Monday, February 28, 2022
Sunday, February 27, 2022
Weekly Reading Vlog #49: Herodotus p.450-452, Exodus 32-35, The Return of the King p.1148-1268, 0z 
Books (188 pages this week)
The Histories by Herodotus p.450-452 (2 pages)
Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum p.1012-1062 (from The Complete Stories of Oz) (50 pages)
The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien p.1148-1268 (from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien) (120 pages)
The Book of Exodus p.96-100 (Exodus 32-35) (From The Bible) (4 pages)
The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman p.290-302 (12 pages)
Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete. Still studying. Audio HERE. Supplemental Audio HERE)
Podcasts and Audiobooks: (Not mentioned in the video)
Revolutions Season 3: The French Revolution 2nd Listening From: 3.46- The Coup of Fructidor To: 3.51 The Coup of Prairial (from Revolutions Podcast)
Revolutions Podcast (New Episodes): 10.87- Anarchy in Ukraine: Nestor Makhno thy time has come
In the video I said I had read 210 pages this week, but I've double checked and it's actually only 188
For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Kamiura Town Beach Park next to Mountain (Kamiura Town, Oita Prefecture, Japan)
Throwback Thursday. This is a video from my 2009 Tour of Kamiura Town.
Kamiura Playlist HERE:
I'm late in linking to this, but several months ago a colleague of mine alerted me to https://www.flippity.net/ as a great resource for teaching online.
Unfortunately, shortly after he alerted me to it, flippity.net started having problems as a result of the Google security upgrade. (Flippity.net relies on Google spreadsheets.) The website owner explains all about it HERE. (This is, I believe, the same security upgrade which changed the links to all of my Google Drive Folders.)
But although some parts of flippity.net are still having problems, the matching game seems to still be working fine. I know this because I've used it several times in the past few months. Very useful for studying vocabulary sets. And much easier to work with than the Pelmanism for Google Slides game I posted last year.
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
New episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.87- Anarchy in Ukraine: Nestor Makhno thy time has come.
In a previous episode (last week, if memory serves), Mike Duncan had briefly name dropped anarchist Nestor Makhno, and said something like, "Don't worry all you Nestor Makhno fanboys and fangirls, we will talk all about your boy when the time comes." Which, I suspect, is what the subtitle to this episode, "thy time has come", is referring to.
I myself had never actually heard of Nestor Makhno before. Which probably should be embarrassing to me considering I once set about to give a series of Youtube lectures on the history of anarchism. (Yet another reminder that there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge, and that I need to read more and talk less.)
But at any rate, it's fascinating to see the conflict between the Reds and the Blacks take center stage.
...after all, the conflict between the Reds and the Blacks is how Mike Duncan originally started this whole series on the Russian Revolution. Way back in 2019, Mike Duncan began his series on the Russian Revolution with a ten episode prologue describing the split between Marx and Bakunin and the conflict between communists and anarchists. I got the impression from that opening that the rivalry between the communists and the anarchists would take center stage for the whole series. But ever since then, the anarchists have been absent from the Russian Revolution.
At one point (several months ago), I looked up on Wikipedia the history of anarchists in Russia just to make sure Mike Duncan wasn't leaving anything out. But to be fair to Mike, it looks like up until now the anarchists haven't really been paying a major role in events. (They've been on the periphery in 1905, the February Revolution, the October Revolution, etc, but not major players.)
But now, here at last, that conflict between the Reds and the Blacks is finally back in the front of the story.
It will be interesting to see where things go from here. I looked up Nestor Makhno on Wikipedia, and (spoiler alert), it looks like he survives the Russian Civil War and will go on to many more adventures before his death.
***********************************
Just posted Ep. 10.87--Anarchy in Ukraine. I swear I'm not doing this on purpose, it's just that history and current events are almost always basically the same thing. https://t.co/Df0sUHLTfE
— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) February 21, 2022
The original title had the definite article b/c it's obv meant as a direct reference, but in the end decided it wasn't worth people seeing it and assuming I was making an ignorant faux pas and rushing to correct/instruct me. https://t.co/NCQXciJjNr
— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) February 22, 2022
...actually as luck would have it, this last point dovetails with my grammar reading. On page 276 of The Grammar Book (which I just read a couple weeks ago) "the Ukraine" is listed as an example of a case where a region or a territory becomes a country, and thus loses the definitive article. (The other two examples in the book were "the Sudan" and "The Gambia").
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Dane's review of The Scarecrow of Oz is out now. (We're doing the series as a buddy read).
For my own review, see HERE.
Weekly Reading Vlog #48: Herodotus p.428-450, Exodus 30-32, The Return of the King p.1106-1148, 0z 
Books (116 pages this week)
The Histories by Herodotus p.428-450 (32 pages)
The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum p.980-988 (finished) (reviewed) (from The Complete Stories of Oz) (8 pages)
Rinkitink in Oz by L. Frank Baum p.990-1012 (from The Complete Stories of Oz) (22 pages)
The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien p.1106-1148 (from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien) (42 pages)
The Book of Exodus p.94-96 (Exodus 30-32) (From The Bible) (2 pages)
The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman p.280-290 (10 pages)
Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete. Still studying. Audio HERE. Supplemental Audio HERE)
Podcasts and Audiobooks: (Not mentioned in the video)
Revolutions Season 3: The French Revolution 2nd Listening From: 3.36- The Liquidation Process To: 3.46- The Coup of Fructidor (from Revolutions Podcast)
Revolutions Podcast (New Episodes): 10.86- The Communist Soviets: All power to the Soviets!* *The Communist Party
For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
The Spas of Amagase Town (Amagase Town, Oita Prefecture, Japan)
Throwback Thursday. This is a video from my 2009 Tour of Amagase.
Amagase Playlist HERE
Wednesday, February 16, 2022
A new episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.86- The Communist Soviets: All power to the Soviets!*
As is quite often the case, there is a lot of different subjects packed into this one episode. I feel like each of these different subjects could have been a whole episode in its own right, but as always Mike Duncan is doing a balancing act between covering the material and keeping the narrative moving.
For example:
At the beginning of this episode, Mike Duncan briefly mentions that in 1918 and 1919 there were revolutionary movements going on everywhere, not just in Germany. Examining this could easily have been a whole episode.
And then, there's the formation of the 3rd International, which also could have probably been a full episode on its own. (The history of the International fascinates me--as I've written before. Granted, the 3rd International is not quite so interesting, because it very quickly devolved from an idealistic organization to the foreign policy wing of Moscow. But then again, tracing that devolution would be an interesting subject in its own right.)
Then, we get into the depressing stuff--the massacres and the atrocities carried out by the Red Army and the Communists. (I'm currently listening to the history of the French Revolution, and I'm struck by the parallels between the two in how the peasant uprisings were treated.)
And then we get into the slow transformation of the Communist Party from an idealistic organization to a corrupt organization. And this is also depressing, but it's also fascinating. And it's particularly fascinating because Mike Duncan makes the point that the same thing was happening on both sides of the Civil War--the Whites were just as bad as the Reds. There are any number of interesting discussions about human nature which could be had here.
I also found it interesting to hear about how the money and supplies from the British actually just encouraged more corruption in the White Army. It reminded me of any number of similar cases throughout history.
For example, as I wrote in an addendum to my review of Sideshow by William Shawcross:
The US congress did attempt to cut funding to the Lon Nol regime, but as Shawcross details in his book, Nixon and Kissinger found a lot of clever ways around this, and lots of money did flow into the Lon Nol regime during this time period. Shawcross argues that this money was destructive. It encouraged corruption in the Lon Nol regime, and it made the Lon Nol regime entirely dependent on the United States for its defense.Furthermore, a fair amount of Lon Nol’s commanders were making accommodations with the Khmer Rouge and selling their weapons to the communists.Given this state of affairs, it’s difficult to see how things could have been improved even if more money had been pumped into Lon Nol’s government.
...also I believe the same was true of the South Vietnamese government. And the U.S. supported governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. History does indeed repeat itself. Human nature can sometimes be incredibly predictable.
Tuesday, February 15, 2022
A new Steve Donoghue Q&A this week. The whole thing is fun to listen to: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
As usual, I put in my own question:
"Lord of the Rings"--Could Tolkien have benefited from a stronger editor, or is the work perfect just the way it is?
Obviously this question is based on the fact that I'm currently reading Lord of the Rings. And I'm suspecting that there's no way an editor would let this thing be published nowadays. As I said in my review of The Fellowship of the Ring:
So, I know Tolkien is still much-beloved today. But if he were a new and unknown writer, there's no way he could get these books published nowadays, right? I feel like the publishers wouldn't allow such a slow pace in a fantasy series nowadays.
Given Steve's confused reaction to my question, I perhaps should have phrased it differently. Maybe "Could Tolkien have used an editor?" or "There's no way an editor would publish Tolkien nowadays, right?" Or something like that. But I think Steve's answer still works.
Monday, February 14, 2022
...and now it looks like the problem with the Blog Archive has been fixed. Looks like I posted one day too soon. (I waited a week, but I should have waited one more day.)
So, I'm going back to my original blogging style. Hopefully it stays fixed. I'll keep my eye on it. If it ever goes back to displaying "No Title", I'll quietly start putting titles on all my blog posts, but in the future I won't bore you all by making a big announcement of it each time.
The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum
(Read from The Complete Stories of Oz)
Started: January 31, 2022
Finished: February 13, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
Background Information
Originally published in 1915, this is the 9th book in the Land of Oz series. According to Wikipedia, the plot of this novel was recycled from the silent film His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (also written and produced by L. Frank Baum).
This book also marks the introduction of the characters Cap'n Bill and Trot to the Land of Oz series. Previously L. Frank Baum had tried to launch Cap'n Bill and Trot in their own series (The Sea Fairies and Sky Island), but when that series failed to get popular, he decided to just import Cap'n Bill and Trot over to the Land of Oz.
Also, part of this book takes place in the Land of Mo (from another L. Frank Baum book The Magical Monarch of Mo), so this book is one big crossover of L. Frank Baum related material.
Plot (SPOILERS)
Cap'n Bill and Trot (from the Cap'n Bill and Trot series fame) get sucked into a whirlpool while boating on the ocean, and end up in a mysterious underwater cave. And so begins another mysterious journey.
Like most of the Oz books, this is a journey story. The characters journey to strange lands, see strange things, and then move on.
After briefly ending up in the Land of Mo (and having a crossover with another L. Frank Baum book--The Magical Monarch of Mo), they at last make it to the Land of Oz. Kind of. Actually they're in Jinxland, a land which was never mentioned before in any of the other books, but which it turns out is some sort of autonomous kingdom inside the Land of Oz, but cut off from the rest of Oz by high mountains.
Once we get into Jinxland, then the characters stop journeying, and we actually stay in one place for the rest of the book. A plot is actually introduced, which has a protagonist, an antagonist, and eventually a resolution. (I think this is a first for the series.) The plot involves an evil king, a wicked witch, a beautiful princess, a gardener's boy, and a magic spell. The whole thing is very fairy-tale esque.
Oh yeah, and the Scarecrow also shows up--which is where the book gets its title.
Evaluation
I allowed myself to be charmed by the fairy-tale quality of this book.
I say "allowed myself", because in order to enjoy these books, you have to make a conscious choice to switch your brain off. (As much as possible, at least.) Nothing makes any sense at all. Character motivations are paper-thin. All the plot points are resolved by deus ex machina contrivances. And during the whole story, you're constantly thinking to yourself, "But if they had the power to do that all along, why didn't they use it earlier in the story?"
But then, one could make the same criticisms of the stories in The Brothers Grimm. Logic isn't the point of fairy tales. The atmosphere and the imagery is the point. And this book delivers upon plenty of fairy-tale imagery.
According to L. Frank Baum's Wikipedia Bio, he was very much consciously trying to imitate fairy tales in his writing. (And L. Frank Baum himself list The Brothers Grimm as his inspiration for the Oz books in the author's forward.) So if that's the aesthetic that he's deliberately going for, then fair enough I guess.
Links
As always, I'm relying on the analysis of Mari Ness at Tor.com. Her review of this book is entitled: Adventuring into Fairyland: The Scarecrow of Oz
Mari Ness makes a number of interesting observations. To quote briefly from her review:
This second, frequently hilarious plot focuses on the tangled and confused tale of Princess Gloria, rightful heir to Jinxland; her evil uncle King Krewl; Pon the Gardener’s Boy, in love with Gloria; the wealthy yet awful courtier Googly-Goo; the evil witch Blinkie; and the Scarecrow, sent along by Glinda the Sorceress to save Trot, Cap’n Bill and Button-Bright—and do a bit of conquest and nation building while he’s at it. It’s one of the few times Baum allows romance to enter his Oz books, and not surprisingly, the romance is treated with a decidedly skeptical and hilarious note. (Both Trot and Button-Bright, singularly unimpressed with Pon as a person, prince, and lover, advise both lovers to just get over it. Princess Gloria, however, explains soulfully that a woman cannot choose whom she might love, she just, well, loves, unworthy object or not. Although this might explain a lot, Trot doesn’t buy it, and her reactions—and Button-Bright’s—are priceless.)Baum tweaks the usual fairy tale ending. Instead of automatically elevating the rightful heir to the throne at the tale’s end, he adds an unexpected note of populism/quasi democracy by having the Scarecrow ask the people of Jinxland to name their ruler. Not surprisingly, they take a look at the available candidates and yell out, “Scarecrow!” He, however, refuses, and with a little more tugging, the people of Jinxland yell out a name and by popular, democratic consent become a monarchy again. Er. Yay?
(Go check out the whole thing).
I've also, as always, relied heavily on Wikipedia. Among other observations, Wikipedia notes:
Although the journey of an American child to Oz had long been a favorite plot for Baum, this work represented its last appearance: no more children would be inducted into Oz for the duration of his work on the series.[4]
That's probably for the best. That plot element has been getting overdone in this series. It will be interesting to see what other stories L. Frank Baum can tell. (This is book number 9, so there are still 5 L. Frank Baum Oz books left to work through before we get to the end of his run on the series.)
I'm also doing this series as a buddy reads with Dane Cobain. His written review is HERE. To quote from part of it:
This book was an interesting one for me because I almost feel as though it didn’t need to be an Oz book. In typical style, the titular scarecrow doesn’t actually make an appearance until towards the end of the story, and it could easily have been written in such a way that he wasn’t required at all. And then Dorothy and the rest of the Oz crew only really show up to say hello at the end, as seems to be the tradition for Oz books.
Odds and Ends
Probably to fully appreciate this story, one would need to first read the other two stories in the Cap'n Bill and Trot series: The Sea Fairies and Sky Island. Unfortunately, being out here in Vietnam, I was unable to get my hands on any copies.
I did briefly contemplate trying to read those books off of project Gutenberg, but I dislike reading large amounts off of the computer screen, and so in the end decided against it.
Besides, as I've been noting in my reviews, L. Frank Baum is pretty sloppy in his continuity. Stuff will be established in one book, and then just completely ignored in the next book. And so if that's the case, then I don't feel too guilty about missing some books--particularly if they're only crossover books. I'll just rely off of the Wikipedia summaries instead. (In fact, as Mari Ness points out in her review, Trot apparently had a loving mother that was established in the first two books of the Cap'n Bill and Trot series, and this mother is now completely forgotten about as Trot and Cap'n Bill agree to stay forever in the Land of Oz.)
Extended Quotation
It was Button-Bright who first discovered, lying on his face beneath a broad spreading tree near the pathway, a young man whose body shook with the force of his sobs. He was dressed in a long brown smock and had sandals on his feet, betokening one in humble life. His head was bare and showed a shock of brown, curly hair. Button-Bright looked down on the young man and said:
“Who cares, anyhow?”
“I do!” cried the young man, interrupting his sobs to roll over, face upward, that he might see who had spoken. “I care, for my heart is broken!”
“Can’t you get another one?” asked the little boy.
“I don’t want another!” wailed the young man.
By this time Trot and Cap’n Bill arrived at the spot and the girl leaned over and said in a sympathetic voice:
“Tell us your troubles and perhaps we may help you.”
The youth sat up, then, and bowed politely. Afterward he got upon his feet, but still kept wringing his hands as he tried to choke down his sobs. Trot thought he was very brave to control such awful agony so well.
“My name is Pon,” he began. “I’m the gardener’s boy.”
“Then the gardener of the King is your father, I suppose,” said Trot.
“Not my father, but my master,” was the reply.
“I do the work and the gardener gives the orders. And it was not my fault, in the least, that the Princess Gloria fell in love with me.”
“Did she, really?” asked the little girl.
“I don’t see why,” remarked Button-Bright, staring at the youth.
“And who may the Princess Gloria be?” inquired Cap’n Bill.
“She is the niece of King Krewl, who is her guardian. The Princess lives in the castle and is the loveliest and sweetest maiden in all Jinxland. She is fond of flowers and used to walk in the gardens with her attendants. At such times, if I was working at my tasks, I used to cast down my eyes as Gloria passed me; but one day I glanced up and found her gazing at me with a very tender look in her eyes. The next day she dismissed her attendants and, coming to my side, began to talk with me. She said I had touched her heart as no other young man had ever done. I kissed her hand. Just then the King came around a bend in the walk. He struck me with his fist and kicked me with his foot. Then he seized the arm of the Princess and rudely dragged her into the castle.”
“Wasn’t he awful!” gasped Trot indignantly.
“He is a very abrupt King,” said Pon, "so it was the least I could expect. Up to that time I had not thought of loving Princess Gloria, but realizing it would be impolite not to return her love, I did so. We met at evening, now and then, and she told me the King wanted her to marry a rich courtier named Googly-Goo, who is old enough to be Gloria’s father. She has refused Googly-Goo thirty-nine times, but he still persists and has brought many rich presents to bribe the King. On that account King Krewl has commanded his niece to marry the old man, but the Princess has assured me, time and again, that she will wed only me. This morning we happened to meet in the grape arbor and as I was respectfully saluting the cheek of the Princess, two of the King’s guards seized me and beat me terribly before the very eyes of Gloria, whom the King himself held back so she could not interfere."
(Taken from the beginning of Chapter 10: Pon, the Gardener’s Boy. This is a pretty good summary of the central conflict for the second part of the story.)
Meh. It's okay enough as a little fairy tale. 5 out of 10 stars I guess.
February 6, 2022 p.888-896
February 13, 2022 p.896-980
Video Review (Playlist HERE)
Sunday, February 13, 2022
All Posts Will Have Titles Going Forward
With apologies, this is another blogging about blogging post. In other words, this is probably only of interest to me, but...
Starting last week, the "Blog Archive" widget (on the left hand side of the screen) started displaying "No title" for any post that didn't have a big orange title at the top.
Previous to last week, the Blog Archive had displayed the first line of any post with a formal title. Which allowed a reader to easily find posts in the Blog Archive, even those without titles.
So, for comparisons sake, this is what my February Blog Archive looked like on February 3.
 |
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220203012713/http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/ |
and this is what it looks like now
Apparently this is an issue that's affecting all blogs on blogger--see people discussing this problem on the help form HERE.
I waited a week to see if this was just a temporary bug that would resolve itself, but now that one week has gone by, I'm going to regard this change as permanent.
Of course, as someone who has been using blogger for close to 20 years now, it's hard to tell what is really "permanent" around here. It could change back again in 6 months, or possibly in 6 years. But until it does, I'm going to have to change my blogging style.
As regular readers know, I typically don't use big titles on smaller posts for aesthetic reasons. (It seems like overkill on a small post). But, in order to keep the Blog Archive functional, I'm going to have to change this policy. From now on, all posts, big or small, will now get titles, until the time that the Blog Archive Widget changes back to the way it used to be--whenever that ends up happening, if that ends up happening.
This is just going to be for all new posts going forward. I don't think I'm going to change any of the old posts.
Update: February 14, 2022
Update: February 14, 2022
...and now it looks like the problem with the Blog Archive has been fixed. Looks like I posted one day too soon. (I waited a week, but I should have waited one more day.)
So, I'm going back to my original blogging style. Hopefully it stays fixed. I'll keep my eye on it. If it ever goes back to displaying "No Title", I'll quietly start putting titles on all my blog posts, but in the future I won't bore you all by making a big announcement of it each time.
Weekly Reading Vlog #47: Herodotus p.426-428, Exodus 29-30, The Return of the King p.977-1106, 0z 
Books (230 pages this week)
The Histories by Herodotus p.426-428 (2 pages)
The Scarecrow of Oz by L. Frank Baum p.896-980 (from The Complete Stories of Oz) (84 pages)
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien p.960-971 (finished) (reviewed) (from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien) (11 pages)
The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien p.977-1106 (from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien) (129 pages)
The Book of Exodus p.92-94 (Exodus 29-30) (From The Bible) (2 pages)
The Grammar Book by Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman p.278-280 (2 pages)
Tieng Viet 123: Vietnamese for Beginner p.10-11 (not yet complete. Still studying. Audio HERE. Supplemental Audio HERE)
Podcasts and Audiobooks: (Not mentioned in the video)
Revolutions Season 3: The French Revolution 2nd Listening From:3.34a- The Republican Calendar To: 3.36- The Liquidation Process (from Revolutions Podcast)
Revolutions Podcast (New Episodes): 10.85- The German Revolution: There was a revolution in Germany. But it wasn't like the revolution in Russia
The video of the shopping mall in which I got the new books is HERE.
For more information about what this is and why I'm doing it, see HERE.
Wednesday, February 09, 2022
I'd been thinking about writing up my two cents on the Joe Rogan issue, but Sam Harris has saved me the trouble. I'm just going to link to Sam Harris's video. It says everything I would want to say on the issue, much better than I would say it.
I'm with Sam 100% on this one. Almost 100%. I think Sam might gloss over the difficulties still being faced by minorities in work, study and social situations. And unlike Sam, I think the "Some of my best friends are black" defense is viewed with skepticism for a reason. But I'm 100% with him on his main point--the notion that using the n-word as a racial slur is completely different from using it in some other way.
Tuesday, February 08, 2022
New episode of Revolutions Podcast is out: 10.85- The German Revolution: There was a revolution in Germany. But it wasn't like the revolution in Russia
So, as I mentioned last week, I'd been hoping for a whole episode on the German Revolution. So I was delighted that Mike Duncan decided to devote a whole 45 minute episode just to the German Revolution. It was what I wanted all along.
...actually, way back when, before Mike Duncan announced that the Russian Revolution would be his final season of Revolutions Podcast, many people were wondering if the German Revolution might be a whole season. (I admit to being one of the number hoping for this.) But aside from a whole season, a whole episode is the next best thing.
It was a fascinating episode. I had known some of this before, but I also learned a lot.
Much of my knowledge of this period comes from the historical fiction series November 1918: A German Revolution by Alfred Doblin. It's from that series that I recognize names of the SPD like Friedrich Ebert (W). Ebert was portrayed in these books as the antagonist of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. I had initially assumed he was a force of the right, and I remember I had been reading Karl and Rosa (A) for a while before I realized that Ebert was the head of the German Socialist party!
Mike Duncan does a good job of explaining all of this--telling us who Ebert is, and the various factions in the German socialist party.
I also thought Mike Duncan explained the German Revolution very clearly, and he explained the differences between the German Revolution and the Russian Revolution--and why one succeeded and the other did not--in a very easy to understand way.
Granted I'm no expert, so I don't know what a historian would make of Mike Duncan's analysis, but I found it very easy to follow.
Other Notes:
* Based on Mike Duncan's brief biographical sketch, it sounds like Rosa Luxemburg had a really fascinating early life. I'm only familiar with her - later - life, but it sounds like her early life would be interesting to read about.
* I thought Mike Duncan did a good job generally of tying the German Revolution to the Russian Revolution. But I got the impression from Alfred Doblin's novels that some of the Bolshevik's were even more directly involved. If memory serves, I believe Doblin portrays Radek (W) as being involved in the German Revolution in the capacity as Lenin's liaison. I'm not sure how much of that is true. (According to Wikipedia, it looks like Radek was in Germany at the time, but had a minor role on everything that was going on.)
* Mike Duncan says that after the German Revolution got put down, the hope of world wide proletarian revolution vanished. But there were a lot more revolutions around this period, I believe (see Wikipedia: Revolutions of 1917–1923). I wonder if any of these will get mentioned during the course of the podcast.
Monday, February 07, 2022
Started: The Return of the King by J. R. R. Tolkien (from The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien)
Started: The Hobbit / The Lord of the Rings Box Set by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien
Started: December 20, 2021
Finished: February 6, 2022
(This review is written using my new format for book reviews.)
Background Information
Originally published in 1954, this is the second book of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (following on from The Hobbit, and The Fellowship of the Rings).
...although the word "trilogy" may be slightly misleading in this case, because although The Lord of the Rings was published in 3 separate volumes, Tolkien composed it all together as one whole. For this reason, a lot of people regard it as just one whole work--including the publishers of my box set edition, who write in the introduction to the trilogy (placed at the beginning of the previous volume):
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is often erroneously called a trilogy, when it is in fact a single novel, consisting of six books plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes. (Notes on Text, p.ix, Douglas A. Anderson)
Presumably for this reason, the page numbers in my box set are continuous over the 3 books. The Fellowship of the Rings ends on page 536, and The Two Towers starts with its first page numbered as 537, even though it is in a separate binding.
As you can probably guess from this, the tone, plot, pacing, and feel of this book is remarkably similar to its predecessor, and consequently there might not be a lot of new things to say in this review.
My History With this Book
I mentioned in my review of Fellowship that I did Fellowship as an audiobook back in early 2001. As I mentioned, I found the experience of doing this series by audiobook dissatisfying, and was feeling more and more confused about what was actually going on. After I finished Fellowship, I checked The Two Towers out of the library next. But very early on in The Two Towers, I decided that I had completely lost comprehension of the story, and that I wasn't getting anything out of this series by doing it as an audiobook, and I bailed on it.
And then, like everyone else in the world, I saw the Peter Jackson movie when it came out in 2002. So, like everyone else, I've known the story from the movie.
But I've felt guilty ever since about never finishing this trilogy (as I confessed before here and here). I mean, everyone is always talking about this thing. So for the past 20 years, I've always been meaning to come back to it. I even bought the trilogy again at one point when I lived in Japan (around 2007 and 2008) with the intent to give it another go, but only got a few pages into it before I realized it was just as slow moving as I remembered it, and that I would need to clear out some space in my reading schedule so I could give it more attention. And then I just never got around to it.
I don't remember exactly at what point I bailed on the audiobook 20 years ago, but it was fairly early on. I remember the scene of Boromir's death. And I think I remember Aragon, Gimli and Legolas starting to track the Orcs, but I don't remember much more than that.
And as for Boromir's death, I had known that scene was coming ever since middle school. My best friend was reading these books in middle school, and on a school field trip (7th or 8th grade) we were sitting next to each other on the bus, and he suddenly groaned while he was reading. "Oh no!" he said. "Boromir's dead!"
"What?" I said.
"One of the Fellowship of the Ring. He died," my friend explained mournfully.
Summary of the Plot
As with last time, I'm going to assume everyone knows the plot already. Everyone has either read these books, or seen the Peter Jackson movies, right?
Although if you've only seen the movies, it's worth noting that the story is distributed slightly differently in the books. In the movies the death of Boromir was at the end of Fellowship, but in the books it is in the beginning of The Two Towers. In the movies, the encounter with Shelob the giant spider is in the beginning of Return of the King, but in the books it is in the end of The Two Towers.
The book is also structured differently. The book is split into two halves--the first half dealing with the battles, the second half dealing with Frodo and Sam and their journey. (The movie, if memory serves, cut back and forth between these two story lines, but the book just splits them into two separate halves.) Thus the big battle scenes that make up the climax of the movie occur halfway through the book.
Evaluation
As I mentioned above, this is part of the same work as Fellowship, so a lot of the same comments I made about Fellowship are going to be the same here as well.
Although it's not exactly the same. This book gets off to much more of a running start than Fellowship. Fellowship took forever for the story to get going, but in The Two Towers, we start out right in the middle of the action. And, although there are a lot of slow sections, there's generally speaking a lot more action in this book than there was in Fellowship.
Also, there's a lot less songs in this book. The Two Towers has a couple songs at the beginning, but it's nothing like Fellowship were characters were breaking into songs every couple pages.
This book does have some great moments.
The battle at Helm's Deep comes is pretty intense and exciting.
And the confrontation with Shelob the giant spider is delightfully creepy. (I think Tolkien could have been a great horror writer if he had wanted to be.)
Tolkien's great strength is, of course, the world building. When we encounter the Riders of Rohan, Tolkien does a good job of imagining the simple warrior culture of men who ride horse on the plains Riders of Rohan. There's also a lot of mythos built up around the ancient Kingdom of Gondor and its lore. And, of course, there's all the world of the Ents, and their lore. There's a lot of stuff to immerse yourself in in this book.
...but, let's face it, the plot of this trilogy isn't all that impressive, is it? I mean, it's basically just a big evil force that wants to conquer the world. And the whole quest to destroy the ring is kind of a MacGuffin , isn't it?
There is still a lot of descriptions of landscape in this book. And, as with the previous book, I often had trouble visualizing Tolkien's descriptions. (And I sometimes did not recognize his vocabulary). I occasionally had to fight myself to keep my mind from wandering off during the descriptions of landscapes, but I was able to get through this book.
Extended Quotation
The bubbling hiss drew nearer, and there was a creaking as of some great jointed thing that moved with slow purpose in the dark. A reek came on before it. 'Master, master!' cried Sam, and the life and urgency came back into his voice. 'The Lady's gift! The star-glass! A light to you in dark places, she said it was to be. The star-glass!'
'The star-glass?' muttered Frodo, as one answering out of sleep, hardly comprehending. 'Why yes! Why had I forgotten it? A light when all other lights go out! And now indeed light alone can help us.'
Slowly his hand went to his bosom, and slowly he held aloft the Phial of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo's mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame, a minute heart of dazzling light, as though Earendil had himself come down from the high sunset paths with the last Silmaril upon his brow. The darkness receded from it until it seemed to shine in the centre of a globe of airy crystal, and the hand that held it sparkled with white fire.
Frodo gazed in wonder at this marvellous gift that he had so long carried, not guessing its full worth and potency. Seldom had he remembered it on the road, until they came to Morgul Vale, and never had he used it for fear of its revealing light. Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and knew not what he had spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his, clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit.
But other potencies there are in Middle-earth, powers of night, and they are old and strong. And She that walked in the darkness had heard the Elves cry that cry far back in the deeps of time, and she had not heeded it, and it did not daunt her now. Even as Frodo spoke he felt a great malice bent upon him, and a deadly regard considering him. Not far down the tunnel, between them and the opening where they had reeled and stumbled, he was aware of eyes growing visible, two great clusters of many-windowed eyes-- the coming menace was unmasked at last. The radiance of the star-glass was broken and thrown back from their thousand facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began steadily to glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope of escape.
Frodo and Sam, horror-stricken, began slowly to back away, their own gaze held by the dreadful stare of those baleful eyes; but as they backed so the eyes advanced. Frodo's hand wavered, and slowly the Phial drooped. Then suddenly, released from the holding spell to run a little while in vain panic for the amusement of the eyes, they both turned and fled together; but even as they ran Frodo looked back and saw with terror that at once the eyes came leaping up behind. The stench of death was like a cloud about him.
(**ENDQUOTE--This is from page 942-943 in my edition)
This quotation illustrates a couple of different things.
First of all, that description of an evil giant spider is just really creepy, isn't it?
But then secondly, all the lore crammed into this little passage. Stuff about the ancient elves and the Simarils.
And speaking of lore, there is so much ink spilled about all of this stuff. Heading over to Wikipedia to read more about Shelob, we can read:
The Tolkien scholar Carol Leibiger writes that Shelob is presented as a disgusting female monster in the story.[5] The Anglican priest and scholar of religion Alison Milbank adds that Shelob is undeniably sexual: "Tolkien offers a most convincing Freudian vagina dentata (toothed vagina) in the ancient and disgustingly gustatory spider Shelob."[6] Milbank states that Shelob symbolises "an ancient maternal power that swallows up masculine identity and autonomy", threatening a "castrating hold [which] is precisely what the sexual fetishist fears, and seeks to control".[6] The Tolkien scholar Jane Chance mentions "Sam's penetration of her belly with his sword", noting that this may be an appropriate and symbolic way of ending her production of "bastards".[7]
The scholar of children's literature Zoë Jaques writes that Shelob is the "embodiment of monstrous maternity"; Sam's battle with Shelob could be interpreted as a "masculine rite of passage" where a smaller, weaker male penetrates and escapes the vast female body and her malicious intent.[8] The Tolkien scholar Brenda Partridge described the hobbits' protracted struggle with Shelob as rife with sexual symbolism.[9] She writes that Tolkien derived Shelob from multiple myths: Sigurd killing Fafnir the dragon; Theseus killing the Minotaur; Ariadne and the spider; and Milton's Sin in Paradise Lost.[9] The result is to depict the woman as a threat, with implicit overtones of sexuality.[9]
Where did all these Tolkien scholars come from? I mean, Tolkien only just published this stuff 70 years ago--it's not like this is some ancient Greek text. But I guess that's how influential these books have become.
Odds and Ends (Random Observations)
* In my review of The Hobbit, I mentioned some concern that the goblins are portrayed as the Amalekites--that is, there seems to be some sort of unspoken rule that you had to kill them all whenever you encountered them, and that it was a sin to leave any goblins (or orcs) left alive. There are multiple passages in The Two Towers which give the same impression. As with my thoughts on The Hobbit, I'm conflicted about whether or not this is problematic, or whether having evil monsters in the story is just part of fairy tales.
What's interesting about the orcs though is that in The Two Towers for the first time the reader gets to listen in on extended conversations that the orcs are having with each other. And it's clear that the orcs are not mindless monsters. They talk to each other just like humans do.
In fact, for some reason, Tolkien has written the orc dialogue as sounding more like modern English than the other races. All the other characters in the book speak somewhat like they're in an ancient epic. But the orcs just use a 20th century dialect.
* And then speaking of the problematic stuff, in this book we get some brief description of the human peoples who have aligned themselves with Sauron. They are described as having black hair and dark skin ("swarthy"). Tolkien doesn't really harp on this. (The hair and skin color just get briefly mentioned). But it's something you can't help but notice nowadays.
I'm not sure this necessarily means that Tolkien is racist. It's not clear that the humans are joining up with Sauron because they have dark skin--they could just happen to have dark skin. But given the increased sensitivity of today's times, I'm sure this would have been written differently nowadays.
There is, it probably won't surprise you to learn, a whole Wikipedia article about how Tolkien's portrayal of race has been dissected by scholars.
* The sections with Frodo and Sam journeying to Mordor were always my least favorite parts of the movies (both the Peter Jackson trilogy, and the Rankin Bass animated one.) I always thought the emotional struggles of Frodo were just so boring.
I was dreading it, then, when I realized that the whole second half of the book was Frodo and Sam. But it wasn't as bad as I feared. The emotional struggles of Frodo aren't harped on too much. Tolkien's main concern is, as always, describing the landscapes. And as always I struggled to visualize what he was describing, but it could occasionally be interesting at the same time. Some of the visual imagery stuck in my mind--for example the description of the swamp where the dead spirits were looking up from the pools of water, etc.
* The names Sauron and Saruman are so easy to confuse, aren't they? Especially when reading.
I believe research on reading has indicated that people don't look at every letter of a word when reading. We just look at the general shape of the word. So my brain was constantly like 'Okay, there's an "Sa" at the beginning, an "r" in the middle, and an "n" at the end. They're talking about "Sauron".' And then only several lines of dialogue later did I realize the characters were talking about Saruman, and I had to go back and re-read the section.
I wonder why Tolkien gave them such similar names.
* While I was reading this book, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about how he was reading this same book to his son every night. "How about that!" I thought. "What a coincidence!" And then the comments to that post were filled with people (many of them mutual friends) all talking about how they were also currently reading this trilogy.
Is this just the noticing effect? Or is everyone reading these books right now?
Connections with Other Books I've Read (And Other Links)
* In this volume, the dwarf Gimli has become obsessed with the Lady Galadriel, and insists that everyone else he meet acknowledge her as the "fairest of ladies" or he will fight them.
This strikes me as straight out of Don Quixote. (Many of Don Quixote's misadventures resulted from him attempting to fight anyone who did not acknowledge his lady to be the most beautiful.) Given how well-read Tolkien was, I suspect the allusion must be intentional.
* Steve Donoghue posted a video earlier this month on The Seven Signs of Classical Fantasy which touches on a lot of the themes in Lord of the Rings.
This is largely the same as Fellowship, but with the plot and pacing increased. I gave Fellowship 6 stars, so I suppose, I should bump this one up to 7 stars.
Weekly Reading Vlogs (as mentioned above, the page numbers for this edition start from 537):
December 26, 2021 p.537-652
January 2, 2022 p.652-682
January 9, 2022 p.682-738
January 16, 2022 p.738-790
January 23, 2022 p.790-828
January 30, 2022 p.828-876
February 6, 2022 p.876-960
Video Review (Playlist HERE)