Spoilers ( Read more... )

These rambles are going to be spoilerific.

Concerning hobbitsI find it difficult to explain to a generation growing up with all the richness of science fiction and fantasy around them that it's become mainstream, what a profound and deep thrill it was to read that first paragraph of the prologue. To my fourteen-year-old self, it was this sentence ( Read more... )

. . . I discovered it had been too long--not for at least ten or fifteen years.

So many thoughts over a lifetime of reading it. Shall I share them?

Over at BVC, the pleasures of rereading.

A couple of posts today coincided in a way that got me thinking about how stories can alter just by when we encounter them in the arc. Here mrissa talks about those of us who never mind spoilers (and who dislike being startled, sometimes the two are related) and those who can't bear spoilers. Then, here, krylyr wonders which of the Star Wars movies to ( Read more... )

What do you reread and why? My own favorites tend to be payoffs, whether longterm or short. My favorite short payoff (and there are a lot of them, but this one has sustained me now for three decades) the Prize Giving by Gussy Fink-Nottle, written by PG Wodehouse. I think my longest payoff sequence of scenes is the Lovers' Vows sequence in ( Read more... )

Does anyone get a purely intellectual satisfaction from a frequent reread? Or a purely emotional one? My own reread need demands a spectrum. An intellectual pleasure frequently translates out to once-read and appreciated, but mostly remembered and seldom actually revisited. Whereas too many of my emo splashes of my young days don't hold up as ( Read more... )