Tolkien's Birthday

 So, Happy Tolkien Day, everyone.

It's been a weekend of a  lot of reading* punctuated by cold medicine.

I no sooner finished reading the entire LotR than we finished up watching all three Peter Jackson LotR movies (the theatrical releases, not the expanded versions). I've now embarked on the Serkis audiobook. A bit disappointed by his Gandalf, but on the whole a credible adaptation.

Today's music was Beatles-themed; yesterday's was THE FIREBIRD by Stavinsky. I'd had this for years but not paid much attention to it: it fills out the space left at the end of an album following THE RITE OF SPRING, the work I got the album for. I'd been working on Cabell lately and only now noticed that  'King Kashchei',  a major character in THE FIREBIRD (1919), is Starvinsky's version of the folklore villain who inspired Cabell's Kashchei the Deathles, who appears in Cabell's JURGEN (1919).

These occasional bouts of intense reading do me good (I just finished reading book #3671). I wish I cd say it does my deadline(s) good as well

--John R.

*not only Tolkien but John Crowley and Kipling. I'd only ever read STRANGE DEVICES OF THE SUN AND MOON of Crowley's works, while Kipling I find harder and harder to read as time goes by. Then I've also resumed the Edith Bratt book