Well, I'm back.

I did not mean to take a year off from the blog, but here we are. This past year was somewhat unexpectedly hectic and difficult, at least as far as maintaining schedules for my personal projects, such as reading widely and writing, both for this blog and otherwise. We bought a house, and moved, and sold a house, and spent the last months of the year watching and waiting for the time for a beloved old cat to leave us. Just life, really, but the kind of “just life” upheavals that can make finding extra energy pretty darn hard.

The last I was here, I shared my goals for reading in 2019. They were nice goals, reflecting my values in conjunction with my reading life and my hopes for the ways I might tweak my reading life throughout the year. They were nice goals, and they did not work for me in the slightest for the year 2019 turned out to be. It was a year of pulling in for me, of feeling even more orientated toward home and safety than is usual for me, a natural homebody. Perhaps this should not have surprised me, given all the uprooting we did and all the subsequent attention that needed to be paid to recreating home (and severing ties with the house that had been home). Perhaps the fact that we only moved from one house to another in the same town we’ve lived in now for eight years fooled me into thinking that the move would not disrupt my normal. Psssht. I ought to know by now that big changes are, for me, Big Changes, and they will not be brushed aside as if they were not.

The fact that I woke up a few days into 2020 feeling renewed and ready to start something—anything, everything—afresh tells me that I needed that pulling-in time, which took the form of creating very little (not much writing, virtually no yarn craft) and stretching almost not at all when it came to my reading choices. My reading in the past year was largely comfortable—I didn’t stretch to read things that might challenge me, not in content, not in form, not in genre. I didn’t want reading to be work, even the minor work of fulfilling goals I had set myself, like reading some of the nonfiction from my shelves, working through some of the Book of the Month books that accumulated over the time I subscribed to the club, or reading more from my shelves. I just wanted to read whatever came to me in any given moment, whatever felt good, whatever wouldn’t ask much of me. And that was fine, that was what I needed to get back on even footing with myself. But it came with a cost.

I didn’t read much last year that really resonated with me, I didn’t read much that rolled up my socks, or even that strongly stuck with me. I lucked into a few reads that were great, but for the most part, my reading year in 2019 was… fine. Pulling in meant not reaching out, not seeking, and that meant just okayish reading. I suspect this in turn contributed to the downswing in creativity too. Curiosity breeds creation, after all.

So this year, while I am setting myself virtually no specific goals, I am looking to get back to trying things in my reading—new authors, maybe new genres—and not shying so much away from books I’m afraid won’t land smack dab in the middle of some sweet spot of perfect comfort read. I’m hoping this will lead to more wonderful reads and more creativity all around.

What are you looking to do with your reading life in 2020?

**The title is from the end of The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. But you knew that.

Wee Narrative Knots I Can't Untangle

Most of the time when I come across something in a novel or TV show/movie that just... doesn't make sense, I crinkle my nose at it and move on. But every once in a while these little errors stick in my mind and I can't seem to leave them alone. But why is it wrong? Why didn't someone catch it? Am I *missing* something? I think of these minor errors as narrative knots, and I just can't let go of the idea that there *must* be a way to unravel them that I haven't picked up on yet. Here are some of my favorites. 

But How Does He Not Know?: Harry Potter and Arrow 

In episode 17 of the fourth season of Arrow, Oliver says that someone is "not Voldemort," and then has this exchange with other members of the team:

Thea: [makes surprised noise]

Oliver: What?

Thea: Nothing. It’s just… well, it’s shocking that you know who Voldemort is.

Oliver: Well, I mean, I’m not immune to pop culture. I read a few of the Harry Potter books.

Diggle: Really? Was gonna bet Thea that you just saw the movies.

Oliver: There were movies? 

This little scene reads a lot like ones from season one where Oliver's missing knowledge about pop culture from the five years he was stranded on the island is played for laughs. But that can't be what's going on here, since all of the Harry Potter books and the first five movies were all out before Oliver got stranded (in the last third of 2007). So maybe it's just commentary on how Oliver doesn't seem like the kind of guy to know about HP? But Oliver would have been exactly the right age when the books were first coming out to have been into  them? Even if *he* wasn't, I do not buy for a second that an American kid of Oliver's background who was thirteen in 1998 (when the first novel was released in the US) could get through the next nine years of his life without knowing who Voldemort is. And to be unaware that there are movies? What? The "there were movies?" line feels dismissive more than confused or surprised, so maybe Oliver is kind of joking, like he's a book purist? Who refuses to acknowledge the existence of the movies? Which, okaaay? Or maybe this scene is an inside joke outside the narrative? I thought maybe this was a haha dig at Tom Felton (who played Draco in the HP movies), as he joined the cast of Arrow's "sister" show The Flash, but Felton joined The Flash in the TV season after the season in which this episode appeared, so? I give up.

But He's Just Little?: Pippin's Presence in Early LotR

In chapter two of The Fellowship of the Ring, we're told that Frodo lived alone but had lots of friends, "especially among the younger hobbits... who had as children been fond of Bilbo and often in and out of Bag End. Folco Boffin and Fredegar Bolger were two of these; but his closest friends were Peregrin Took (usually called Pippin), and Merry Brandybuck (his real name was Meriadoc, but that was seldom remembered)."* This passage comes in the middle of an expository section about how Frodo spent his time between Bilbo's leaving the shire and Gandalf's return and the subsequent revelations about the ring and the beginning of Frodo's journey. We hear about Frodo's wanderings throughout this period, including how he went "tramping all over the Shire with them [Merry and Pippin]." After this description, the narrative goes on to say, "so it went on, until his forties were running out, and his fiftieth birthday was drawing near."** The progression of this description implies that Frodo was wandering with Pippin before his forties were running out. But the marker of Frodo's fiftieth birthday also tells us how much time has passed since Bilbo left (that is, seventeen years, as Frodo was thirty-three at Bilbo's party). So, it seems that Pippin has been hanging out with Frodo for something in the vicinity of seventeen years. Fine. Except. We find out later that Pippin, during the bulk of the narrative, during the attempt to get the ring to Mordor et cetera, is only twenty-nine years old. When a Gondorian tells Pippin that he looks like a child, "a lad of nine summers," Pippin responds, "Though you are not far wrong. I am still little more than a boy in the reckoning of my own people, and it will be four years yet before I 'come of age', as we say in the Shire."*** We know that hobbits come of age at thirty-three****, so Pippin must be twenty-nine (33 minus 4). If he is "little more than a boy" at twenty-nine, he must absolutely have been a child at twelve, the age he would have been seventeen years earlier, when he was, apparently, "tramping all over the Shire" with Frodo. Friends "among the younger hobbits," indeed. If we grant that Tolkien is not absolutely specific about when Pippin started hanging out with Frodo, I guess we can assume that Pippin started doing so somewhere in his early or mid-twenties, which makes things make a bit more sense. But that certainly isn't the impression the description gives. It sounds like Frodo is bacheloring around, keeping company with the young relatives he likes better than his fuddy-duddy peers, for seventeen years while Gandalf is off not finding things out as quickly as one might like wizarding. But surely an eleven-year-old kid is not old enough to be a friend to an adult, not in this sense of "we take long walking holidays all around the Shire." With this age difference, it would make more sense if Frodo had adopted Pippin, as Bilbo did Frodo. But that certainly is never implied. It's tangled up, you see? And this one is particularly strange because Tolkien was notorious for niggling over exactly these kinds of details to make sure they were right.

You Can Do What Now?: Brick and His Crutch in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (the 1958 movie), Brick hurt himself and is walking with a crutch.***** His father, Big Daddy, tries to get Brick to talk about his alcoholism, and they have this exchange, during which Big Daddy takes away Brick's crutch and Brick falls:

Brick: This talk, it’s like all the others—it gets nowhere, nowhere! And it’s painful!

Big Daddy: [shoves Brick, who falls] All right, let it be painful! [takes Brick’s crutch away]

Brick: I can crawl on one foot and I can hop if I have to…

Big Daddy: If you're not careful, you're gonna crawl right out of this family.

Brick's last line, surely, is inside out? "I can hop on one foot and I can crawl if I have to" makes more sense, right? In that one doesn't crawl on one's feet? And in that hop-to-crawl would be progression toward the most desperate action within the sentence? And in that Big Daddy's next line picks up on "crawl" as if that's the last thing Brick said? But if Paul Newman got the line wrong, why didn't they do another take? Was this the best one they had (it *is* good)? And even if that was the case, they couldn't ADR the right line in? Did they not do ADR in 1958? My knowledge of film history definitely doesn't stretch to knowing that. Or maybe the line in the movie *is* correct? To demonstrate how distraught Brick is? I dunno. Every time I see this excellent, excellent film, this little curiosity tosses me out of it for a moment.

So those are my favorite narrative knots I'd love to untangle. What are yours? And do you see what I don't that might explain any of mine? 

*p. 41 of this edition of FotR

**p. 42

***p. 746 of this edition of RotK

****p. 21

*****This is a gross oversimplification of what's going on in this scene. If you've never seen this movie, do yourself a favor and go watch it. It's amazing.

Recommending Favorite Books to Favorite TV Characters

Here's a fun little game I like to play sometimes: which of my favorite books would I recommend to my favorite fictional characters? In this iteration, I'm imagining what I would suggest to some of my favorite TV characters, should I ever fall through my TV screen and have the opportunity to inflict my bookish opinions on them.

Father Brown (Father Brown): The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Father Brown can't leave a mystery alone and is deeply invested in both his faith and in doing what is right in order to help people. The Sparrow, in the way it weaves together questions about faith and humanity with the mystery of what happened on a Jesuit-run first contact mission to another planet, should be irresistible to him. 

John Crichton (Farscape): The Princess Bride, William Goldman

Crichton comes slowly unhinged over the course of Farscape, but never (permanently) descends fully into madness. He learns to embrace the absurdity of his situations, often with good humor, and thus he should feel right at home with the tongue-in-cheek, postmodern adventure story of The Princess Bride. 

Phryne Fisher  (Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries): Ms. Marvel, G. Willow Wilson

Phryne has no time for your prejudice, whatever its form, and she hasn't met a sticky situation she wouldn't jump into headfirst. I think she would follow the adventures of Kamala Khan and her transformation into Ms. Marvel with delight.

Hercule Poirot (Agatha Christie's Poirot): Copenhagen, Michael Frayn

Frayn's play about Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, quantum mechanics, and war is so delightfully thinky without ever losing sight of the human cost of all the questions it brings up that I think Poirot would find himself and his little grey cells, perhaps surprisingly, enraptured by it.

Oliver Queen (Arrow): The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

So many of the big things LotR is *about* seem like they would resonate pretty strongly with Oliver and maybe, maaaaybe help him hold on to the slivers of hope he sometimes manages to find. The concept of "the long defeat," Gandalf's counsel against despair, and the Scouring of the Shire all seem like bits that would be heartbreakingly relevant to Oliver Queen.

Who are your favorite TV characters, and what would you tell them to read?