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).
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