commander.  He and Angie are drawn toward each other -- her husband left her several months ago and she doubts he'll be back, but she doesn't know for sure that he's dead, so she makes it clear to Hondo that she's unavailable.  He rides on out after borrowing a horse, but he can't get her out of his head.  And then he meets up with her husband at the fort, and... okay, I'll stop there :-)  Read or watch it yourself!

L'Amour's writing is spare and lean, and bit philosophical at times, but always so grounded and concrete that everything he writes about seems tangible.  I love the way the landscape and characters are drawn to complement each other -- Hondo Lane is hard and dry like the desert, while Angie Lowe is vigorous and resilient like the little ranch she owns.  

Particularly Good Bits:

Under a quiet sky the planet turned, and horses ate, and men slept, and death waited for morning (p. 97).

For months now he had seemed like somebody who had never really been.  Like someone who had walked across the page of her life and left no tracks (p. 119).

When they were the age of this boy it was an awful thing to see a friend ride off.  Later you became used to it.  Later you learned that nothing was for long.  It was a pity you had to learn that (p. 149).

If this was a movie, I would rate it:  PG for western violence.

"This Dark Endeavor" by Kenneth Oppel

This is the story of how Victor Frankenstein got interested in the off-beat pseudo-science that would lead him to create his famous monster in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein.  I've read the original twice and am just not a huge fan -- I don't like any of the characters much, and that's such a deal-breaker for me.  But I thought this looked good, and I have to admit that the cover art intrigued me, with its almost western feel, so I read it.

I don't like it any better than Shelley's book.  Victor Frankenstein was arrogant and impetuous, his twin brother Konrad was too perfect to be terribly likeable, and their mutual love interest Elizabeth was too wishy-washy with her affections.  However, I also felt compelled to finish reading it and find out what happened -- it's very well-written and has an intriguing story:  Victor turns to alchemy in a desperate attempt to save his ill brother.  It's got lots of exciting adventures, a love triangle (because we just don't have enough of those), and a treasure-trove of historical details.  

So if you like YA fiction, historical fiction, or books that expand a classic story, you might dig this.  My reasons for not liking it much are totally personal and not a reflection on the writing.

If this was a movie, I would rate it:  PG-13 for danger and suspense and some creepy imagery.