Putting my own, initially incorrect approach to reading this book aside, if you are looking for a deep, highly detailed dive into the formation of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, then this is it. The Return of the Shadow brings you to the very first drafts of The Lord of the Rings – to a world where the familiar foursome of hobbits that are the stars of the trilogy are not Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin. Instead, the reader is treated to Faramond, Frodo, Merry, Odo, Folco, and a host of other hobbits that never made their way into starring roles in the final trilogy. The Return of the Shadow also takes its readers into the thought process behind Tolkien’s creation of iconic characters like Treebeard and Strider. Would you believe that in their first incarnations these well-known players in The Lord of the Rings were much different? For example, in Tolkien’s first draft, Treebeard was working in the service of Sauron. And Strider? He began as the hobbit Peregrin! And these characters are set in a Middle-Earth that includes a forgotten elvish land named Hollin, a Rohan that is still filled with horse lords – but whom are also working in the service of Sauron, and where Gondor is known as Ond.

As fascinating as this early version of Middle-Earth may sound, there are some aspects of The Return of the Shadow that were a bit much for this reader. For example, in his writing and analysis of his father’s work, Christopher Tolkien often repeats words and phrases regarding the story that become more and more laborious as you go along. Also, in some cases he beats a dead horse to the point of absurdity. At one point at the beginning of the third phase of this book, Christopher Tolkien revealed that Odo was no longer going to be part of traveling group and that he would be replaced by Frodo. However, he repeats this revelation three or four times within two or three pages. For someone who gets the point the first time, you do not need to have the same information repeated to you several more times within the span of a few pages.

All things considered, I am glad to have read The Return of the Shadow. While it is an incredibly dense book and while it sometimes dives too deeply for my liking, it is truly a novel that captures the impressive scope and wide-ranging depth of not just Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, but the variety of fascinating characters that live within it. If there is a Lord of the Rings fan in your house or in your family and you want to get them a book that they can get lost in for hours, then this book would make the perfect gift.

As you’ll see, the feed contains just random thoughts, complaints, and observations. I’m not solving world hunger here, folks – I’m just living my life!

On the topic of what is going on with this blog there’s nothing major to update everyone on, but here is the general rundown:

First, for some reason we’ve been receiving a large number of spammy comments. Now, I write “spammy” comments because these comments aren’t your typical “click here for drugs” robotic spam comments, but rather vitriolic hate speech that is actually written by a human being. It’s really some pretty vicious stuff that has no place on a personal blog. And I don’t know how many times I have to write this in the comments section, but this always has been and always will be a personal blog. In other words, what I say goes so if you write a comment that attacks another commenter or blatantly distorts the issues presented in the various updates, you can stick your comment up your ass. Now granted, in the last year we’ve only gotten about 6 or 7 really vitriolic, arrogant, hateful comments and all of those were moderated before they made it on to the site. However, if you plan on writing bullshit and hate in the comments section you might as well save yourself the time because it’s not getting posted, period. My personal blog, my dictatorial rules – very simple to understand.

Second, I have a lot of content written and ready to be posted to the blog, but I’m waiting for the right time. For example, I have my next student loan update written and ready to go for whenever my total amount outstanding drops again (which should be in about a month – more on that in a minute). Also, I’ve been working on some other projects that are taking up some time so I’ve only been writing for the blog in my spare time.

Third, I’ve been working really hard to cull and delete a ton of the tags on this blog. If you don’t know what a “tag” is, it’s the keywords that bloggers use to help their individual pages categorize themselves and rise up in the search engines. A few years ago I utilized a system that provided a whole host of tags for specific keywords and that has bogged down and crapped up the database for the blog. As an example, if I wrote something about my old Chevy Blazer, I would get the following tags added to the database: Chevy, Chevy Blazer, Blazer, Chevrolet, Chevrolet Blazer, Blazer SUV, SUV, Chevy SUV, etc. That’s totally unnecessary. My culling process is reducing all of that gunk to two tags: Chevrolet and Blazer. That’s it – nothing more is needed. Obviously, this is a long process since there are some 6 or 7 thousand of tags in the database that need to be reviewed and deleted. I’m going through them about 250 at a time and I hope to have the project completed by the end of the year.

And the final part of this part of the update is that I’m looking for ways to freshen up the design of the blog. If you’ve been eagle-eyed, then over the last few weeks you might have noticed random updates here and there in certain design features (the addition of the Twitter feed, the lengthening of the Facebook feed, the layout change for news from the other sites that I own, change in some of the external button links, etc). However, I’ve been thinking that it might be time for wholesale change – I just don’t know how far I want to take it. If you have any ideas on how to change the design, please feel free to add them to the comments section of this post (but don’t post hate or it won’t get to see the light of day!).

That’s it for the JerseySmarts.com Update. And before I end the web-based updates I thought I might add that one of the sites that I own through Usable Web Solutions, LLC has really exploded in the last month and a half. Hits to that website have tripled and it is growing into a very respected site. I’m proud of the team that works there and plan to continue providing them with as much support as possible to let the growth continue. As for the rest of my life…

Things have been very busy. Towards the end of January my company moved its offices from Trenton to New Brunswick. That’s about ten miles less of a drive each morning for me, but the same amount of time thanks to the Route 18 traffic (which sucks). However, I tried to bypass most of the heavy traffic by changing my work schedule from 9am-ish to 5pm-ish to 7:45am-ish to 4:00pm-ish. I’m getting up earlier and leaving my house about an hour and a half earlier, but I’m also getting home right at or slightly before 5:00pm, so that’s an hour and a half earlier than the Trenton commute. The change hasn’t been too bad, but when you shift your schedule to work (and live life) an hour and a half earlier, you experience a personal seismic shift.

On my end, I’m finding that I have less time to spend on the computer in the evening (not playing around on the computer, but working on computer-based, paid projects). Also, I find that I’m totally exhausted by about 3:00pm. I think this is happening because my body isn’t used to going to bed at 10:00pm so I wind up tossing and turning for about a half an hour (though I’m totally beat right now and expect to sleep like a log tonight). It’s a change and I’ll get used to it.

Also, we’re getting towards the end of the college basketball season and I’ve been busy attending the Monmouth University men’s basketball team home games. The Hawks have struggled a little bit this season, but they’re starting to show signs of strength heading into their last four games of the season. Oh, and unlike the last few years I don’t really have a ton of pictures to post from these home games. I’ve actually been sitting back and enjoying the games instead of waiting for the perfect camera shot. However, I have taken a small handful of pictures at the games (mostly of the scoreboard after the games are over) and I plan to post them in the next few weeks.

I’ve also been hit with a variety of big expenses in the last few weeks. First, I spent a good deal of money traveling to Washington, DC for a business trip last week (granted, these expenses will be reimbursed, but I have to wait for the reimbursement to arrive). Then, I had my car crap out on me and it cost over eleven hundred bucks to get the thing fixed. And on the same day that I paid to get the car fixed, I co-hosted a fundraiser/donor recognition event at one of the Monmouth home games (which wasn’t a huge expense, but still an irregular expense in my routine budget). While all of these expenses are manageable, they are all irregular costs in my planned budget and they all hit within the same three day period. So… I’m glad that tomorrow is pay day!

Between the big shift in my personal schedule and the time I’ve been spending at the Monmouth games, my health is more or less in a stalemate. I haven’t been to the gym in about three weeks because I can’t figure out this new schedule yet, but my weight hasn’t moved too much and my blood sugar is very stable. I’m glad about the blood sugar being stable because a shift in routine combined with a reduction in the amount of medication that I’m taking could have formed the perfect storm to throw my blood sugar out of whack. On the topic of health, I purchased the Rebel Fitness Guide from Nerd Fitness a few weeks ago and I just finished reading it. Any guy who writes fitness articles and quotes the Lord of the Rings, uses Legos as a graphic tool, and frequently references the video games that I grew up playing and other nerdy topics is alright with me! I expect to begin the Level 1 Rookie workout around the beginning of March so be on the lookout for updates on how I’m progressing with that workout program.

Other than what’s posted above I don’t have many more big updates to provide right now. One of the last originally-written posts that I wrote for the blog was about finding a new church to attend that is close to where I live. Well, I’m still going to church there on a weekly basis and I find it amazing that I used to think that I didn’t have the time to go to church. Absolutely amazing. The services last about 45 – 50 minutes and when you factor in driving there and driving home, I’m only out of the house for about an hour and five minutes each Sunday morning. Who can’t give an hour and five minutes to go to church each week?! In fact, I continue to find that I enjoy going to church to listen to the homilies and the readings and so on. It’s nice – makes you feel good after you leave and gives you guidance for the week.

I’ve also been reading a lot on the NOOK, in The Word Among Us daily meditations, and random articles – so I have a lot to update on the site when I get a moment to do so! Stay tuned and in the mean time, follow me on Twitter @JVince81!

The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed in every way possible from basic storytelling to failure to generate a compelling plot to an inability to provide a riveting action/adventure storyline. The series failed in making characters that the reader could emotionally invest in and actually care about (which, again, doesn’t really matter since I know now that everything in the hundreds and hundreds of pages in the first few books is useless). The A Song of Ice and Fire series failed to make this avid reader want to read more from the series or this writer.

And yet, those are all of the areas where Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule excelled.

Wizard’s First Rule is the first book in Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series – and it’s awesome! I’ve always heard of Goodkind as a popular fantasy author, but I never really gave him the time of day. As a J. R. R. Tolkien fanatic, I tend to group every fantasy writer from the last fifty or sixty years into a “wannabe” group. Admittedly, that’s a bad point of view to have regarding contemporary fantasy writers, but that’s what makes me a fanatic for Tolkien. So when I first read positive reviews of Goodkind’s work a few years ago I immediately wrote him off as another Tolkien wannabe.

Now, after having read Wizard’s First Rule, I know that it was a bad decision on my part to assume that Goodkind’s work wasn’t worth the time. This book was great!

In a weird way, I’m actually glad that my disgust for Martin led me to Goodkind. Since I wanted to see what Goodkind had to offer, I decided to download Wizard’s First Rule, which happens to be the first book that he ever wrote. After some research I learned that this book is the first book in a ten book series (the aforementioned The Sword of Truth series) that follows the adventures of the main character – Richard Cypher – and his companions Kahlan Amnell and Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. In Wizard’s First Rule, Richard fights against a powerful wizard named Darken Rahl. The story follows Richard from his beginnings as a woods guide (someone who helps you traverse a landscape by showing you how to navigate through the forest) through his progression to what is known as the “Seeker.”

As the Seeker, Richard is tasked with finding and defending the truth. It’s a task that is somewhat shared by Kahlan, who holds the position of Mother Confessor. The Mother Confessor is the most powerful of the confessors – people who can use their power (magic) to make people tell them the truth. There’s a lot more to the whole confessor thing than just that, but you can read all of the details in the book.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this book, but one thing that stands out to me after having finished the book a few weeks ago is that I can remember a whole heck of a lot of the story. I remember Richard and Kahlan interacting with the Mud People, I remember the stories of Chase and Adie (among other characters) and the descriptions provided for the different locations around the landscape. Goodkind’s writing does that – it grips your interest and creates a really powerful image for you to latch on to and, essentially, feel the story.

However, I do have a bit of criticism for Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule. Now don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed Goodkind’s writing style. However, it appeared that some of the emotion-based writing was hyperbolic to the extreme. In other words, it seemed like every time Richard encountered a new emotional experience it was the most extreme feeling of that experience that he had ever felt or would ever feel again. For example, his interactions with Denna the Mord Sith (a woman whose job was to bring days, weeks, months of endless pain to her captives) brought him the most physical pain ever while the thought of losing Kahlan makes him feel the greatest feeling of despair that he could ever feel. Hopefully, that style of exaggeration diminishes in the future novels in The Sword of Truth series because if it doesn’t, then that would be the worst thing ever!

If you don’t understand what hyperbole means in literature, then the really lame literary joke that I made in the last sentence probably didn’t make any sense. No worries. Moving along now!

Granted, even though I’m a Tolkien maniac I did notice the influence that certain elements of the Lord of the Rings had on Wizard’s First Rule. For example, in the Lord of the Rings series you have the deformed former hobbit Gollum who is twisted and deranged by the power of Sauron’s one ring. Well, in Wizard’s First Rule you have Samuel – a former man who was the Seeker and wielded the fabled Sword of Truth that Richard now holds. His lust for the Sword of Truth deforms him into a very Gollum-like creature who is constantly saying that sword belongs to him. Gollum and Samuel are very, very similar and I hope that Samuel being modeled off of Gollum is more or less a tribute to Tolkien and not something that the author would argue was organically created in this story.

Before I wrap this up I thought I’d provide another comparison. A Game of Thrones was 733 NOOK book pages while Wizard’s First Rule was 681 NOOK book pages. The difference between the two isn’t just the 52 additional NOOK book pages. The difference is that those 681 pages of Wizard’s First Rule are packed with storytelling, drama, intrigue, mystery, exciting people and lands, treachery, despair, triumph, etc. Meanwhile, those 733 pages in A Game of Thrones is packed with – well, ultimately useless words – lots of words that evoke little-to-no emotion and tell little-to-no lasting, meaningful story. It’s 733 pages of wasted time.

Reading Wizard’s First Rule sold me on two things:

First and probably most importantly, I’ve become a fan of Terry Goodkind. The man can write a fantasy novel! Here’s hoping that the intelligent fun and excitement of Wizard’s First Rule carries through to the rest of the series. Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve already completed the second book in the Sword of Truth series though I plan to delay diving too far into the third book as I finish up some Bible readings that I started a few months ago.

Second, as a reader who is reluctant to change I’m beginning to understand that there is a vast fantasy and science fiction world out there besides the master of the genre, J. R. R. Tolkien. And that may not be as immediately important of a learning point as becoming a fan of Goodkind, but if I can manage to put my Tolkien mania aside again (after finishing the Sword of Truth series, that is), then the sky really is the limit in how many books in this genre that I might find interesting.

In short, if you’re looking for a good fantasy book to read, then I suggest picking up (or downloading onto your NOOK) a copy of Wizard’s First Rule. This is what a fantasy book should be!

So with the thought in my mind that this was a New York Times bestseller, a hit series on HBO, and a fantasy story that was gaining momentum in pop culture I got myself the NOOK Book version of A Game of Thrones. For reference, the NOOK Book version of the novel has 753 pages, some 733 of which are the actual story versus the final 20 NOOK Book pages which are an appendix listing the relationships of the different characters in the story.

I’m not sure how deep into detail I want to get with respect to the story itself, but there are a few major, overarching points that I want to make about this book.

First, A Game of Thrones does not read like a fantasy or science fiction story except in certain places. Other than the opening prologue, the reader has to wait hundreds (literally, hundreds) of pages before any event occurs that is actually supernatural in its nature. Further, the reader isn’t treated to a second supernatural, fantastical event until the very last page or two of the book. And even at that, after the reader gets through 733 pages of this “fantasy” novel the fantastical event at the end of the novel is good, but not enough in this reader’s mind.

Second, this is a long book. A really long book. As a reader, I enjoy long books because they give me a chance to get wrapped up in a story and really try to understand the perspectives of the characters, why they do what they do, what larger issues are being commented on by the story/author, etc. I didn’t get much of that from A Game of Thrones and, frankly, the lack of both character depth and progressive character development for the majority of these 733 pages is alarming. Based just upon the character depth and development alone, I’m shocked that A Game of Thrones made its way to the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Shocked.

Third, while I eventually began to accept what A Game of Thrones had to offer, I can’t really say that I enjoyed reading the book. Don’t misunderstand – I didn’t loathe reading the book. If I hated A Game of Thrones I would have just stopped reading it and went on to the next book in my unread stack. There’s something in this story… there’s something there that made me – as a fan of fantasy and science fiction writing – want to see the superiority and depth of this story and its characters. But I just couldn’t get myself into it that deeply.

The story of the Stark family ruling at Winterfell, being split up, and ultimately having the head of the family decimated in King’s Landing after King Robert dies is certainly a good story. But the reasons behind the various actions that lead to the end of the novel are not that deep. Look, the Lannisters are scumbags and they do whatever they want to do without regarding for right or wrong. They put an inbred young king on the throne who doesn’t even know that his father is actually his uncle and I guess that there is supposed to be more of a gripping story than appears to the naked eye there, but I didn’t see it. However, a more compelling story for this reader was that of Dany and her brother Viserys and their interactions with the Dothraki. And yet even in that story, Martin (seemingly randomly) chooses to kill off one of the most interesting characters in the novel, Khal Drogo, to reach the storyline progression that is achieved at the end of A Game of Thrones. It just seemed to me that in terms of storytelling, Drogo could have made it a little bit further in the story.

There are a variety of lesser stories interwoven throughout the novel that also have potential, such as the stories regarding the Mormont family, the different characters and their interactions in the Night’s Watch, the Others beyond the Wall, etc. But Martin doesn’t really get into those stories too much. One would think that with 733 pages of story, he could dive into one of those sub-stories and really give it some color. The again, if he chose not to give a depth of color to the main characters, I guess it would seem silly to do that with the minor ones instead.

I know this NOOK Book review seems more like I’m complaining than anything else, but I just can’t figure out what my exact gripe is with A Game of Thrones. My gripe is not that the story is mostly sluggish or mostly boring – I can imagine many folks enjoying this read. And my gripe also doesn’t have to do with the extremely repetitive words and phrases that Martin uses throughout the novel (if I read that a character ate something “to break his/her fast” again or that a warrior was robed in armor that looked like “a lobster,” I’m going to punch someone).

In general, I think my problem with A Game of Thrones is that it really does take hundreds of pages for Martin to reveal a plot point that any astute reader had probably already discovered and processed the moment that the plot point was hinted at… hundreds of pages earlier. In addition, while Martin’s writing style isn’t necessarily bad, his narration style leaves a lot to be desired. A Game of Thrones does not benefit by the way Martin jumps from one part of the story to the next (very similar to the way the Lord of the Rings movies follows the progression of the story). Aside from being distracting to the discerning reader, jumping from one scene to a completely different one reveals another one of my gripes with this story – it seems to have almost been written in a format that would make it easily adaptable to television.

After 733 pages of NOOK Book reading, I can’t quite put my finger on the element of the book that makes A Game of Thrones a hit show on HBO. However, there is little doubt in my mind that this story was written – at least in part – from a desire to see the characters come to life on film or television and that is what is at the core of what bothers me. When you read a book like Tarzan or a book like The Hobbit or a series like The Lord of The Rings, you aren’t reading about characters who were created to eventually be placed on the big screen. Go back and read a book like Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe and tell me if you think that the characters in those books were written with the express purpose of eventually making a video game or television series based off of the characters. The answer is clearly no (and not just because those mediums of entertainment didn’t exist when the books were published). These books were written to tell a compelling story and let’s be honest – content is king.

The reason why The Lord of the Rings has stood the test of time is because J.R.R. Tolkien created a story with characters that are so deep and with such a rich back story that a fan of fantasy novels can get lost in his legendarium and never cease to be amazed at a new discovery that informs the core story of good versus evil. It’s that content that made Tolkien a master of his craft. And in truth, it’s that lack of content – the lack of any compelling, overarching reason as to why events are happening – that brings down A Game of Thrones for this reader. I understand that there are other books in this series. However, I have to ask the question – if a deeper, compelling story isn’t revealed after 733 NOOK Book pages of reading, then what else is there? Could Martin have made the next books in this series any less substantive, any less dramatic, any more unnecessarily graphic, or any more frustrating to read than A Game of Thrones? I have access to the next book in this series, but I’m unsure if I’m going to read it yet. I might give the first chapter a try just to see what’s doing.

For those of you out there who are looking for something different to read – A Game of Thrones is definitely different. However, if you’re looking for a good science fiction series or a fantasy series with a deep, compelling story to get into, then I don’t think that A Game of Thrones is for you. The story isn’t quite science fiction nor is it quite fantasy except in very few, very brief instances in its 733 pages. And for a science fiction or fantasy fan, that’s just not enough. The book is long – that’s for sure. But length aside, A Game of Thrones is a case where quantity does not equal quality.

I read those books a few years ago and I really enjoyed them. However, as you’ve probably garnered from this blog – I’ve been booked up over the last few years and thus I haven’t had a chance to catch up on reading the remaining books in this series. Until now, that is…

Lords of the North was one of those books that had been shuffling around from my bookshelf to my home office desktop to the bureau and so on for the better part of a year and a half. In fact, in the last year and a half I only managed to read about 6 pages of the book. But then a few weeks ago I picked up the book on a Friday night and started reading a little bit more of it. I read through the first few pages again, moved along to the next few pages, and before I knew it I was some 50+ pages into the book. Fast forward a mere 24 hours later and I had finished reading the Lords of the North.

That’s how captivating this story is once you start to get into it (and have the benefit of having read the previous two novels in the series). The third installment of The Saxon Tales follows the story of Uhtred Ragnarson as he travels back to his ancestral homeland in Northumbria. What I remember about the “plot thickening” in this story is the part where Uhtred helps free a slave by calling himself Thorguild the Leper. Nothing wrong with a little deception when you’re trying to keep yourself alive, right? The slave turns out to be a guy named Guthred who proclaims himself the King of Northumbria. This part of the book stayed with me as a major plot point because after helping Guthred build some credibility for himself to be the King of that part of England, Guthred goes and sells Uhtred into slavery as demanded by Uhtred’s uncle.

Talk about getting screwed over by your boss, right?

The story takes a bit of a detour when Uhtred becomes a slave. I’m not sure if it’s one of Cornwell’s literary devices or if it’s just the way this part of the book presents itself to the reader, but I thought the entire story slowed down at this point. Having read three of Cornwell’s books (and I’m almost finished with the fourth book in this series), I’ve noticed that when he writes about fighting scenes and action scenes, he’s great. However, when he writes about the mundane existence of a slave (for example), the writing slows down. There are several places in Cornwell’s books that have these slow down points and, as an informed reader, I find myself annoyed at the slow down in the story, but understanding of the need to do so.

The other part of this book that stands out in my mind is the final fight for Dunholm. Uhtred takes Guthred’s “army” and leads an attack against Kjartan. This is the same Kjartan whose son (Sven) had one of his eyes plucked out by Ragnar – the guy who essentially raised Uhtred and whose name he uses in his last name (Ragnarson). What stands out to me in this battle is the release of Thyra and her hounds. From the way that Thyra is described in the book, I envisioned a crazy lady that appeared as a mix of the crazy cat lady from the Simpson and the lustful, angry version of Galadriel from the Lord of the Rings.

This is what I imagine Thyra, Ragnar's sister, was like - just without the magic.

Not exactly a pretty sight if you’re trying to win a battle against her side, you know?

Of course, like in all great movies and novels, the good guys win in the end and Uhtred defeats both of his long-time enemies (Kjarten and Sven) as well as a much stronger, better funded enemy in Ivarr Ivarsson.

I’ve never considered myself a big reader of historical fiction until I began reading The Saxon Tales. They’re very entertaining and Cornwell skillfully crafts each book so that it can be read on its own. Readers of this series, though, know that each book builds on the one prior and that the characters continue to develop throughout. I’d recommend this book to anyone who has read the first two novels in The Saxon Tales as well as anyone who enjoys historical fiction (set in the late 800s and early 900s). Also, those who enjoy reading fantasy and science fiction might enjoy how Cornwell intersperses the Norse religion and Christianity throughout the tale because the character think that the gods of each religion are using their “magical powers” to help them along.

Plus, it’s the summertime and who wouldn’t love a good book to read while laying on the beach?! If you’re headed to the beach this year, then I suggest picking up the Lords of the North – I think you’ll really enjoy it!

So do we call these things "Classic NOOKs" now?

Instead, I wanted to use this brief entry to talk about my experience using the NOOK Color to read The Hobbit. You see, The Hobbit was the first book that I purchased on the NOOK Color and the first book that I read from start to finish on the device. And, overall, I have to say that it was a pretty good experience.

There were two features that stood out to me in particular while reading The Hobbit. Here is a brief discussion of those features from my point of view.

Ease of Holding the Device. Look, I’m a book reader. I love reading books. Even when I was a little kid I loved reading books. And, as a long-time avid book reader, I love the entire book reading experience. If you’re a fellow avid book reader, then you know what I’m talking about – the experience of holding a book in your hand and having the thickness of pages in your right hand diminish as the thickness of pages in your left hand increase. You rush towards the end of the book and flip ahead to see how many pages are left and wonder how the author will get to his point before the book is over.

It’s the sensation – the experience – of reading a book that an avid book reader comes to love. Well, with the NOOK Color, you get a different experience, but not an all together bad one.

While there aren’t any pages to flip, the NOOK Color is easy to hold. It sits in your hand comfortably and isn’t too heavy. Plus, all you have to do is touch one side of the screen to flip forward or backward. While this takes away from the traditional experience of reading a book, it does allow the reader to get into a groove with flicking his or her finger to move to the next page. Getting into a groove like that ultimately allowed this reader to get very comfortable reading The Hobbit while laying in bed and not having to move too much to keep the story moving.

Features and Options to Enhance Reading. Not only does the NOOK Color allow the reader to change the layout of the text on each page of the e-book, but after a recent software update you can now change the color of the page, too. I found that this feature came in handy when I wanted to read a portion of The Hobbit before going to bed. Instead of having to keep the lights on in the bedroom, I could turn off the lights and lay in bed and still read comfortably after changing the brightness settings of the screen and changing the color of the page from white to grey. The darker tones made it easier on my eyes before I went to bed – a very nice feature indeed.

One other item that I feel compelled to bring up even though it didn’t directly impact my reading experience is the recent software upgrade for the NOOK Color. You may have read about this software update which essentially turned the NOOK Color into a high-powered, Google Android tablet. Well, I can vouch for how cool of an Android tablet the NOOK Color has become. It has its own app store (though it desperately needs more apps to choose from) as well as built-in e-mail support and a pretty efficient web browser.

Overall, I really enjoyed my reading experience with the NOOK Color. The e-reader sat comfortably in my hand and the ability to change the view, brightness, and color of the pages made the reading experience comfortable for my eyes. If you haven’t tried the NOOK Color yet, then I suggest you head over to your local Barnes & Noble store and try one of the devices that they have on display. It really is that damn good.

Give it a shot – I think you’ll really enjoy the NOOK Color!

Been-there-done-that, awkward, Harry Potter, brilliant graphics, so-so story, great story, horrible, poor camera views, abysmal acting, tired, old, fun to watch, good (though darker) family movie, pretty much what I expected, Lord of the Rings, random

And it’s that last adjective – random – that I think carries throughout the entire movie. For example, the four siblings are randomly drawn back into Narnia after Prince Caspian blows a magical horn. We get about 2 minutes of the family in the real world before they are sucked into a Harry Potter-like train scene where they wind up in their fantasy land after the train goes away.

Skip FAR ahead to the end of the movie. You have Susan running up to Prince Caspian and giving him one of the most awkward kisses in movie history. It was out of place and inappropriate for the scene and really took away from the storyline where Susan and Peter will never be coming back to Narnia. I don’t know why they tried to wedge the love story in there, but I guess that’s how movies are these days.

A little bit before the end of the movie you have two more random scenes. The first is Aslan randomly appearing in the forest to save Lucy. Yeah, I paid attention and I know what was going on here in terms of the siblings needing to prove themselves to Aslan in order to have him come back. Frankly, this aspect of the story sucked. It had a poor setup (due in part to the horrible acting by Georgie Henley as Lucy) and it had a random and awkward payoff (Aslan comes in and saves the day – boring). The few minutes where the White Witch almost made a comeback was MUCH more intriguing than the poor storyline that was Aslan in this movie.

And since I just mentioned it, Georgie Henley was not good in this movie at all. AT ALL. She has got to be one of the worst child actors out there right now. I understand Disney’s need to keep all of the same characters and even I would say that I’d rather see her playing Lucy than someone else, but damn – someone give the girl some acting lessons.

The second random scene at the end of the movie was the water man who came and destroyed all of the Telmarines. In the Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring, Eowyn talks about how the power of her people will protect the Hobbits if they can only cross the river. Then she says a little magic diddy after she crosses the river and the water rises to destroy the Nazgul chasers. It seems to me that Director Andrew Adamson must have watched this scene way too much because the battle-ending scene at the end of Narnia was far too similar. Again, I go back to my list of adjectives and been-there-done-that.

Then you have the use of killer trees (again, a la the Lord of the Rings). While I didn’t really want to see this in Narnia (I already saw Lord of the Rings, which is a much better movie, many times), I admit that I don’t have too much of a problem with it. For those of you that don’t know, CS Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia) and JRR Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings) were friends and a sort of pen pals. They were both disgusted at the post-industrial society that the Western world had created where the environment was trampled on a daily basis. This is why you see a reliance on the strength of nature in both of their novel series.

It looks like this movie is being written off as a stinker already, too. As the folks at The-Numbers.com suggest, “Weekend Estimates: Caspian Second Disappointment of Summer.” It looks like Caspian has made $56.5 million so far while Ironman is up around $222 million. None of this matters, though, as Indiana Jones is going to house the entire box office.

And yet after all of this criticism, I don’t think that Narnia was a bad movie…I just don’t think it was a good movie. I guess if you have young ones and you want to keep them busy for two hours (two and a half – commercials at the beginning of the movie), then you should go out and see this at a matinee (no need to spend the extra money to go any later). However, if you’re a fan of the novels – and God bless you if you could get through Prince Caspian as a novel – I suggest going at a time of the day when you’re not going to spend a lot to see the movie or just waiting for it to come out on DVD.

Though the most popular of these works was the Lords of the Rings trilogy and Bilbo Baggins’ tale in The Hobbit, the elder Tolkien also began writing other stories concerning the peoples and histories of Middle-Earth. Some of these stories have been published as The Silmarillion while others were either in The Book of Lost Tales or Unfinished Stories. As these books entered into circulation, Tolkien fans always craved more and fuller stories. Thanks to the hard work of Christopher Tolkien, The Children of Hurin is the first new Tolkien story published since his death.

To be clear, this is a complete, 259-page story and not a lost tale or unfinished item. Christopher does a great job of telling the reader how he was able to put together the new story from his father’s notes and letters, so you can read that when you purchase the book. I, for one, was pleased with the story in the book. Before reading it, one has to understand that this is a book that was, in fact, pieced together by notes and large swatches of unfinished parts of the tale. Christopher does a masterful job of putting together a full flowing story from these materials.

Hurin, one of the great heroes of men, is essentially captured by the Dark Lord and forced to watch the destruction of his family from on top of the his fortress. The title of the book refers mainly to Turin, who is Hurin’s son, and his rise from a boy to a fierce and intelligent warrior. Nienor, Hurin’s daughter, also plays a very important dually motivated role in the book as her fate is intertwined with her brother. As the Dark Lord put Hurin on top of his fortress, he cursed his entire family – a curse which is easy to see throughout the entire book and comes to an emotional end in the last paragraph or two of the story.

The writing style isn’t easily critiqued given that Tolkien did not have a chance to proofread his manuscript before putting it out for mass consumption. However, the story does flow and there are few, if any, breaks in the storyline. One thing that the reader should be ready for is the speaking style of the characters. Many of the characters speak in a foretelling tone and what they predict generally comes true. So as you read, you’re finding out what will happen in the next paragraph or the next chapter throughout the entire book. It’s not really a distraction if you’re a Tolkien fan, but it may take some getting used to for new readers.

I obviously give this book my highest recommendation. Not only am I a Tolkien fan, but I am one of the fans who have been craving something more since I finished reading the Lord of the Rings (a trilogy which I usually read annually). So, if you’re looking for a good read regarding the early history of Middle-Earth, the The Children of Hurin is for you.