J.R.R. Tolkien: A Man with a Mission

One of the things I now appreciate about the Hobbit and the following trilogy was that Tolkien was out to create an English mythology equating to the Greek pantheon or the Norse Gods.  He succeeded in that much of the fantasy literature is derivative and certainly things like Fantasy video games owe much to Tolkien.  Reading the wikipedia entry just now, I was thrilled to find Tolkien employed working on the letter W for a dictionary maker at one point. 

Tolkien wasn't writing about fantasy, he was writing about courage in the face of extraordinary adversity.  I think it is time to read the books to my own children.

For those who have not been keeping up, Tolkien's son has been publishing all of Tolkien's background work.  Truthfully, it is very dull stuff, though I imagine we already have a body of scholarly work and very likely we have Tolkien majors and PhDs.  Bravo, let the deconstruction begin.  I'm sure Sam and Frodo...

The Elements of Style

Such a short book, and yet so underread.  A classic that explains that messy sentence structure leads to messy thoughts. 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The Alchemist reminded me of this earlier work, which is better as a book than as a movie.  That is saying a lot, since the movie is very hot, but you can't translate the sense of the book's ethereal nature into a movie.  The movie is a tragedy, but the book somehow avoids that sense. 

The Alchemist

I picked this up at a friend's parent's camp house and read it cover to cover in four hours.  It isn't so much the ideas as the images that he manages to insert into your consciousness without you being fully aware of it.  I've read everything? he's written that has been translated.  Good, thoughtful material, but his most recent didn't resonate as much as his earlier books.

Four Hour Workweek

When you look at this book, it seems so shallow.  A twenty something has figured out how to outsource his supplement business.  Now he's selling a book.  But have a look at the last chapters (not the blog additions).  He has some good points and makes anyone taking the "safe" path to retirement think (if the financial crisis hadn't already done that for you).