At some point after the election I wanted something escapist and comforting, so I picked up some Tolkien. (Laugh all you will at my use of “comforting” to describe a dark and morbid fantasy novel, but hey, it does have a happy ending!) The Peter Jackson movie versions of the trilogy were released while I was in college, and they were my true introduction to the Lord of the Rings series (excluding an animated version of The Hobbit from my childhood), but once I found the books themselves I was hooked.
While I got a nostalgic kick out of revisiting the Tolkien, I got stuck halfway through the second book in the trilogy (The Two Towers), so I think it’s time to switch to my next reading project.
A good friend of mine recently mentioned that My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead is all the rage (judging by how many people she’s seen reading it on the NY subway), and since I’ve been living under a rock I had to do some quick googling to see what all the fuss was about. Once it was clear that the focus of the book is revisiting an old favorite of the author’s (Middlemarch by George Eliot, unsurprisingly), our mini-book club of two decided we should start with the original inspiration. It’s embarrassing to admit that I’ve never read any Eliot, so maybe at age 34 (yes, I’m deep into the mid-30s, folks), it’s about time.
(Did you notice how that post came full circle with the “Old Favorites” theme? My high school English teacher would be proud – ha!)
Stitch Party 