We finished reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit this week – the first full-length book I’ve read to the kids. It was a the obvious choice, as this was also the first book my Mom read to me. It’s been a while since I’ve read that book and several things stand out after so many years. Tolkien wrote in long, descriptive, balanced sentences. Very nice to read aloud. The sense of place and history, the sheer amount of description is palpable in The Hobbit. Of course this has become one of the prevailing themes of fantasy fiction, so no surprise there. Finally, Bilbo is just a great character. And now onto the girls’ thoughts as recorded be me with a few questions here and there…
One favorite part is when Bilbo went to talk to Smaug. He saw the weak spot by getting Smaug to roll over by telling riddles. Bilbo was pretty brave there. I was afraid Bilbo might be found by Smaug, and he’d attack him and eat him. I thought this was the scariest part. Instead he just got a little burnt. Read more »
Any month is a good month for the fiction of horror master H.P. Lovecraft, but October provides an added aura of foreboding. Not that many of Lovecraft’s stories are particularly Halloweenish, and he was more apt to include ageless alien demi-gods in his fiction than ghosts or witches or the like, but there’s something about a gray stormy evening with a cold autumn wind blowing that makes passages of nameless horror especially tasty. For this reason I’ve been re-reading at least one classic Lovecraft story each October the last few years. (Having read virtually all of them the first time back in college.) 




The Sci-Fi Channel decided to rebrand to ‘SyFy’ in an attempt to capture the ever-elusive “broader audience”. In the process they have, naturally, pissed off the majority of Geek Nation. Their marketing shclubs have issued statements like this:
