Portfolio Tag: Travel
100 Days of Summer Reading 2023
The prompts, books, and points: Prompts Books Points 1. Book with summer, beach, sun or sand in the title. Tove Jansson: The Summer Book 6 2. Book set in a location that you would like to go on vacation. 3. Book with a title that starts with a letter in the word B-E-A-C-H. […]
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The Geography of Arda and Middle-earth
The Years of the Lamps and the Years of the Trees Source: Wikipedia Andrey Maximov: Illuin and Ormal — Ted Nasmith: Illuin Karen Wynn Fonstad: The Spring of Arda — from Almaren and the Great Lake in the Time of the Lamps to Middle-earth and Valinor in the Years of the Trees. Aman and Valinor […]
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The Creatures of Middle-earth
Arda had a rich fauna, largely (though not exactly) coinciding with that of our world: it would be going overboard to try and list on this page every single type of animal mentioned in the legendarium even in passing; so the descriptions and commentary hereafter will be limited to those animals that significantly impact a […]
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The Timeline of Arda and Middle-earth
While there is no substantial difficulty in fixing the time periods known as the Second, Third, and (beginnings of the) Fourth Age of Arda and Middle-earth, it is somewhat trickier to determine what exactly was “the First Age”, how long it lasted and which events it comprised. For a discussion of the whys and wherefores […]
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The Weaponry of Middle-earth
Middle-earth was not a peaceful place; from the First-Age warfare between Morgoth and the Elves, and their Edain allies, to the War of the Ring at the end of the Third Age, armed conflict formed the constant background of its people’s existence — and while there were also numerous minor wars and disputes, the overarching […]
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Shiny Objects in Arda and Middle-earth
Arda and Middle-earth knew poverty, destruction, war, and hardship aplenty, but from their very own sources of light to precious jewels and metals, it also shone and sparkled with items of sheer magical brilliance, many of which were also of huge symbolic value. These are some of them: The Lights Amy O’Hanlon: Illuin and […]
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The People and Peoples of Arda and Middle-earth
Note: This is primarily a write-up for my own purposes; I am not trying to emulate or even approximate the many outstanding Tolkien resources already available on- and offline. As I prefer having all closely-related information available on one and the same page, I am keeping the information on Tolkien’s major (groups of) characters on […]
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Wars and Battles of Arda and Middle-earth
Battlefields are blood-soaked places of unspeakable horror, replete with corpses, body parts, the roar, thunder and clash of arms, the cries and whimpers of the wounded and dying, shouts of rage, often the fumes of smoke and fire, and always the all-pervading stench of death. And of course the legendarium’s universe far exceeds the various […]
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Middle-earth
Introductory post HERE J.R.R. Tolkien Author page: biographical sketch, bibliography, quotes, links (Auto-) Biographical Works Humphrey Carter: J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography Humphrey Carter: The Inklings Philip Zaleski: The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings Middle-earth The Books The Silmarillion (1977) The Hobbit (1937) – […]
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Summer Games 2021
So, I’ve finally come up with a summer reading theme: Seeing as both the Olympic Games and the European Football (Soccer) Championship have been pushed back to this year from 2020 due to the pandemic (and 3 of the four tennis Grand Slam tournaments are also set while it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere), I […]
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The Chronicles of Brother Cadfael
The Novels The Prequel: A Rare Benedictine: The Advent of Brother Cadfael (published in September 1988, set in 1120) The first Chronicle: A Morbid Taste for Bones (published in August 1977, set in 1137) The second Chronicle: One Corpse Too Many (published in July 1979, set in August 1138) The third Chronicle: Monk’s Hood (published […]
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Appointment With Agatha: The Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration
This is my master update post for a group project to read all of Agatha Christie’s full-length novels in the order of their publication, beginning in October 2020, in honor of the 100th anniversary of the publication of her first mystery novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which introduced the world to Hercule Poirot and […]
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An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes
This project is based on a very similar series of blog posts that I saw in BeetleyPete‘s blog and liked so much that I decided I’ll have a go at it, too — not least because it may also serve as an introduction to those of you who haven’t been following me for a long […]
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The (Mostly) Dead Writers Society Reading Projects: Birthday Challenge & Authors in Residence
(Dead) Author Birthdays This is a reading challenge associated with the (Mostly) Dead Writers Society on Goodreads; I decided to join it because it is as much an invitation to reconnect with the classics as it is one to walk down literary paths less traveled; so it ties in nicely with my own 2021 reading […]
Read MoreDiversity Bingo
Central America – Laura Esquivel: Like Water for Chocolate South America – Gabriel García Márquez: El coronel no tiene que escriba / Nobody Writes to the Colonel, and Other Stories Caribbean – Various Authors: Trinidad Noir (Akashic Noir series) North Africa – Assia Djebar: L’amour, La fantasia Sub-Saharan Africa – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Dear […]
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2020 Summer Sojourn
As current events make actual travel — at least, leisure travel — either undesirable, unwise or flat-out impossible, I decided to devote my 2020 summer reading to literary armchair travel, and to call it the 2020 Summer Sojourn. Then the BookLikes meltdown happened and I had to start sprucing up my WordPress blog … as […]
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Around the World in 80 Books – Mostly by Female Authors
[World map created with Mapchart.net] The aim: To diversify my reading and read as many books as possible (not necessarily 80) set in, and by authors from, countries all over the world. Female authors preferred. If a book is set in a location other than that of the author’s nationality, it can apply to either […]
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The Flat Book Society
The Flat Book Society on BookLikes The Flat Book Society was a science and popular science book club, active on BookLikes from July 2017 to December 2019. BookLikes Book Club Page BookLikes Discussion Group The Reading Lists Suggested Books Nominated Books Books Read 2017-07-07 – 2017-08-31 – Andrea Wulf: The […]
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Freedom and Future Library
Introduction (2018) You’d have to be living under a rock buried somewhere halfway down to the center of the earth in order not to be aware that in recent years our beautiful world has been shaken up by a number of crises the likes of which I, at least, have not experienced in my entire […]
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Kill Your Darlings
Aaaand … that’s a wrap. My Kill Your Darling Books. Green Round: Team MbD – Lillelara – TA Round 1 Suspect Own guess / card played: Madeleine L’Engle – wrong – 5 points Correct guess: None Victims Own guess / card played: Katniss Everdeen – 5 points Correct guess: None Crime Scenes Own guess […]
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