I grabbed it too. It’s been almost 40 years since I read it. Looking forward to a re-read. Except the Tom Bombadil part.
That part is so abstract. I had to re-read it a dozen times to try to get an idea on what to picture in my head, and I still had a very hazy idea. It wasn’t until I played LOTRO that it even solidified in my head that Bombadil was a real character, not some kind of drug-hazed dream of Frodo’s.
I want to punch the jollyness out of that singing fool.
That was the musical interlude. Would have been awesome if they included that in the director’s cut DVD… so I could skip to the next chapter.
That looks pretty interesting! Bought!
habibi
1771
I think I only re-read it twice before giving up and skipping it entirely. Such a weird digression in an otherwise epic tale!
I also think the Ent tree part is similarly slow and bizarre.
I recently learned that Frodo’s name was originally Bingo, and JRRT changed it only after it became clear to him that LoTR was going to be a lot more serious than The Hobbit. I also learned that early drafts of The Hobbit weren’t set in Middle-Earth.
I recently read Candy Man by Vincent King, author of Time Snake and Superclown, which I read last year. Candy Man is better, and if anything even more fucked up. A guy pretending to be blind wanders around on a far-future Earth where everything is built over and the people are lobotomized. He gets by selling drugged cotton candy to people, inciting them to express discontent, then reporting them to the authorities for doing so, all in exchange for drugs. He knows he is different from everyone else, but he doesn’t know how or why. He is obsessed with the fact that he has no name and no Purpose, and feels that if he could just have a name everything would be OK…
Kolbex
1773
Wow, I’ve never heard of this and from the title alone I assumed it was a very modern novel. When I clicked and saw the cover I thought, “damn, that’s an amazing impression of a 70s sf paperback cover,” and wtf it is a 70s sf novel! Going on the list.
Finished this last night - an excellent page turner, though the original whodunnit gets a bit lost in some of the story, and left me wanting more info on what happened
with the architect of the crew
RichVR
1775
Funny that you bring it up. I somehow got sidetracked and put it aside. I started reading The Keep by F. Paul Wilson, because I watched the movie. Now I’m on Nightworld. I’ll get back to it… eventually. :)
JoshL
1776
I read that! For the same reason. Funny how different the movie is. I love the scene in the book where the monster pretends to be afraid of a cross just to really piss off the Jewish researcher. But the monster in the movie has a completely different origin…
RichVR
1777
But he does crumble up the cross in the movie. For different reasons.
I remember back when the movie was being made that various magazines had leaked photos of Molasar/Rasalom. I was hooked.
And back then I didn’t realize how great the cast was. Scott Glenn, Jurgen Prochnow, Ian McKellen, Gabriel Byrne. Damn. And now @tomchick will call me an idiot because I missed the really great person or persons that he loves. :)
JoshL
1778
Yeah, the monster in that movie is fantastic. The smoke effects are crazy good.
https://www.amazon.com/Mexican-Gothic-Silvia-Moreno-Garcia-ebook/dp/B07YK1K1YK/
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s excellent Mexican Gothic is $3 today in the US Kindle store. Also noticed Paul Tremblay’s fantastic A Head Full of Ghosts at a similar price but it wasn’t a daily deal so who knows how long that will last. Spooky reading for the month.
Thanks for the tip! I have read A Head Full of Ghosts before this and I will second the recommendation.
Reminder: Check your emails for the latest Tor book giveaway. I like the name. The Haunting of Tram Car 015.
I read a short story by this writer. It was an alternate history story set in Cairo in 1912. It was a murder mystery about dead djinn. It was quite good. This is a good writer.
A Dead Djinn in Cairo? I read this one recently as well. Just downloaded the book too, but did not put it together. A lot of the time the free Tor books get moved to the very back of my backlog, might have to move this one up.
Yes, Dead Djinn was what I read. It’s a short so a quick read. The guy’s a sharp writer. Looks like he has a full novel in the same setting coming next year.
I don’t always download the free Tor books. I have such a big backlog now that if the premise and sample doesn’t grab me, I don’t bother.
The novella this writer has out now that Tor is promoting with this giveaway sounds interesting too. Three Black women are fighting the KKK in Macon back in the 1920s. Apparently some of the KKK are actual demons. Pricey for a novella, though.
