Challenge 7- The Hobbit Review

Title: The Hobbit
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Pages: 306
Version:  Paperback
Publisher: The Random House Publishing Group

What can I say about the Hobbit? It was absolutely amazing. I probably even enjoyed it more than Lord of the Rings which is really quite astounding to me. The Hobbit is much more fast paced and exciting compared to Lord of the Rings. It doesn't ever seem to drag on at any parts while Lord of the Rings definitely did. The overall story was very interesting and learning how Bilbo found the ring was quite cool to me. I love all of the dwarves as well, they are all very dynamic and unique. In addition, the interactions with the people that they meet along the way are fantastic. I really loved the whole section of meeting with Beorn in the forest. One thing that actually surprised me though was how little Smaug seemed to be in the book. He was obviously a major problem, yet it seemed to me he had come and gone so quickly. The biggest part of this book was definitely the journey, not really the final goal of the great wealth lying beneath the Lonely Mountain. Luckily, the journey was full of twists and turns and all kinds of exciting adventures. Having seen the first movie already before reading this, I did end up comparing it to the movie. It was strange how the crazy old wizard Radagast was in the movie quite a lot while he was simply mentioned once in the book. I thought it was really interesting to see that parallel and how Peter Jackson essentially took Beorn out of the movie and implemented Radagast instead and made an entirely new character. I am really excited to see the next movie when it comes out to find out what other things they decide to change and do differently. The book is beautifully written overall which is, perhaps, not surprising considering it is written by J.R.R. Tolkien. His talent to create this amazing world that is completely new and has such depth is absolutely astounding to me. I also greatly enjoyed the fact that Gandalf was in this book (and in fact, is on the cover of the version I read, shown above) considering he is my favorite character. The songs and poems that were carried along through Lord of the Rings as well were a nice touch and tie together of the books. I really like his poems and songs quite a lot. In fact, the Misty Mountain song at the beginning of the book translated over to the movie is absolutely incredible. I think they did a fantastic job of transferring that song from the book to an actual song and captured the whole mood of it very well. Overall, I strongly recommend this book to almost anyone, especially if you liked the movie. It really is fantastic and probably one of my favorite books that I have read in a long time.

The Hobbit and New Book Releases

This week I continued reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm nearing the conclusion being that I am on page 235 of 306. I'll probably finish it up in the next few days. So form where I left off last week, the company ventured into the forest and met Beorn, a solitary shape-shifter that lives and associates mostly with animals. After telling their tale to him, he offered to help them by giving them a place to sleep and supplies when they set off. They end up getting to the edge of the forest where Gandalf leaves the party and Bilbo and the dwarves are forced to venture into a dangerous forest without him. They continue on the path for most of the way as they were warned to, but eventually out of desperation, leave the path and end up getting split up. All of the dwarves minus Thorin are taken captive by spiders, but Bilbo- who had been on his own- finds and rescues them. They venture forth and realize that Thorin is missing and then they all get captured by wood elves. Bilbo however, uses his ring to disappear and simply follows them. They are all locked up in cells and Bilbo ends up finding out that Thorin is there as well having been captured. Bilbo finally thinks of a plan to free them and they execute it one night and end up escaping floating down the river in barrels. They come to another town and are helped there. They rest for a bit and are given supplies. At this time, it has finally come for them to make the final trek to the Lonely Mountain. They arrive and search all over for the secret back door entrance to the mountain that was depicted on the map left by Thorin's father. Bilbo ends up finding it after many long days of searching. Once they all get up there, they cannot figure out how to open it for many days. Bilbo also figures this out when the sunset creates a shadow so he can see a keyhole in the mountainside. They open the door and Bilbo goes in and with the help of his ring, steals a single piece of treasure while Smaug, the greedy dragon, is sleeping. The dragon notices it is missing when he wakes up and gets very angry. Bilbo goes the next day to steal more of the treasure, but Smaug is smart and is only pretending to be asleep. Bilbo notices this and they have a talk, then Bilbo leaves. The dragon is so angry he searches for them on the mountainside, but they had hidden inside the tunnel and closed the secret door. The door ends up blocked from the outside with the damage Smaug caused and the only way out is through the dragon's den. The dragon has also left to take revenge on the nearby lake town for helping the company.

Now for the question for this week! This week, one of Ms. Motter's favorite series releases the new (and last) book in the series. When the last few books of Harry Potter were released, book stores and publishers made a HUGE deal having all night book parties with costume contests and other fun activities building up to the release of the book at midnight. Is there a particular title that you have been or are excited to be released? Do you think more people would get excited about reading if bookstores and publishers did big premier parties? Do you think more could be done to encourage reading when the movie version comes out?

 Previously, I was very excited for the last few books of the Maximum Ride series because of it being one of my favorite series. I woke up and went to the book store first thing to buy it and ended up  reading it all day and finishing it. I haven't really been keeping up with too many authors or books that are coming out recently. I plan to begin getting back into it after I finish The Hobbit though. Other than that, I can not really remember any that I got really excited for. Maybe because I always seemed to end up reading books that already had all the books in the series out. I think that the midnight release parties that they do are a really cool idea and I would love to go to one if I was excited about the release of a new book. I personally have not actually been to one though. In general, I'm sure if it is a widely popular book, premier parties would be wildly beneficial and fun. If it was a less well known book, then it probably would not work as well. Premier parties could definitely help encourage people to read the book just because they're a fun thing to do and it is awesome to be around other people that are as enthusiastic about the book as you are. As far as movies go, I think the fact that they make movies based on books encourages people to read the book before seeing the movie (or after sometimes). If a book is being made into a movie, it is usually fairly popular already so I'd say it usually just shows more people how it is so great that it's being made into a movie (and maybe they should read it if it is so good). The only thing I can really think of doing to encourage reading the book more is to make a bigger deal about the fact that the movie is based on a fantastic book. Maybe put something like that at the beginning of the movie instead of just saying something like "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix- based on the book by J.K. Rowling" (which is essentially how it is now).

The Hobbit and Social vs. Individual Reading

This week, I started reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien I am absolutely loving it so far. I am up to page 112 of the book and it is quite fast paced and exciting. So far, Bilbo has been taken on a journey that he really did not want much to do with. He is traveling with dwarves and Gandalf and will be acting as a burglar. They then traveled on to Rivendell and stayed there for a few days before moving on with their journey. The company went on up the Misty Mountains and encountered trolls that tried to cook and eat them. Gandalf then saved the day by distracting them long enough for the sun to come up and turn the trolls into stone. They found the trolls cave and acquired some Elven blades that were stashed away there. They moved on into the mountains and hid in a cave from the storm that was going on outside. While they were sleeping in the cave, goblins came through a secret entrance and took the dwarves and Bilbo to their city in the mountain. There, they ended up being saved by Gandalf, but they got snuck up on and Bilbo somehow woke up in a dark cave. He encountered a creature called Gollum and they had a riddle contest for Gollum to show Bilbo the way out of the caves. Bilbo finally wins the contest by asking what was in his pocket. Bilbo found a ring on the ground and put it in his pocket previously. This belonged to Gollum and he suspects that Bilbo stole it. Bilbo puts the ring on a disappears while Gollum is chasing him and Gollum tries to find him by searching near the entrance which leads Bilbo out. Bilbo has some troubles leaving the goblin city, but squeezes out the door barely with the ring on. He then ends up happening upon the dwarves and Gandalf near there and they set off at a quick pace so they can escape the goblins. They end up coming to a great forest and happening upon wolves so they climb up trees to escape. Alas, the goblins are coming and soon arrive to get them out of the trees. However, the day is saved by the great eagles who pick them out of the trees and take them to their nest.

Now for this week's question! Historically, reading tends to be a pretty solitary activity--we usually read books independently and don't often read when we are with others as it can be considered anti-social behavior as you aren't interacting with the people around you. In recent years, that seems to be changing a bit with the creation of book clubs, social media groups like good reads, book blogs, and even reading retreats where a group will go on a retreat with a group of people and spend most of the time reading. Explain whether you believe reading is best left a solitary activity or whether you believe making it social encourages more people to read.

 Reading is definitely a solitary activity. The actual act and experience of reading a book really can not be a group activity unless a book is read aloud. However, talking about opinions and experiences with books can be a group activity. Sharing feelings and things about a certain book can be social and change the experience with books. Even some sort of book group that all reads the same book and then talks about it can be a social kind of thing to go with the independent reading of books. Actually reading something is always individual and personal though. I think that sharing opinions of books is really interesting and different though. Getting to hear what other people think compared to what you saw, heard, and experienced is actually quite cool. So I do not think reading is a completely anti-social because it is something that can be discussed with other people. The act of reading a book is individual though because it cannot be shared unless a book is read aloud.

The Thief Lord Review

Title: The Promise
Author: Cornelia Funke
Pages: 345
Version: Paperback
Publisher: The Chicken House

This week, I read The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. It is about two boys, Prosper and Bo, who have run away from home after their parents had died and ended up in Venice. They are looked after by a mysterious boy called the Thief Lord. Little do they know, the Thief Lord has a secret that will change everything. In the midst of all this, a magical adventure to a secret island will complicate things even more. I personally absolutely loved this book. I really haven't read another book like it before which made me interested in it from the start. The book is quite realistic in the beginning; I could really picture the kids walking the streets of Venice and sleeping in their hideout. The Thief Lord was very mysterious and interesting as is expected and I just kept wondering what he was hiding. As the book goes on and it tells more about the Thief Lord, things got even more interesting. The story had a slight shift or twist to focus on fantasy which I loved. By introducing new characters, the addition of fantasy to the story was very smooth and seemed to fit really well. In general, I just really liked this book a lot. It was nice to read something so different from what I usually read. I found myself wanting to read this book all the time which doesn't happen too often. Besides the actual book, I think the cover is really nice; I love the colors and the mysterious Thief Lord in the top corner, slinking around the roof tops. Another really interesting thing that I found out after I read the book is that it was originally written in German and then translated into English. It doesn't seem that way, it is very well translated in my opinion and I couldn't tell at all. Something that I really enjoyed in this book was that there were little drawings at the beginning and sometimes end of each chapter. I thought this added a lot to the book and with the writing, really gave it an overall style that I absolutely loved. The only thing that I did not like as much about the book was the ending. It was good, but seemed incomplete and almost like a cliff hanger to me (which kind of drove me nuts). Overall, the book was very good and I enjoyed it a lot. I would recommend it to anyone that likes "realistic fantasy" kind of books.

Challenge 6- Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise Review

Title: The Promise
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Illustrator: Gurihiru
Pages: 240
Version:  Hardcover
Publisher: Dark Horse Books

This week, I read the series of graphic novels "Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise". It consists of three books and is a continuation of events after the television show. They also come as one volume with all three stories inside. The illustrations are absolutely fantastic and they stayed very true to the original show in my opinion. The style is extremely similar and the colors all add together to create the tone that the show originally established. The story was also really interesting; it made sense in relation to the end of the story the show told, but was unique. The dialogue between characters was quite good as well. The characters in the show were very established and unique by the end of the series and so it was a big task, but they pulled it off wonderfully. All the characters said things that were very true to their characters and it was really interesting to see them in a different sort of environment. The one problem that I had with the books was a couple of moments that almost lost that connection. There are some little phrases and things that characters say that don't seem to fit occasionally. It was subtle enough that it did not make the book any worse which is great. One other thing that bothered me was simply Zuko's character. This could be partially because he was one of my least favorite characters in the series, but I think he also changed slightly in the graphic novels. He seems even more unsure of himself than he was in the series if that's even possible. His indecisiveness is probably one of the most frustrating things about his character to me. Since he lacks so much faith in himself, he is easy to doubt, even if he is right. That was what I disliked most about the novels and it mainly is due to personal preference. I would really only recommend these books if you have knowledge of the original show even though they do partially recap at the beginning. It is only really effective if you know the story because its real purpose is to be a continuation. For anyone with knowledge of the show, I would definitely recommend it. Now I'd like to address the question of if I believe graphic novels should be held in the same literary regard as more typical books. I definitely think there is a difference between graphic novels and "normal" books. Reading both of them is a completely different experience considering that graphic novels are based on words and illustrations and books are usually just based on words. As far as quality of story, I would say that they are both really fantastic. Graphic novels have really amazing stories most of the time, they are just communicated in a different way than "normal" books. Essentially, I would say that they are very different to read, but I think that they are both of the same quality and should be held in the same regard. Neither is any lesser because of how it is told and they can both have incredible stories.