Another LOTR Read-Along: The Forbidden Pool (TTT 4, 6)

I'm sorry I haven't posted a new LOTR post in almost a week, and I haven't replied to a whole bunch of comments either.  My 10-year-old came down with the flu on Friday, and my 6-year-old came down with it today.  The influenza flu, not the stomach flu.  So my life is filled with doctor visits and medicine and thermometers and trying to keep people hydrated.  :-(

BUT I have 5 minutes before I need to start making supper, so here we go!

I hate this chapter. Hate it hate it hate it hate it. All those warm fuzzies from last chapter? Gone. This is pretty much the only time I truly sympathize with Gollum -- how betrayed he must feel when Frodo coaxes him closer and then strange men pop a bag over his head and tie him up. It's awful! Hate it! Yeah, yeah, it's necessary for the plot and whatever. But I'm still sitting here glaring.

When Faramir says "I will declare my doom" (p. 675) to Frodo and then says he's going to let Frodo and Sam and Gollum go free, I always took that to meant that he was dooming himself to death if Frodo and Co. didn't behave themselves, that it was his doom. Like Eomer letting Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli go with the warning that his own life would be forfeit if they proved false. But that's not it, is it. He's declaring his decision, a doom for them, a verdict. Huh. Fascinating the things you re-understand when you re-read a book!

Favorite Lines:

"It is a place of sleepless malice, full of lidless eyes" (p. 677).

"I must take such paths as I can find" (p. 678).

Discussion Questions:

Do you think there's any way that Frodo could have kept Gollum from feeling so betrayed?

Have you ever re-read a book (or re-watched a movie) and discovered you'd misunderstood something the previous time(s) through?

"Girl in Disguise" by Greer MacAllister

I've had such a great string of reading luck lately -- book after book that have been awesome!

Girl in Disguise is a fictional book based on the life of Kate Warne, the first woman detective hired by the famous Pinkerton Agency back before the American Civil War.  She walks into the Pinkerton agency to ask for a job, wows Mr. Pinkerton himself, and goes on to become one of his finest operatives.  Her career takes her all over the US and spans decades, though most of the book occurs during the Civil War while she is spying for the Union Army as part of her Pinkerton duties.

I finished reading this and set out to find a non-fiction biography of Kate Warne because I wanted to know just how much of this book was based in reality and how much was made up.  And then I learned something disturbing:

There aren't any biographies of Kate Warne.

In fact, we know almost nothing about her.  We don't even for sure have any photographs of her.  All we know was she existed, she was the first woman detective, Pinkerton hired her and eventually made her head of his female detective division, she worked as a spy for the Union during the Civil War and helped Pinkerton smuggle Abraham Lincoln through Maryland on his way to his inauguration, and that she's buried near Pinkerton and his family.

ARGH!  

So much for me learning all about Kate Warne.  Or learning more about her, anyway.  Still, I really, really enjoyed this book and look forward to re-reading it one day.  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for bad language, some violence, and a lot of innuendo and adult situations.  It never crossed the border into explicitness, but it sure danced around that border a lot.

Another LOTR Read-Along: The Window on the West (TTT 4, 5)

This is more like it! Finally, we're talking about Boromir again!

Okay, honestly, even if Boromir wasn't mentioned, I would be so happy with this chapter. A brief reprieve from wandering around in the grey dismality of Almost-Mordor. Food and rest for poor Sam and Frodo. Whew.

And hello, Faramir! It's weird, but for many years, I never paid a whole lot of attention to Faramir. I tended to just think of him as Boromir's little brother, and isn't it nice how much he loved his brother, etc. But during my previous read-through, I was really struck by just how grand Faramir really is. He's like a knight out of a King Arthur story, chivalrous and honorable to a fault.

And he listens better to the old stories than Boromir, for Faramir says of Lothlorien, "few of old came thence unchanged, 'tis said" (p. 652), while Boromir said, "it is said that few come out who once go in; and of that few none have escaped unscathed" (p. 329). Aragorn, of course, corrected Boromir thus: "Say not unscathed, but if you say unchanged, then maybe you will speak the truth" (p. 329). Faramir got it, but Boromir didn't. Interesting.

He's something of a paradox, this Faramir. He's obviously a good warrior, since his followers told us in the last chapter that "he leads now in all perilous ventures" (p. 645), yet he himself says, "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory" (p. 656). Unlike Boromir, he doesn't enjoy deeds of valor for their own sake, but does them out of necessity.

Oh, and... Faramir has grey eyes! Pattern still holds.

Favorite Lines:

"We are a failing people, a springless autumn" (p. 662).

"Your heart is shrewd as well as faithful, and saw clearer than your eyes" (p. 666).

"...the praise of the praiseworthy is above all rewards" (p. 667).

He planted himself squarely in front of Faramir, his hands on his hips, and a look on his face as if he was addressing a young hobbit who had offered him what he called 'sauce' when questioned about visits to the orchard (p. 650).

Discussion Questions:

Faramir says, "We are truth-speakers, we men of Gondor. We boast seldom, and then perform, or die in the attempt" (p. 665). How does that differ from what Eomer said back in "The Riders of Rohan," when he claimed that "the Men of the Mark do not lie, and therefore they are not easily deceived" (p. 424)?

Why does Tolkien place this great emphasis on truth-telling?

Another LOTR Read-Along: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit (TTT 4, 4)

I quite like this chapter. Why? Because Frodo and Sam get to eat their herbs and stewed rabbit! That makes me so happy. (In the movie, they get interrupted, and that saddens me deeply.) Also, we finally get to walk through some more pleasant countryside. And more happens than just trudging and being weary.

And here we meet a new character: Faramir, Captain of Gondor. You'll learn a lot about him in the next chapter. For now, we have learned that since Boromir left, Faramir "leads now in all perilous ventures" (p. 645).

Favorite Lines:

"Know, little strangers, that Boromir son of Denethor was High Warden of the White Tower, and our Captain-General: sorely do we miss him" (p. 641).

"Wise man trusts not to chance-meeting on the road in this land" (p. 644).

"May the light shine on your swords!" (p. 644).

To his astonishment and terror, and lasting delight, Sam saw a vast shape crash out of the trees and come careering down the slope (p. 646).

Discussion Questions:

Do you like potatoes?

As they walk through more pleasant environs, Sam laughs "for heart's ease, not for jest" (p. 636). Why do you think Tolkien includes the explanation of why Sam laughed? What does it tell us about Sam?

"The Family Under the Bridge" by Natalie Savage Carlson

My friend Jennifer sent my son this book last year.  He read it, and I wanted to read it, but I was busy with other books and just kept putting it off.  Well, the whole reason that I joined the OldSchool KidLit Reading Challenge was to motivate me to read the classic kids' books like this that I keep pushing aside, so yay!  That plan worked!  I have now read this.

It's a sweet, mellow story of an old homeless man in Paris who is aggressively happy with being homeless and alone.  Three children befriend him against his will, and their kindness toward him thaws out his curmudgeonly heart.

The illustrations by Garth Williams are just as wonderful as you would expect from him -- I especially love the way he drew the gypsies who figure into the story later on.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Clean and sweet.

This is my third book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Challenge 2018 and my second for the OldSchool KidLit Reading Challenge 2018.

Another LOTR Read-Along: The Black Gate (TTT 4, 3)

Frodo waxes rather philosophical in this chapter. As they face the Black Gate, he says, "I am commanded to go to the land of Mordor, and therefore I shall go... If there is only one way, then I must take it. What comes after must come" (p. 624). It quite reminds me of the point toward the end of Hamlet where Hamlet discusses death with Horatio. He says:

"If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." (V, 2)

That's one of my favorite moments in the play, when Hamlet finally stops fighting against everyone and everything and accepts that there's not a lot he can do anymore except see this mess through. And that's exactly what Frodo seems to have decided.

But then there's Sam. Sam's thoughts are still all centered on home, wanting to see his Gaffer one last time, and so on. Sam "never had any real hope in the affair from the beginning; but being a cheerful hobbit he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed" (p. 624). And so now that everything looks like it's ending, he's going to stick by Frodo and see this through too. The readiness is indeed all.

Of course, Gollum's not anywhere near ready to just give The Ring up -- he still has hope of regaining it, and he convinces them to go elsewhere. So the hobbits take fate back into their own hands and struggle on. Frodo believes that "if both led to terror and death, what good lay in choice?" (p. 630). And indeed, it seems pretty pointless right here, though we who know how the story ends can nod our heads and look wise.

Favorite Lines:

Another dreadful day of fear and toil had come to Mordor (p. 623).

Discussion Questions:

When pondering whether to go through the Black Gate or follow Gollum elsewhere, Frodo thinks "[i]t was an evil fate" and "[t]his was an evil choice" (p. 630). Why do you think Tolkien uses the word 'evil' here instead of 'unpleasant' or 'difficult'?

Sam and Gollum both misunderstand Frodo a bit, "confusing kindness with blindness" (p. 626). Do you think this helps or hinders Frodo in his efforts to fulfill his quest?

In Which I Join Instagram and #MiddleEarthMarch

I keep hearing good things about #bookstagram, and this post from Musings of Jamie prompted me to just take a flying leap into the world of Instagram.  (Well, that plus I just got a new phone with a decent camera on it, which will make posting to Instagram a lot easier.)  I joined, I started posting pictures, the whole shebang.  And I promptly joined an Instagram challenge called #MiddleEarthMarch, which basically is just posting Tolkien-related pictures all through March based on various themes.  What themes?  These themes:

I promise my feed won't be continually Tolkien-related -- there will be plenty of bookish pictures, photos of flowers (I'm addicted to flower photography), probably pictures of things I bake or places I go or whatever.  But for this month, yeah, gonna be a lot of Tolkien stuff.  I thought it fit nicely with my current My Years in Middle Earth reading challenge and the LOTR read-along I'm hosting here, etc.

I joined under my real name, so you'll find me @RachelKovaciny there.  I've loved photography for years, but I'm obviously entirely new to the whole Instagram thing, so this is a new adventure!  Looking forward to finding new friends there and also those of you I already know via the blogosphere :-)