I’m please to share that today I started reading Return of the King for this section of the Impossible Read, and I hope (hope hope hope) it’s not too early to predict that I’ll be able to finish the book and start watching the movies over the holidays.
A friend suggested that, as I watch the movies, I keep track of the number of sins of omission (i.e., things in the books that were left out of the movies) and the sins of commission (i.e., things that were changed no no reason or for poor reasons). Which sins do you think will come out on top? And will there be sufficient penance?
There is probably an official or unofficial Lord of the Rings cookbook out there somewhere (actually, there seem to be several of them) with sufficient recipes to whip up for a watching party. But so far it seems as if I could do a fairly good job with apples, mushrooms, cheese, and beer on hand. I don’t think I want to prepare roasted rabbit, especially not over an open fire in the back yard.
The menu aside, Past Me prepared for just such a future watching party by purchasing the Extended Version Director’s Cut and All the Commentary and Extras slipcased DVD versions of the movies as soon as they came out. (Plus The Hobbit, which I chose not to re-read or re-view at this time.)
At the time the movies were released, I had not read or re-read the books. Now, I’m finally ready to move from one version of the story to the other. And all I need to do first is read 248 more pages.
The time is quickly approaching when I’ll need to return quite a few library books that I checked out — in August 2024 — for my research project. This weekend I made some progress on the work that I need to do with these books before they’re out of my hands.
Even though university library borrowing privileges are quite generous, all good things do come to an end and these books must go back again to their home libraries via the Inter-Library Loan process. In the next several days I’ll try to document every possible aspect of them before I must say farewell.
And the next step will be to try to write an article about my findings. I have decided to take the radical step of finding out what my findings actually are before I decide what kind of article I will write. (This seems more productive than coming up with the thesis now and hoping that my data will back it up.)
There are, of course, many other aspects of the project on which I can work. But so far, this “due date” has been the only looming external deadline. After the end of this month I’ll only be accountable to myself. (Uh-oh.)
Knitwise, so far I have completed 25 repeats (100 rows) on the Universal Scarf. After about 15 rows or so, I started to be able to “read” the fabric that was being created and just knit without having my eyes glued to the pattern on every row.
Right now I’m trying to carve out enough knitting time to do five repeats in a sitting, and I’m not trying to do more than that. That’s enough time to get relaxed and get a chunk of knitting done — even if it’s just a small chunk. The way winter is going, I can knit this scarf and a fraternal twin and still be in scarf weather when I bind off the second one.
Chocolate Sheep 