Approximately 40 minutes into The Two Towers and on the screen Frodo and Sam are leading Gollum by a length of Elvish rope loosely tied around his neck, after capturing him on their way to Mordor. Gollum is writhing and squirming and howling “It burns! It burnsss!” and flinging himself melodramatically to the ground, grimacing and crying and gnashing his teeth.
Anders, Martin and I all literally sit up and look at first Karin and then each other, and then simultaneously burst into laughter. Our own little melodrama queen gazes on, completely oblivious.
***
What a shitty start to another month at work. I thought January was bad? HA! says February. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
***
I was listening to www.last.fm yesterday, and after typing in an old favorite’s name (Wendy MaHarry) I spent the next hour writing down about 20 new (to me) artists with fabulous voices and engaging music as one after the other caught my attention and brightened my surroundings. My music list, like my book list, is 42 miles long. *sigh*
***
Did I mention that choir has started again? We lost about half our members with the departure of our former choir leader and the long wait during the search for a new one. I like our new leader, though she’s not as charismatic or as forceful as Eva was. She has a sense of humor and is very engaging. She’s chosen a couple of intricate madrigals to start off the new season; with their bouncy paean to spring and their intertwined fa la las they ought to be the perfect antidote to the boring part of winter that we’re in the long stretch of now.
***
My get up and go seems to have got up and went. Without me.
***
The very abbreviated, truncated, restrained version of the short list of best beloveds: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the Outlander series, My Name is Asher Lev, The Agony & the Ecstasy, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Watership Down, Little Women, Dandelion Wine, A Little Princess, The Land of Laughs, the Lymond Chronicles, The Pillars of the Earth, The Saturdays, The Door Into Summer, Pilgrimage, Twilight series, Charmed Life, Wicked, The Phantom Tollbooth, Something Rising (Light & Swift), Prodigal Summer, Earthsea series, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Wrinkle in Time, The Light Princess, The Razor’s Edge, Beauty, The House at Pooh Corner, The Skook, Anne of Green Gables, Paksenarrion series, American Primitive, Emergence, Falls the Shadow, A Girl of the Limberlost, His Dark Materials series, The Fountainhead, Swallows & Amazons, A Vision of Light, Still Life With Woodpecker, The Sparrow, Where the Wild Things Are, The Tempest, Archangel series, I Capture the Castle, The Hound & the Falcon, Raising the Stones, After Long Silence, Brightness Falls From the Air, the Attolia books, The Importance of Being Earnest, To Say Nothing of the Dog, Bellwether, When & After Worlds Collide, Swiss Family Robinson, Katherine
If you want authors of any of the above, let me know, or a list of always excellent authors. If you want more of a particular genre, let me know that, too. I can recommend books until the cows come home, primarily in these: fiction, historical fiction, fantasy & speculative fiction, children’s literature. I tend away from best seller lists, as you might have aready guessed. 🙂