The Aviary

So, lo these many years ago*, I decided that it would be a good idea to make my own for-my-own-consumption-only unabridged audiobooks of The Lord of the Rings. Because the available options for unabridged recordings of LotR are...not good, and I enjoy reading aloud. This was obviously a ridiculous undertaking because I am terrible about completing long-term projects in anything like a timely manner, as is evidenced by the fact that is 2018, I haven't done any recording at all this year, and the last time I worked on it, I had only hit the beginning of The Two Towers.

However.

On a whim, I decided to listen to some of it while I knitted on my dinner break and you guys, it's pretty good. I mean, it's not in any way professional quality, but I read pretty well**. I have a long vacation coming up and may have to start working on this thing again, so that I can then listen to it.***








*That is, in 2015.

**I am also fortunate in that I'm not weirded out by the sound of my own voice most of the time.

***The problem with reading The Two Towers is that I have listened to the BBC radio version so many times that I'm not sure I can read the same lines without mimicking the inflections used in that recording.
It's going to be an issue.

So, along with cooking things yesterday and watching about an hour's worth of Stephen Universe, I decided on a ridiculous plan. I decided that I was annoyed enough by the available options to make my own recording of The Lord of the Rings. And then, I recorded about two and a half hours of it.

This is clearly an absurd thing to do - the whole thing is over two days long, and I am infamous for starting large projects, getting half way through, and not finishing them. Plus, I occasionally get sidetracked trying to find out weird little things about the book that stop me recording*. But, you guys, this book is absurdly fun to read out loud! Plus sometimes I get to sing! So great!

Other the other hand, I have recorded two and half hours of it and am still in chapter three. We haven't even left the Shire yet. Guys, why is the beginning of Fellowship so long? (Probably that is someone's favorite thing, in which case I apologize for maligning it. But I have to admit that I usually start with the Council of Elrond, if I don't just read the Moria bits and then skip straight to The Two Towers.)

Maybe I will actually meet Tom Bombadil by the time I go to bed tonight.






*I spent about 15 minutes yesterday trying to figure out if Cirth runes have names, like Tengwar letters or Futhark runes. As far as I can tell, they don't, but if there are other Tolkien nerds out there who know otherwise, please let me know.

Things:

- I enjoyed tonight's episode of The Flash immensely. I am here for all the Rogue team-ups, please and thank you. (I swear to god, I really do care about Barry et al but you really can't expect me to pay attention to them when I could be thinking about Captain Cold. Also ( spoilers ))

- I have recently started learning how to draw Celtic knotwork designs and am finding it very satisfying. I really enjoying making big whole-page designs - I find the actual process of drawing them very soothing, because it requires me to follow a series of steps that are time consuming and require concentration but aren't actually difficult and don't really require any sort of artistic talent. And then I get to color them, which is always pleasing. Plus, when they're done, it's very calming to trace over the lines with my fingers. I suppose it's a little like the idea of finger labyrinths or those zentangle things.

- Megan and I went to see the last Hobbit movie this weekend, so I am having a little bit of a Tolkien resurgence. Which is why I'm listening to the Silmarillion on audiobook. Possibly, that way I will actually finish it. Ungoliant has just eaten the two trees at present. If I can get past the Noldor returning to Arda, I will officially be farther than I've ever gotten before.

- The thing is, I am really happy for everyone who is rooting for the Seahawks - it's cool that your team won and is going to the Superbowl again - but I will pretty much also be really happy when football season is over and I don't have to talk about it with people at the library any more.

So, I went to see The Hobbit today and you guys, I am full of feelings about Middle Earth.

I used to reread Tolkien a lot and then I guess I reached a saturation point where I didn't feel like I needed too any more. (This point may have been the moment when I realized that there were significant chunks of dialogue in Two Towers that I could recite by heart. I'm pretty sure I can still do that.) So I don't reread LotR every year anymore and I go long stretches of time thinking that I've outgrown high fantasy. But then something comes along and makes me think about Middle Earth and no, I haven't outgrown high fantasy. I see the flaws in it now, maybe, but I still love it.

And I like Peter Jackson's movies. They're not the books, but they're glorious fanfic full of love for the source and that makes me happy. I don't need them to be the books - I have the books to be the books. The movies make me happy in different ways.

( Smallish, mostly unimportant spoilers. )

I have to take my sister to the airport tomorrow and then go to work on Monday. This is sad, because it means I probably don't have time for a giant Lord of the Rings marathon any time soon.

Things:

- I am mostly better! Not entirely - I still have a bit of a cough and more mucous than I'd like - but mostly. So that's good.

- I put the BBC radio production of LotR on my mp3 player today and started listening to it for the first time in a long time. It is still amazing and wonderful. It occurred to me today, as I was listening to it, that it was my very first introduction to audio drama. I was probably...11 or 12 when I first listened to it. I'd listened to audiobooks before - I nearly wore out my library's copy of Dragonsong, for example - and one day, the library had this set labeled The Two Towers. Which was (and probably still is) my favorite of the books in the trilogy*, so I snatched it and took it home. And it had sound effects! And music! And different actors for all the different parts! I hadn't realized you could do things like that in an audiobook** - it was seriously a revelation. I listened to The Two Towers and The Return of the King (the library never had Fellowship) so many times that there are entire sections of the book that I am not capable of reading without hearing those actors' voices in my head. It is still, for my money, the best adaptation of LotR there is. And although there are a couple actors I might quibble about (I've never really liked their Bilbo and I have reservations about Aragorn), it has the very best Sam. Which is, of course, the most important thing.

- Oh man, it has been years since I actually read those books, I should totally do that. I should buy it for my kindle - my copy is one of those all-in-one omnibus things which is too heavy to carry around. Apparently they are including materials from the appendices in the Hobbit movie? I should reacquaint myself with those.

- Tonight was movie night at Bainbridge. We watched The Wolf Man, which I had not seen in years. I have never been a big Wolf Man fan, I must admit. I do, however, very much like Claude Rains and he is lovely in it. And the yak hair is still hilarious, and I still find it charming that after his first transformation, Larry Talbot apparently decides to change his clothes before stalking the moors in search of prey. And I had fun during the discussion afterwards, because we got to talk about how much werewolf "lore" comes from this film, and about Werewolf of London (which is neat, because it was made before this movie and so doesn't use a lot of that "lore"), and about Universal monster films in general. There was a moment of I Have Opinions, when one of the guys who runs the movie night said that he thought that Dracula was the best of the Universal monster movies, because that is obviously wrong. Now, I love Dracula as I'm sure we all know, but I am fully willing to admit that it's not actually what you could call a good movie. The Transylvania bits are awesome and Mr Lugosi is lovely throughout, but everything that happens in London is so boring. And also incoherent and nonsensical. (What happens to vampire!Lucy, you guys? We never find out.) I vote Bride of Frankenstein for best Universal monster movie, but it's possible that I'm biased. What do you guys think?





*It has the Rohirrim, and Saruman, and Wormtongue, and the Ents, and Faramir, and the Uruk-hai, and Theoden, and Shelob, and Gandalf's return, and the Dead Marshes, and Shadowfax, and Eowyn, and did I mention the folk of Rohan? Look, I was a proto-heathen kid who was still really into horses the first time I read these books. The Rohirrim are the best thing ever. Anyway, Fellowship takes a while to get going (I used to skip straight to the Council of Elrond and go from there, after the first few times I read them) and Return is the depressing one, whereas Two Towers is nothing but awesome.

**Not that it's properly an audiobook, but as a tiny person, I did not really know that.

Things:

- One of the things I always do when I clean my bedroom is rearrange my altar. My room's been messy for a while this time and I haven't redone my altar since Disting (missing Ostara entirely, yes) but now it is all red candles and copper and Loki. And orange soda and gummi worms, because I like to give Loki silly things and sweets occasionally. It feels good, getting back to altar work. Like waking up, somehow.

- Like everyone else, I watched that behind-the-scenes video from the filming of The Hobbit. I watched it this morning, and immediately went to amazon and bought the book for my kindle, since the only copy I have is an enormous hardback. I don't think I've read Tolkien since the movies happened - it is still so amazingly good. Maybe I will reread LotR as well.

- Along with DS9, recently, I have been watching Sanctuary. I had watched something like half of the pilot once before, but got bored and wandered off. However, recently, I've been seeing lots of people talk about it online, so I decided to give it another chance. (The fact that I read spoilers helped a bit too - if I know that, eventually, there's going to be Nikola Tesla the electrokinetic mad scientist vampire, I can put up with a good deal of boring protagonist guy.) Unlike Fringe - the other show where I wandered off during the pilot and then came back later and enjoyed things more - I don't think this is actually a good show, but it is a terribly enjoyable show, and it's fun to watch while I crochet. Also, it gave me an episode where the plot was "shapeshifters and/or paranoia in frozen places". That is pretty much my favorite sci-fi/horror plot ever, so I was terribly glad to see it.

- I got the yarn for the Kira vest yesterday and started working on, since the shawl was finished. (Well, except for weaving in ends.) It is knitpicks' Cotlin, which I used before on my skirt and which I absolutely love. It is a cotton/linen blend (hence the name) and has a really pleasing weight to it. I think it'll work nicely for the openwork in this project and will hang nicely once the thing is done.