Showing posts with label tolkien. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tolkien. Show all posts
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Top Ten All-Time Favorite Authors

Posted by Marie on Wednesday, April 22, 2015 in , , , , , , , , , , ,
So how did this came about?

There's this activity in one my book clubs (The Filipino Groups there in Goodreads), where the moderator told us to list down our top ten favorite authors of all time.

So okay, challenge accepted.

I'm glad it's top ten favorite authors and not top ten best authors because it's easier to just rely on my biased opinions (from which the latter is based on), rather than try to be an objective reviewer (from which the former is based on).

So anyway, here's my top ten favorite authors (in alphabetical order):

Jane Austen 

I like how polarizing Jane Austen can be. After all, most of her characters are very much preoccupied with parties, social chit chat, and other trivial matters. In a time when social standing and connection is a matter of life and death (sometimes literally), marriage is an essential undertaking, most especially for women. In a time when people are judged by their superficial looks and manners, how you bear yourself is very important, most especially for women. Austen wrote her books much like how women must present themselves in her time: seemingly modest, seemingly simple, seemingly light, seemingly trivial. To appreciate Austen, one must read deeper. Modesty belies the intensity of her drama (which, rather than explode outwards in Bronte-like bursts of passion, her characters prefer to implode inwards, with minimalist but accurate language). Modesty also veils the wit and the satirical tone of her texts, the ironies and (surprisingly for some people) the realism.

New readers should start with: Persuasion (then follow with Northanger Abbey) 


Ray Bradbury

I find it unfair when people describe Ray Bradbury merely as a science fiction writer. This is because while most of his story has some science fiction or fantastical aspects in them, it is the "heart" - the warmth, the optimism for the future, the down-to-earth human-ness - in his stories which makes them very good, and what defines them. There is a lyrical simplicity and honesty to his language. It is a language of sadness but also of hope, of kindness but also of cruelty brought simply because we are all merely human.

New readers should start with: The Martian Chronicles (then follow with his short stories, particularly There Will Come Soft Rains) 


Anton Chekhov 

Anton Chekhov knew people. He knew how they think and how they react. He knew that lives can be funny, melancholic, exciting, and mundane all the same time. His stories are a reflection of these. He wrote stories of characters who are both ordinary and strange. Of small dramas that have good and bad endings. He wrote of stories that are heartrendingly familiar, even to modern readers (for example, the very short story, "The Head of the Family" suddenly took me back to my childhood). He even wrote stories of oppression and cruelty, not just of the rich, but also by the poor. Rationality is seldom the focus, and his characters are primarily swayed by their emotions. No solution comes in endings, but mostly a complete presentation of the issue at hand. Life is such a complicated mess, and Anton Chekhov knew that.

New readers should start with: The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories (particularly the titular story, and Ionitch) 

Arthur Conan Doyle 

Yes, I know that Arthur Conan Doyle wrote other stories besides the Sherlock Holmes canon. Unfortunately for Professor Challenger (I swear I'll try to put his stories in my TBR), it is Sherlock Holmes that I love the most. Arthur Conan Doyle had the ability to write characters that are so well fleshed out they seem to be real people (heck, some people really do believe that Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were real as you and me). His stories are a nice blend of comfortable tropes and brilliant storytelling. They are not meant to be deep (remember that these stories were first serialized in Strand Magazine), but there is a timeless quality to them and the characters, such at more that 120 years later, people still loves everything Sherlock Holmes.

New readers should start with: A Study in Scarlet (then follow with The Sign of the Four)

Franz Kafka 

Unsettling is the word that comes into my mind when I think of Franz Kafka. His stories are like dreams - strange things happen in it, and you recognize its strangeness, but you accept it anyway. Most of his story are familiar frustrations and anxieties: futile struggles against the bureaucracy, striving fruitlessly for one's goals, and of loneliness and alienation. I had found reading Kafka to be a personal experience - because it is useless to comprehend his stories rationally, your interpretation is as valid as anyone else's.

New readers should start with: The Metamorphosis (then follow with Amerika) 


Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

The same way with Ray Bradbury, I find it unfair to call Gabriel Garcia Marquez as solely a magical realist author, simply because he is so much more. The way he described scenes, places, and people are just so vivid. When he described the plantations of Macondo (for example), you can almost see the bananas swaying with the hot wind, while you shield your eyes from the unyielding tropical sun. And my God, the stories. The words present themselves as such that you feel them rather than read. You feel the slowness of time and the frustrations of the Colonel while waiting for his letter. You feel like the dread of the inevitable fate of Santiago Nasar. And One Hundred Years of Solitude is not a read, it is an experience.

New readers should start with: No two ways about it. Begin with the awesome One Hundred Years of Solitude. 


Vladimir Nabokov 

I was angry with Vladimir Nabokov in college. He manipulated my emotions. He made me like Humbert Humbert. Only on the second read (and with the help of my other book club) did I saw Humbert as the monster that he really is. It's not that there were no clues. It's just that Nabokov wrote Humbert Humbert with such charm that I had unconsciously ignored the alarms. Only in later years did I appreciate the preciseness of Nabokov's prose, the careful arrangement of words that had made me fall under Humbert's charm. My takeaway lesson from Nabokov is that readers should not judge books as good or bad merely from their empathetic reaction with the story or characters ("the story made me sad/the main character is a terrible person, and that is why I rate this as 0 stars"). One should also think of the way the story is made, the style, the prose, the character development, and many many more.

New readers should start with: Lolita (then follow with the wonderful Pnin) 

Ambeth Ocampo

One day in college, despite having a report deadline in PI 100, I finished the Ambeth Ocampo book collection in the UP Main Library. That's six books in two hours. That just show how accessible and easy to read Professor Ocampo's books are. He had made history so approachable and alive, especially for the young folks (I'm not sure I'm still included in this lot, hahaha!). Personally, I like reading Ambeth Ocampo's books in between heavy fictions. They are the perfect palate cleansers, not because they are pieces of fluff (for example, Meaning and History and Bones of Contention are meaty reads), but because of the welcome change of topic, and easier pace and tone.

New readers should start with: Rizal Without the Overcoat (then follow with Aguinaldo's Breakfast) 

Tony Perez 

Tony Perez dwells in the unusual. Not just the supernatural, mind you, (although he does head the Spirit Questors) but those that are beyond the normal. I hesitate to call it bizarre, after all bizarre is in the eyes of the beholder. Take Cubao, for example. The day gives it a matter-of-fact, business-as-usual look. But at night, Cubao takes a mysterious, seductive, and dangerous sheen. Tony Perez's stories are rife with characters with subversive thoughts and intentions. His language is gritty, grimy, and disturbing, and his story are full of twists and turns, sometimes for good, but most of the times, for the worse.

New readers should start with: Cubao Midnight Express (then follow with Cubao Pagkagat ng Dilim) 


J.R.R. Tolkien

Finally, J.R.R. Tolkien. Many of the fantasy tropes in fiction began with him. Because of the familiarity, people tend to get bored with him. Not me. I had re-read Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion so many times that I lost count. Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and the rest of the Fellowship had become dear friends that every read's end brings a tear in my eye (yes, literally). I'm not really sure why I love Tolkien's stories to bits. Maybe it is the comfort that chaos and evil does not last, and that order will sometimes be restored, not exactly the way it was, but at least to some satisfaction of most people. That journeys does not really end, and people return from these journeys quite changed. And that stories goes on and on, even after you had read the last page, even after you had closed the book.

New readers should start with: The Lord of the Rings, (then follow with The Hobbit)

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Tolkien for the Holidays

Posted by Marie on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 in , ,
Christmastime is J.R.R. Tolkien.

 As a kid, the holiday break has always been my chance to read Lord of the Rings in one go. Then in college, watching The Lord of the Rings film series was a December tradition with my friends, that later turned to watching The Hobbit trilogy post-college. I cannot remember a time that I haven't turned to Professor Tolkien for some holiday cheer. This year is no different. But this time, I'd took on Professor Tolkien's earlier works, particularly The Hobbit (published on 1937) and Letters from Father Christmas (published posthumously on 1976).

Anybody who had read Lord of the Rings most likely would have also read The Hobbit (or There and Back Again), or at the very least would have watched it on the big screen.

It is the story of Bilbo Baggins, a quiet, normal hobbit living in the very normal suburbs of Bag End, Hobbiton. Hobbits are a race similar to men but shorter in height. The hobbits sensibly love creature comforts like second breakfasts and snug, comfy holes in the ground. Bilbo was recruited by the wizard Gandalf for a quest to the Misty Mountain, to recover treasures that were guarded by the dragon Smaug. He is joined by twelve dwarves led by Thorin Oakenshield, the King under the Mountain. A lot of things happened on the course of their adventures, culminating into a battle between different races, all vying for the dragon horde.


I had always read the story (yes, I forgot how many times I've reread the book) as being the tale of Bilbo Baggins' evolution from a scared, timid hobbit to a selfless hero and full-fledged leader. That a person sometimes starts his journey as one thing and comes home as another, changed irrevocably, (sometimes for good, sometimes for bad, but most of the times for both) is a constant theme in Professor Tolkien's stories, not just in his Middle-earth books, but also in his other writings. In The Hobbit, it can be summarized by Bilbo's poem during his return to Hobbiton:

"Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known."

As a veteran of the First World War, he certainly knows how war permanently changes people, exactly like how fierce battles and the death had changed Bilbo.

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead." (Preface to the second edition of Lord of the Rings)

So yes, two conclusions. The first is that The Hobbit is not some silly Lord of the Rings prequel published primarily for kids; and two, that there's nothing like war and death to make you appreciate the things that you have and the existence of people who love you.


Let's now go to something lighter. In 1920, J.R.R. Tolkien's son, the then three-year-old John, received a letter from Father Christmas.

Father Christmas described in words, pictures, and even poems his house at the North Pole, his assistant, Polar Bear (or P.B.), his secretary, the elf, Ilbereth, P.B.'s mischievous nephews, Paksu and Valkotukka, and other various characters which includes snow elves, red gnomes, snow men, cave bears, and nasty goblins. For the next twenty years, these letters regularly arrive in the Tolkien household during Christmastime, while reply letters made by the children (John, then Michael, Christopher, and finally Priscilla) mysteriously vanish from the fireplace.

Throughout their childhoods, the Tolkien brood were regaled stories of the adventures and misadventures of Father Christmas, Polar Bear, Ilbereth, and the rest of his household, from the time the North Pole broke, to when they needed to move to another house, to when Father Christmas lit some of his wonderful fireworks to celebrate the holiday, to when P.B. got lost in the caves, to the times of the goblin attacks, and their successful defenses. It is very easy to note how strikingly similar Father Christmas to the wizard Gandalf, and, as you can see in the image on the right, P.B. to Beorn, the mysterious man-bear in The Hobbit.


The 1937 letter is funny because Father Christmas mentioned to the children that he initially though of sending them this book 'Hobbits' (which he had been sending loads to other children - mostly second editions), but he thought they might have already have many copies (duh) so he had instead sent them another 'Oxford Fairy Tale' (which I am now intrigued into finding a copy).

By 1943, most of Professor Tolkien's children had grown up (John is 26, Michael is 23, Christopher is 19, and Priscilla is 14). Father Christmas' missive that year was a letter of goodbye. He also notes that his messengers is calling the year "grim" (indirectly referring to World War II), but is glad that in the children's household, it is not as miserable as they were expecting it would be.

"... I shall not forget you. We always keep the old numbers of our old friends, and their letters; and later on we hope to come back when they are grown up and have houses of their own and children."

Which the Tolkien children did. They kept the letters and, three years after Professor Tolkien's death, compiled it into a book with Christopher's wife as the editor. I personally like it. It is a testament of a father's love and willingness to provide boundless imaginative delight to his children. I am glad that the Tolkien family published it since it had now also provided joy to other children of various ages.






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