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Classics – Lioness at Large

Classics

Literature Reviews

Adventures in Arda

Note: This was my summer 2022 project — but while I posted the associated project pages here at the time (Middle-earth and its sub-project pages concerning the people and peoples, timeline, geography, etc. of Arda and Middle-earth, see enumeration under the Boromir meme, below), I never got around to also copying this introductory post from […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien: Tales from the Perilous Realm

Blurb: Combined into one volume, this is the collection of Tolkien’s five modern classic ‘fairie’ tales in the vein of The Hobbit: Roverandom is a toy dog who, enchanted by a sand sorcerer, gets to explore the world and encounter strange and fabulous creatures. Farmer Giles of Ham is fat and unheroic, but – having […]

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Literature Movies Reviews

Andy Serkis: Gollum: How We Made Movie Magic

Blurb: Film-making history was made when, in The Two Towers, an actor’s performance and digital animation were seamlessly integrated to create the world’s first totally lifelike computer-generated character. Now Andy Serkis tells his own story about how a three-week commission to provide a voiceover for Gollum grew into a five-year commitment to breathe life and […]

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Literature Reviews

Robert Foster: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth

Blurb: For the millions who have already ventured to Middle-earth—and for the countless others who have yet to embark on the journey—here is the one indispensable A-to-Z guide that brings Tolkien’s universe to life. EVERY CHARACTER From Adaldrida Brandybuck to Zaragamba—every Hobbit, Elf, Dwarf, Man, Orc, and other resident of Middle-earth is vividly described and […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien: The Lays of Beleriand

Blurb: The third volume that contains the early myths and legends which led to the writing of Tolkien’s epic tale of war, The Silmarillion. This, the third volume of The History of Middle-earth, gives us a priviledged insight into the creation of the mythology of Middle-earth, through the alliterative verse tales of two of the […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien: The Fall of Gondolin

Blurb: Presented for the first time as a stand-alone work, the epic tale of The Fall of Gondolin reunites fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, Balrogs, Dragons and Orcs and the rich landscape and creatures unique to Tolkien’s Middle-earth. This audio production features Samuel West, voicing J. […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien: Beren and Lúthien

Blurb: Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, was deeply opposed to Beren, and imposed on him an impossible task that he must perform before he might wed Lúthien. Undaunted by Lord Thingol’s challenge, Beren and Lúthien embark on the supremely heroic attempt to rob […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien: Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth

Blurb: Unfinished Tales is a collection of narratives ranging in time from the Elder Days of Middle-earth to the end of the War of the Ring and provides those who have read The Lord of the Rings with a whole collection of background and new stories from the 20th century’s most acclaimed popular author. The […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien: The Children of Húrin

Blurb: There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings. The story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion

                      Blurb: The Silmarillion is an account of the Elder Days, of the First Age of Tolkien’s world. It is the ancient drama to which the characters in The Lord of the Rings look back, and in whose events some of them such as Elrond […]

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Literature Reviews Uncategorized

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit – Performed by Andy Serkis

Like its magnificent sequel, The Hobbit is, I think, many things to many people: the first exposition of the universe that would become Middle-earth; prelude to The Lord of the Rings; a bite-sized visit to Middle-earth whenever you don’t feel up to the full blow of the War of the Ring(s); one of the most […]

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Literature Reviews

Karen Wynn Fonstad: The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth

Blurb: “Find your way through every part of J.R.R. Tolkien’s great creation, from the Middle-earth of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to the undying lands of the West … The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an essential guide to the geography of Middle-earth, from its founding in the Elder Days – as […]

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Literature Reviews

J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings – Performed by Andy Serkis

In another online community, we recently talked about the new Andy Serkis Lord of the Rings recordings.  Well, it turns out that the pull of The Ring is still mighty strong, for however much it may have been destroyed in Mount Doom. I had barely gotten my hands on these audios and I found I […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Swing, Brother, Swing (aka A Wreath for Rivera)

Blurb: Lord Pastern and Baggot is a classic English eccentric, given to passionate, peculiar enthusiasms. His latest: drumming in a jazz band. His wife is not amused, and even less so when her daughter falls hard for Carlos Rivera, the band’s sleazy accordion player. Aside from the young woman, nobody likes Rivera very much, so […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Death at the Bar

Well, as it turns out, I can’t leave well alone with just two books by Ngaio Marsh in a row, so here we go … As I revisited Overture to Death — the book immediately following Artists in Crime and Death in a White Tie — last year as part of the Appointment with Agatha […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Artists in Crime

Blurb: One of Ngaio Marsh’s most famous murder mysteries, which introduces Inspector Alleyn to his future wife, the irrepressible Agatha Troy. It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy, artist and instructor, returns to the class, the pose has been reenacted in […]

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Literature Reviews

Vladimir Nabokov: The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

Hoo boy. This starts out really nicely, as the story of two Russian half brothers growing up remote from each other (even though in the same home), from which beginning we segue more or less seamlessly into the surviving younger brother’s quest for the life and identity of his elder sibling, who under the English […]

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Literature Reviews

Georges Simenon: Maigret: Collected Cases (Maigret Goes Home / Maigret in Montmartre / Maigret Has Scruples / Maigret in Society / Maigret Sets a Trap)

Radio dramatizations of five novels from various periods of the Maigret canon, originally published (in the order in which they appear in this collection) as L’affaire Saint-Fiacre Maigret au Picratt’s (also translated as Maigret at Picratt’s and Inspector Maigret and the Strangled Stripper) Les scrupules de Maigret Maigret et les vieillards (also translated as Maigret […]

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Literature Reviews

Margaret Millar: Vanish in an Instant

  The Appointment with Agatha group’s April side read, and the third book by Millar I’ve read this year alone. Though I didn’t like it quite as well as my very first foray into her oeuvre (An Air That Kills), it’s not very far behind, and I can definitely see how the two novels came […]

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Literature Reviews

Agatha Christie: Murder in Mesopotamia

Any fan of Agatha Christie’s knows that this is one of several novelizations of Christie’s own experience gained during the months and years she spent with her second husband Max Mallowan on his archeological expeditions to (today’s) Syria and Iraq: To what far-reaching extent this is true, though, only occurred to me when I read […]

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