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asking the wrong questions skip to main content search this blog asking the wrong questions pages about me essays reviews track changes selected reviews a political history of the future more posts the great tolkien reread many meetings get link facebook x pinterest email other apps may 05 2026 rivendell by j r r tolkien i hear all kinds of news from over the mountains and out of the south but hardly anything from the shire i heard about the ring of course gandalf has been here often not that he has told me a great deal he has become closer than ever these last few years the dúnadan has told me more fancy that ring of mine causing such a disturbance it is a pity that gandalf did not find out more sooner i could have brought the thing here myself long ago without so much trouble i have thought several times of going back to hobbiton for it but i am getting old and they would not let me gandalf and elrond i mean they seemed to think that the enemy was looking high and low for me and would make mincemeat of me if he caught me tottering about in the wild the second book of the fellowship of the ring opens with frodo waking up in rivendell and reuniting with gandalf and his friends though some plot relevant conversation occurs gandalf post a comment read more the great tolkien reread the hobbit get link facebook x pinterest email other apps april 21 2026 illustration from the swedish translation of the hobbit by tove jansson 1962 a previous version of this essay appeared on asking the wrong questions in october 2010 the most that can be said for the dwarves is this they intended to pay bilbo really handsomely for his services they had brought him to do a nasty job for them and they did not mind the poor fellow doing it if he would but they would have done their best to get him out of trouble if he got into it as they did in the case of the trolls at the beginning of their adventures before they had any particular reasons for being grateful to him there it is dwarves are not heroes but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots some are not but are decent people like thorin and company if you don t expect too much last week s news that the long beleaguered production of the hobbit is finally getting on its way sent me back to the book itself post a comment read more podcast talking about cloud atlas by david mitchell on a meal of thorns get link facebook x pinterest email other apps april 08 2026 i ve made no secret of my admiration for ancillary review of books s podcast a meal of thorns in every episodes host jake cassella brookins invites a guest an author critic or academic to discuss a single book selections range across genres a recent episode focused on raymond chandler s the big sleep discussing books new and old famous and obscure i guested on a meal of thorns last year with a discussion of iain m banks s excession and cassella was kind enough to invite me back in 2026 this time our topic was david mitchell s 2004 breakout success cloud atlas a novel in which six nested narratives set in different time periods and written in different styles and genres reveal unexpected connections as well as a meditation on humanity s tendency towards cruelty and exploitation as i say at the beginning of the episode it is by no means an exaggeration to say that cloud atlas was one of the novels that made me it s a book i discovere post a comment read more the great tolkien reread a knife in the dark flight to the ford get link facebook x pinterest email other apps april 07 2026 ringwraith by anato finnstark immediately though everything else remained as before dim and dark the shapes became terribly clear he was able to see beneath their black wrappings there were five tall figures two standing on the lip of the dell three advancing in their white faces burned keen and merciless eyes under their mantles were long grey robes upon their grey hairs were helms of silver in their haggard hands were swords of steel their eyes fell upon him and pierced him as they rushed towards him desperate he drew his own sword and it seemed to him that it flickered red as if it was a firebrand two of the figures halted the third was taller than the others his hair was long and gleaming and on his helm was a crown in one hand he held a long sword and in the other a knife both the knife and the hand that held it glowed with a pale light he sprang forward and bore down on frodo we have arrived at the midpoint of the fellowship of the ring with 1 comment read more review pretenders to the throne of god by adrian tchaikovsky at locus get link facebook x pinterest email other apps march 29 2026 reviewing every installment in a series is a rare accomplishment even for a prolific critic reviewing every installment in a series by adrian tchaikovsy who routinely publishes multiple novels and novellas every year is surely an accomplishment worthy of note few series however reward this sort of sustained engagement as much as tchaikovsky s tyrant philosphers series which i strongly believe is one of the major achievements in fantasy of this decade i reviewed the first novel in the series city of last chances in 2023 calling it a resurgence of the new weird then late last year i published an omnibus review of the next two novels house of open wounds and days of shattered faith as well as the novella lives of bitter rain which allowed me to observe how the books examine the workings of the fascistic palleseen empire and the deterioration of its ideals of perfection in the face of a bloody war and the costs of maintaining an empire it was in res post a comment read more the 2026 hugo awards my hugo ballot get link facebook x pinterest email other apps march 26 2026 every year when hugo nominations open i put together a preliminary ballot i jot down the titles of the things that blew me away in the previous year and the perennial nominees like strange horizons and more recently the ancillary review of books i look over the hugo spreadsheet of doom for titles i might have forgotten or good ideas and i send that ballot in then i put together another list of books to read movies to watch and other things to look into between now and the nominating deadline with weeks to go i tell myself every year i could easily get through all of these potential nominees and compile a diverse and informed ballot this is not to be clear a plan that ever survives contact with real life but this year has been a special case it might explain something about my mental state as i prepare to finalize my 2026 hugo nominations if i say that in the hours since i sat down to write this post i was disturbed by an alert warning of iranian missile launche post a comment read more the great tolkien reread at the sign of the prancing pony strider get link facebook x pinterest email other apps march 24 2026 the prancing pony by tomás hijo there were also many families of hobbits in the bree land and they claimed to be the oldest settlement of hobbits in the world one that was founded long before even the brandywine was crossed and the shire colonized they lived mostly in staddle though there were some in bree itself especially on the higher slopes of the hill above the houses of the men the big folk and the little folk as they called one another were on friendly terms minding their own affairs in their own ways but both rightly regarding themselves as necessary parts of the bree folk nowhere else in the world was this peculiar but excellent arrangement to be found after several chapters spent in the wilderness the hobbits return to civilization with their arrival at the village of bree which is a rare example in this book of a location that is the home of ordinary people not royalty or high elves and which is both familiar and not on the one hand it is a pl 3 comments read more more posts powered by blogger theme images by fpm abigail nussbaum visit profile 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