incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

As I re-read The Lord of the Rings, I intend to also read critical essays and other commentary. rushthatspeaks recommended the first of these, the Le Guin essay I discuss below; I also borrowed from the local library Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism, edited by Rose A. Zimbardo and Neil D. Isaacs, which looked to have a good range of material. I have some meta essays at lotrfic_crit bookmarked for later reading as well; other recommendations are welcome. (I do have access to a college library via Chad, though I should note that my background in literary theory is not strong.)

(Oh, and I think I forgot to say this earlier, but there may be spoilers for everything Middle Earth in these posts. If you haven't read the books yet, these posts will not be safe for reading along with. Via kalimac, here's a blog with chapter-by-chapter posts during a first reading; The One Ring.com has a similar list of articles by "A Tolkien Virgin," but the site's down until July.)

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Note: I decided to read this and then go back to Chapter 1, because the pacing of the entire opening is often criticized. Chapter 1 thus follows after dinner (and, possibly, a plea for fashion advice).

[ more LotR re-read posts ]

So, wedding July 4th weekend. Bought a new dress today, which I love. (Admittedly I'm biased because it fits astonishingly well (with the minor exception of the straps being a touch long, which I can easily fix; yes, that's why the torso is bunching a little in the pictures) and it wasn't that expensive (the shoes cost more)). However, it was the only one left on the rack, and it comes with this long sash thing that I can't quite tell what to do with. Therefore, behind the cut, I give you pictures and a poll:

[Edit: the dress is dark brown with cream, not black and white. Apparently I should've played with the color balance before posting the pictures.]

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Oh, and while I'm at it: single short string of fake pearls good for a necklace? Or something else?

Dinner and cleanup and so forth took a very long time, so I'm afraid chapter one of Fellowship will have to wait yet again.

Quickie time-in-review:

Spent two weeks with a cold. It was actually a relief to realize that I very likely caught it from Mom over Mother's Day weekend, because that meant it wasn't a flare-up or relapse of the sinus problems I'd had earlier. Other than that, not much fun: decongestants stopped working one or two colds ago, so I had pretty much a constant sinus headache and went through several boxes of Kleenex. At least the congestion stayed loose and I mostly avoided coughing.

Chad's parents and sister came up for dinner one night, which was great. We also had Chad's upper-level class and advisees over for dinner on Memorial Day, which is entertaining in the kind of way that makes my introvert self hide after a while (fortunately, dusk and the accompanying bugs were a reasonable excuse, not that any of them noticed my not coming back out of the house after a whiel). I'd had the day off and used it to cook: two batches of chocolate chip cookies, one batch of mac & cheese (so that the vegetarian would have something filling to eat). I was hoping for leftovers, since I didn't think baked food would be that popular on a hot day, but it was like locusts descending. College students; I should've known better.

Besides what's been already mentioned here, it's pretty much been work, a fair bit of it as I finished something short-fused. Between that, my cold, the weather, stressful LJ discussions, and, I don't know, the position of Saturn and the spatial arrangement of my office furniture, I've been feeling vaguely cranky. However, I'm cheerful about the LotR re-read project, and have hopes that this will carry over to a generally less-cranky attitude.