And another
Book 18 of 2010 - The Children of Húrin - J.R.R. Tolkien
19/02/10 - 24/02/10
I'm really glad that I read The Silmarillion before reading this one, purely because I had been refreshed of the scope of the world I was entering into. Of course, I'd pretty much read this story in The Silmarillion but The Children of Húrin goes into so much more depth. The Silmarillion is like a history book, it tells you the most important things that were said, but is chiefly interested in passing on the basic information about events. The Children of Húrin goes into greater detail and there's time for the classic, Tolkien-esque descriptions of people and places.
I found myself getting really drawn into it, and I can't help but thing it's a real shame that Tolkien himself didn't finish it to the same level as The Lord of the Rings. As I was reading it I was imagining it in just the same way that I could imagine things when I first read The Lord of the Rings. There was something really nice about being able to settle down with a Tolkien book that I'd never laid eyes on before, but it would have been nice to have had more of the depth of The Lord of the Rings something which was maybe lost in the editing process, or which Tolkien himself never managed to write down.
I'll also admit that the whole time I was reading it, I was picturing how it would work as a film. I couldn't help myself. It's so tragic a story that I doubt whether they would ever do it, and it would probably have to be made in two parts, but all the same, I was fantasy-casting actors to play the parts.
Oh, and the illustrations. There are many Middle-earth-inspired illustrators but the two who worked on the films (John Howe and Alan Lee) have to be my favourites (Ted Nasquith deserves a special mention because he was the cover illustrator on my first copy of The Lord of the Rings which was printed the year I was born). Alan Lee's illustrations just help make the story. There's a sketch at the beginning and the end of each chapter as well as a full page colour glossy illustration every fifty or so pages. They are just beautiful and really helped me to visualise the world. One of my favourites was towards the end of Glaurung burning the land. You can just make out the dragon amongst all the smoke and steam. Some of them look almost photographic in detail. Lovely!
So now I'm on to The Hobbit. Hopefully this'll only take me a few days to get through. It's a bit of a jump going from the complicated Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin to the jovial language of The Hobbit but I'll probably feel even more confused when I move on to Lynda La Plante's Above Suspicion afterwards. I tried to reserve it at the library today because I checked and saw that it was in but they want to charge me 70p just for holding it here, I'm sure they never used to! And they've never even heard of Jen's book club book according to the library system, so I'm thinking I'll order that one at some point in the next week... I may have to put some more money into my bank account...
Oh, and the Book People books have arrived. If you don't hear from me for a few days, I may have been buried under an avalanche of books!