Classic Set Somewhere I’m Unlikely to Visit: The Hobbit

This is a double-points review! I read this book for the Children’s Lit discussion group and also for the Back to the Classics Challenge. It is true: I am unlikely to ever visit Middle Earth.

I’ve always loved this book. My first memory of it is my family sitting around the living room, listening to my mother read it aloud, begging for just one more chapter. So that probably biases me toward putting it in the “books that have my undying devotion” category.

It is a classic quest story: an unlikely hero is swept into a grand adventure involving dragons, treasure, mythical creatures, a hint of magic, and camping in the rain*.

In between the last time I read this (years ago) and this reading, I read Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. Reading The Hobbit again, it surprised me to realize it is less, well, epic. But it hangs together more as a story and less of a history, which I appreciate too.

Part of what is great about this story is that Bilbo Baggins starts out as a loveable and unlikely hero. Yes, we read that there is a hidden strain of adventuring in his blood, but to all outward appearances at the beginning of the story, he has settled down to an ordinary, respectable existence. He just wants teatime to remain undisturbed.

But Gandalf, the wise mentor and wizard, knows better, and sends him off on crazy adventures that lead him to dangerous places and make everyone realize there is more to him than even he had any idea of.

One thing that stood out to me in this book was how action-packed it can be: each chapter is a new adventure. But the pacing doesn’t feel rushed (mostly), which I appreciated.

The other thing that stood out was Tolkien’s asides to the reader and some of his descriptions. It is clear that he enjoyed writing this book, and while he dips occasionally into brief motivations and moral dilemmas, this book does not deal with long histories or dwell on inward reflection. We see the lighter side of the elves, as they sing silly songs to travelers arriving in their valley, and can almost forget their sad history told in The Silmarillion and mentioned in The Lord of the Rings.

While I did not come away with any great revelations about human nature, Tolkien presented an enjoyable story in which characters do grow and which stirs the imagination without becoming ridiculous. It’s a fast read, and worth a few hours of anyone’s time.

*Every quest story involves camping in the rain. I’ve come to believe it’s just part of the formula.

British Television

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I enjoy British television. I love tea (particularly Earl Grey), digestives, and cucumber sandwiches. I own most of the recent (and semi-recent) movie takes on Jane Austen novels.

So of course I am slightly obsessed with Masterpiece Theater’s Downton Abbey. I watched Season 1 last year, and became enthralled with the costumes, sets and slightly soap-opera-esque story lines of this British series. Naturally I am in the middle of watching Season 2.

Part of the interest comes from the Upstairs, Downstairs aspect: it follows not only the lives of the Earl of Grantham and his family (especially the marriage-hunting angst of his three daughters); it also follows the lives of the servants of Downton, and does occasionally show a bit of class friction.

Season 2 is set during World War 1, so the house and its inhabitants are all in an uproar; a much gentler and softer reflection of the horrors of war going on in much of Europe. Several male characters are off in the trenches; the female characters must learn to cope with altered life at home. Carson, the perfect butler, must learn to cope with a reduced staff and army convalescents; the world is changing.

I think my 2 favorite characters are Mary Grantham and Mrs. O’Brien (for different reasons, of course). Any fellow Downton enthusiasts who want to share favorites?

“['Downton Abbey' is] as much cake as it is bread. And, sue me, I like cake.” – Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker.

I agree.

Reading

I want to read more this year. I haven’t been doing enough reading, and want to get back into the habit.

Things started out well; I had a week of vacation at the beginning of the year and plunged back into the world of books, and I want to keep up the momentum. To that end, I decided a few goals might be in order.

The first is a Back to the Classics ChallengeI found on a blog. Hooray! There are 9 categories:

1. 19th Century Classic
2. 20th Century Classic
3. Reread a Classic
4. Classic Play
5. Classic Mystery/Horror/Crime Fiction
6. Classic Romance
7. Classic Translated
8. Classic Award Winner
9. Classic set somewhere you’re unlikely to visit

I need to pick my books and get on with it. Classics sometimes take a while to read. Too bad I read Jane Eyre a year ago, because winter is the perfect time to read that book and it definitely counts as a Classic Romance. Ah well. I’m sure I can find another. Also, last year it appears that Children’s/Young Adult Classic was on the list, and I am slightly unhappy that it didn’t make the list this year. Read on to goal three to find out why.

The second goal is to read the IAM Readers Guild books for this year. Well, except for January, because I’m in the middle of several other things at the moment. But starting in February!!

The third goal is to continue with a group I roughly organize (so yeah, I’d better be involved!) which gathers to read children and young adult literature. Delightful. So fun (but now do you see why I’m sad about the Classics Challenge? I could have had a double point book! Alas). This month we’re reading The Hobbit –and it was so fun to read it again. Also, I have now watched the trailer for the upcoming first installment of the movie about 10 times. Sold. I will be in a theater next December watching this movie.

Well folks, that’s all I’ve got for this evening. Perhaps I will let you know how things are going periodically. And remind me to tell you about the most hilarious Christmas gift I got this year. It’s fun.

Fun Things I Found on the Interwebs*

First, it’s almost Christmas! I’m pretty excited about that.
Second, here are some links to cool things. The title may have tipped you off that this was coming.

• Looking at pictures on this shop’s website make me a little sad I don’t know more about sewing and fabric (Ray-Stitch). Oh, and that I don’t live in the UK.
  You can sip coffee while you peruse the haberdashery. (Discovered via Pinterest)
• Christmas music! Here (indie shuffle) and here (can you see the sunset)
  The second place has lots of lists, including Worst Christmas Songs. (discovered via downplayer.com–which is pretty great in its own right)
• Smitten Kitchen blog makes Peppermint Hot Fudge Sauce. Mmmm….
  If we didn’t have enough sweets at my house to feed a small army already, I would definitely make this.
• An article on “Why Creative People Are Eccentric” (thanks, Nathanael!)
• Pretty stencils like this one: Simple Scroll Border
• More Christmas music (www.christmasishappening.com)! (thanks, Maggie and Hunter!)
  One song a day.
  
• How to Hack Your Job -an article on morphing a job into something even better…. Of course, this isn’t every job, just some kinds of jobs, but it’s still interesting.

*ok, so many of these were found by other people and sent my direction, but still….

**EDIT: later than last minute addition: http://internationalartsmovement.org/readers-guild –the 2012 Readers Guild list is up! T.S. Eliot and Flannery O’Connor are featured. This. Is. So. Great. Too bad they’re listed 8-12 months from now….**

The Pumpkin Spice Challenge

You’ve heard the name tossed around as people prepare for the coming of autumn. Grocery stores are beginning to sell mini-pumpkins, and the menu boards at Starbucks are orange with fall drinks advertised in curly script.

Yes, my friends, the seasonally-appropriate Pumpkin Spice Latte is back.

This year I have decided to challenge myself to find the best pumpkin spice latte in Charlottesville. This is not a task for the faint of heart (or palette). It is a very good thing, I tell myself, that I enjoy pumpkin spice lattes so much, or October could be a very long month.  My task is to sample these delicious drinks from as many purveyors of coffee as I can find and rate them using some sort of scale. Then I will present my top choices to the world (or the readers of my blog, and maybe facebook, if I am that bold).

Will it be easy? Yes and no. There are actually many places that sell coffee in Charlottesville. I am sticking with just coffeeshops here, not restaurants that sell many other things, so that should cut down on the numbers.

Will it be tasty? I certainly hope so.

Will I become sick of pumpkin by Thanksgiving? Possibly. I hope not.

Will it be subjective? Absolutely. But I hope to present an unbiased view as possible. I invite anyone who wishes to weigh in with comments and/or to join me in my tasting experience.

See you at the coffeeshop!

Wind Chimes

Many of my friends are, like me, young, just starting out in careers (or still unsure of whether “career” is really the right word), and transient, unsettled. We pick up and move often, even if only across town. We rent apartments or duplexes or houses and have minimal furniture.

Most of us don’t have things like 12-place-settings of china, matching living room furniture, or wind chimes. I can’t remember the last time I heard wind chimes, so a few days ago when I heard the melodious tinkling of wind chimes, it made me stop for a moment.

Sometimes a sound has the power to instantly transport one to faraway places — places separated by space and time. I heard the sound of the low chime — clear like a bell — and could see my grandmother’s deck and the swinging wind chimes.

Hers were aluminum and fairly long, so they sounded like bells and not the tinny kind, but not quite as low as church bells. It fascinated me as a child to see the wind stir the hollow tubes and the wooden clapper to make music.

I could almost feel a cool mountain breeze on my face and hear her chimes, could almost taste the watery lemonade and boxed gingersnaps, could almost hear the adults’ conversation as we sat outside on old deck chairs. The deck was faded red and the trees behind deep green. We would have a snack outside after returning from the pool for a swim, usually because an afternoon thunderstorm forced an early departure.

Grandmama would pull out frozen lemonade mix, invariably add too much water, and one of the grandchildren would stir the mix in the glass pitcher with an old wooden spoon, watching the yellowish liquid swirl and the frozen mix dissolve. Another grandchild would be sent to fetch my grandfather from his reading, to be sociable and eat a snack.

Those were happy, lazy afternoons.

And then the sounds died away and I was back in my own life, driving to work on a hot summer morning.

There was such a sense of permanence to those afternoons that stretched before us, eating cookies and drinking lemonade on my grandmother’s deck while we dried off from our trip to the pool.

Why don’t we have wind chimes? Are they too permanent? They aren’t the sort of thing one really needs to set up housekeeping, the way one needs a table and chairs or plates and glasses, but they belong to the category of finishing touches, something I often lack.

It does seems a shame though. Small odd things have a way of sticking with you, and the vivid memory, recalled by a single sound, can never be replaced. Perhaps I should look into purchasing a set of wind chimes. Not the little tinkly ones, but the deep, sonorous kind that ring in your ears and give song to the breeze.

Relocation

Our days at the current home are numbered. Our time here is drawing to a close. After three years, we are bidding our little house adieu.

It is a bit sad. Three years is the longest I’ve lived anywhere since maybe middle school (my family moved across town when I was just learning to drive…this led to my first speeding ticket, but that’s another story entirely). My life has been punctuated by packing up my things into boxes and stuffing the contents of my closet into the back seat of my car — leaving a space and transporting my possessions to another space for a little while.

Three things not to be underestimated:

• Packing up the kitchen. The thought is rather daunting; there are so many breakable things!
• Our current landlord is wonderful.
• All the appliances work, and none of them have caused fires or floods.

Also, last August I painted my room a lovely green which I will miss in a new place with stark white walls. It is such a friendly green (not all greens are, though many of them are very pretty, not all of them can be said to be friendly). I am disproportionately sad about this loss.

But the thought of moving is also a little bit exciting. We will get some of our own furniture, so our new home will reflect some of our personalities (and/or our thriftiness in gathering hodgepodge pieces). We will also live in a slightly different part of town, with a different perspective on traveling to and fro.

The new house has hardwood floors, which is a definite plus. There is also one bedroom with a nook under a window (clearly this is the one I have my eye on. I will forgo a separate master bath or extra closet space for a room with a nook any day).

This sign epitomizes what I hope to be able to proclaim a little over two weeks from today.

Yes, two weeks. We found out Monday that we officially have the new place, and now we in two weeks we will pack up everything and move it across town. The logistics of moving may take over my life for a while, but the change will, I hope, be good.

p.s. If you come across any spare boxes, send them my way! We will need lots.

My Town’s Physical Activity of Choice

I live in a town that highly promotes, among other things, physical fitness. This is evident by the number of beautiful, incredibly fit people who live around me.

Judging by the numbers of people I see taking part in physical exercise, the activity of choice seems to be running. They are everywhere, especially on fall and spring evenings, these runners. You cannot drive far before you see someone in athletic apparel jogging down a road or forcing their way up a hill. Sometimes I jokingly bet on the number of joggers I will see on a drive from my house to the grocery store. On a night like tonight, I would probably guess around 11.

So far my forays into this world of running have been inconsistent and undisciplined, but no longer! I have finally caved to the pressure.

Last summer my co-worker announced that she was going to take part in the Women’s 4-Miler Training Program, and encouraged me to join. I declined, excusing myself on grounds of it being about 100+ degrees outside every day and also the fact that I’d just started a new job and wasn’t ready to start anything else new just yet.

I also bowed out of 10-Miler training (10 miles is a long way for someone who thinks, at this point of her running career, she is doing well to run a mile). Besides, it was cold outside, it being winter and whatnot.

But finally I have decided that neither heat nor cold will deter me, and I have committed myself to becoming a runner, for this summer at least. I signed up, paid my dues, and received an introductory packet consisting of directions to the Saturday morning meeting place, a booklet complete with training schedule, and a very pink visor which I am sure I will never wear.

I signed up for the Women’s 4-Miler Training Program. Might I regret this when my alarm goes off at 6.15 tomorrow morning? Probably. Might I be sorry that I am making my muscles work when they are still sore from Saturday’s (pathetically short) run followed up by some dancing at a wedding? Most likely. But in the words of Emperor Kuzco, “Bring it on.”

Despite my probable groans as my alarm summons me from blissful sleep, I still want to do this. I am hopeful that putting this out there will also encourage me to follow through; there’s nothing like the threat of semi-public humiliation to motivate oneself. Oh and also maybe seeing women several decades older than myself will remind me that it is possible to become that paragon of Charlottesvillians, a runner.

Kids Just Ask

8-year-old cousin: “Are you going to get married?”

Me: “Well, not in the near future, but I’ll keep you in the loop, ok?”

 

***Edit: I almost forgot about this one: “Why do you have 3 earrings?”
Excellent questions.***

Shared Experiences

Growing up, my family was somewhat unplugged from media. We did own a TV, but only watched for short periods of time and only a couple days a week, we didn’t listen to the radio that much (though time was made for “music appreciation”), we owned no Nintendo or Nintendo-esque games, and didn’t even have computer games until I was in middle school.

Ok. Now that you feel sorry for poor deprived me, I can continue with the surprising fact that there was one computer game with which I was familiar as a girl: Oregon Trail.

I use this as evidence for my theory that playing Oregon Trail was ubiquitous of my generation’s (or at least half a generation’s) social education. If you are at a party of twenty-something’s and stuck for a discussion topic, bring up this game of adventure and faux history and you will 1) boost your humor points and 2) buy yourself 5-10 minutes of conversation.

Obviously I will choose to ford the river

Yes, Oregon Trail in all its primitive-graphics glory was a cornerstone of American education. Everyone can commiserate and reminisce about having a member of their fictitious party break a bone or two, having their wagon wheels float down the river, going hunting and shooting 3000 pounds of buffalo (even though you know  you can carry only 50 back to camp, thus explaining, in my mind at least, why buffalo went extinct in the West), and let’s not forget the perennial favorite: dying of dysentery.

I think dysentery was funny mostly because none of us knew what it was until we went home and asked our parents, who then wondered what company we’d been keeping. And it was funny thereafter because what child doesn’t appreciate a good dysentery joke?

But I digress. It is strange to me that a primitive game about crossing the continent should have become such a shared experience. We may not have all watched the same TV shows (most of my free time was spent outside building forts, having pine cone wars, arranging picnics, and putting on endless plays with the same plot for my long-suffering parents), but one thing I do share with others of my generation: that glorious moment when the computer screen announced that my party had arrived in the mythical Oregon.

p.s. Did Oregon Trail inspire young people of my generation to move to that state? I wonder if there’s any way to tell if a positive correlation exists?