unstructured ramble
Thursday, January 13th, 2011 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanOne of the pressies I received for Christmas was an Amazon Kindle, from my lovely Furtle. It was the cream of the crop and quite likely the single best pressie I have ever had for Christmas or a birthday -and I have had some corkers (and some clunkers) in the past.
Over the past couple of years, my reading – by my standards at least – has dropped off considerably. By the time I get home I haven’t fancied it and during lunchtime at work or commuting it’s been too much hassle. At lunchtime I tend to read the paper and do the sudoku puzzles and on the train I have found it awkward to read a book. Being a large chap, I get a little self conscious about the amount of space I take up, and my elbows sticking out and taking up even more space while I am reading rather embarrasses me (Dunno why, to be honest: other people large and small just absorb as much space as they can get and are quite happy to sit there with their elbows up someone else’s nose in cheerful abrogation of the concept of personal space).
Whatever the reason in the past two years, rather atypically for me, my book consumption has probably dropped to single figures; certainly the low double figures.
Since Christmas, however, the Kindle has started me off again. I am still getting less reading done than in previous times, but rather more than in recent. I have downloaded a heap of free classics and bought a couple of other books. Particularly, I have taken the opportunity to start re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the fifth or sixth time, but the first in close on twenty years.
Interestingly, having recently rewatched the movie trilogy, I had a fairly fixed view of the differences between the two versions. But there are far more than I realised. For all their faults, and as much as I love the books, I think the movie version of the story is better. Certainly it is much tighter (thank God they ditched the entire Tim Benzedrine sequence – although that isn’t quite as annoying as I remembered). The only parts of the movie adaptation that are probably not improvements are the rewrite of the ending of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields – the Army of the Dead lifted the siege of the western ports allowing Gondor’s own troops to lift the siege on Minas Tirith if I recall rightly and of course that led to the entire description of the apparent arrival of the corsairs suddenly being revealed as the arrival of Aragorn with the unfurling of the standard of the Kings of Gondor; an entire set piece excised from the movie, which could have happily remained at the expense of the extended, multiple endings…
I had forgotten in the books that Aragorn actually carried the broken sword around with him. How bright is that? It makes far more sense that it be preserved as a relic in Rivendell, then at Weathertop, he could have done in the book what he did in the movie and use fire and sword to drive off the ring wraiths, instead of just swinging a couple of matches t them. Really, Tolkien didn’t think it through properly, did he?
I’m sure as I get further through the books, I shall find other bits that have actually been improved by Jackson and his script writers. I wonder how many I shall find where he’s done the story a disservice.
Because they are free, I have even downloaded some works by Dickens to see if I can get over my oft-stated dislike of his work.
Over the past couple of years, my reading – by my standards at least – has dropped off considerably. By the time I get home I haven’t fancied it and during lunchtime at work or commuting it’s been too much hassle. At lunchtime I tend to read the paper and do the sudoku puzzles and on the train I have found it awkward to read a book. Being a large chap, I get a little self conscious about the amount of space I take up, and my elbows sticking out and taking up even more space while I am reading rather embarrasses me (Dunno why, to be honest: other people large and small just absorb as much space as they can get and are quite happy to sit there with their elbows up someone else’s nose in cheerful abrogation of the concept of personal space).
Whatever the reason in the past two years, rather atypically for me, my book consumption has probably dropped to single figures; certainly the low double figures.
Since Christmas, however, the Kindle has started me off again. I am still getting less reading done than in previous times, but rather more than in recent. I have downloaded a heap of free classics and bought a couple of other books. Particularly, I have taken the opportunity to start re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the fifth or sixth time, but the first in close on twenty years.
Interestingly, having recently rewatched the movie trilogy, I had a fairly fixed view of the differences between the two versions. But there are far more than I realised. For all their faults, and as much as I love the books, I think the movie version of the story is better. Certainly it is much tighter (thank God they ditched the entire Tim Benzedrine sequence – although that isn’t quite as annoying as I remembered). The only parts of the movie adaptation that are probably not improvements are the rewrite of the ending of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields – the Army of the Dead lifted the siege of the western ports allowing Gondor’s own troops to lift the siege on Minas Tirith if I recall rightly and of course that led to the entire description of the apparent arrival of the corsairs suddenly being revealed as the arrival of Aragorn with the unfurling of the standard of the Kings of Gondor; an entire set piece excised from the movie, which could have happily remained at the expense of the extended, multiple endings…
I had forgotten in the books that Aragorn actually carried the broken sword around with him. How bright is that? It makes far more sense that it be preserved as a relic in Rivendell, then at Weathertop, he could have done in the book what he did in the movie and use fire and sword to drive off the ring wraiths, instead of just swinging a couple of matches t them. Really, Tolkien didn’t think it through properly, did he?
I’m sure as I get further through the books, I shall find other bits that have actually been improved by Jackson and his script writers. I wonder how many I shall find where he’s done the story a disservice.
Because they are free, I have even downloaded some works by Dickens to see if I can get over my oft-stated dislike of his work.