Category: Ruminations

Saturday Snapshot: Lord of the Rings Nostalgia

On By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot11 Comments

I’ve been working my way through the Lord of the Rings novels, and as part of the very elaborate process, I’ve also been rewatching the movies.  I saw them all when they originally came out, but never read the books then.  I did, however, collect bookmarks.  I think they were available at my school’s library–the memory has gone a little vague.  But I collected them some ten years ago, and haven’t much thought about them since.

However.  While I had never read the books, my dad had them, so they were in my house.  And in my typical, over-organized fashion, where else would I store LOTR bookmarks…but in copies of LOTR?  So in the course of reading the books (those same copies that were sitting there all along) I’ve also unearthed the bookmarks.

I somehow don’t have the set from Fellowship, but I do have Two Towers and Return of the King…

Lord of the Rings Bookmarks (2)Lord of the Rings Bookmarks (3)The bookmarks are two-sided, and I’ve kept them in the same order so you can see which characters were paired.  Some make sense…others don’t.

Lord of the Rings Bookmarks (1)Lord of the Rings Bookmarks (4)My one regret here…no Faramir bookmark.  He gets more screentime in the Extended Edition and…I just love him (this scene!)  Ah well…aside from that, I’ve quite enjoyed rediscovering a collection I all but forgot I had. 🙂

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!

Stonehenge Post: Revising Writing Goals

On By cherylmahoneyIn RuminationsLeave a comment

Stonehenge 2New post up today for my writing group blog, Stonehenge Writers!  You may remember at the beginning of the year, I wrote a post about setting writing goals.  Well, we’re almost five months along, and it’s a good time to take a look at goals and make some reassessments…  Come read the post: “Revising My Revising Goals.”

What Are You Reading: Lord of the Rings Edition

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations, What Are You Reading?13 Comments

Time for another post for What Are You Reading, hosted by Book Journey.  I have been reading…a lot of Lord of the Rings.

On my last WAYR post, I was about to attempt The Fellowship of the Ring.  I am happy to report I finished that one, and didn’t find it nearly as difficult to get through as I feared.  I didn’t madly love it–but it was a good time.  Posted my review here.  I read a few other books, but pretty quickly went on to The Two Towers.  Have to keep the momentum up, now that I’ve begun!

P1020482I have a few books lined up for after The Two Towers.  I’m thinking Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier next, then The Master of Heathcrest Hall by Galen Beckett to finish the Mrs. Quent trilogy, and then The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley, since I just reread The Blue Sword, the companion book (review here).  And then–on to Return of the King!

So I’m actually reading a fair bit that isn’t Lord of the Rings…but Tolkien looms rather large.  All three books have been these big icons in my reading plans, and all the other books have been selected and viewed as fitting in around Lord of the Rings.

Can you tell that I sort of make a big deal out of these books?  But after having them loom at me for ten years, it is a big deal to finally read them! 🙂

What are you reading this week?

Saturday Snapshot: A Small Foray into Gardening

On By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot14 Comments

The weather is warming up, and I am attempting to grow things.  Tomatoes, in fact, because I eat a lot of tomatoes…and they seemed do-able.  I live in an apartment and the absolute only place to put plants is on the landing outside my second-story door.  So I went to the farmer’s market two weeks ago (this would have been last week’s post, but Mr. Crawford pre-empted it), and…here we are.

Tomato Plants

I didn’t have the slightest idea what kind of tomato plant to buy.  But the guy at the farmer’s market told me Sungolds are sweet, and I bought a Violet Jasper because, um, I liked the name…  So it’s all rather an experiment.  We’ll see how it goes!

If it goes well, you’ll be seeing more pictures.  And, of course, if it goes badly, we will never speak of this again…  But so far, I’m enjoying my (very) small foray into gardening!

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots.

Blog Hop: The Pleasures of Rereading

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop, Ruminations4 Comments

This week’s Book Blogger Hop question is particularly relevant to my recent reading…

book blogger hop

What was the last book you reread?  Or name a book you would like to reread.

Since one of my reading goals for the year is to revisit old favorites, there’s been quite a lot of this going on…especially as it’s Once Upon a Time season, and a lot of my old favorites are fantasies!  Recent rereads include:

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

The Two Princesses of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George

Chalice by Robin McKinley

Links all go to reviews.  The next book I reread will probably be Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier, which I have conveniently sitting on my shelf…

In the meantime, a thought on rereading: “There’s nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over.  When you do, the words get inside you, become part of you, in a way that words in a book you’ve only read once can’t.” – Gail Carson Levine