Book picks similar to
A Companion to J. R. R. Tolkien by Stuart D. Lee
tolkien
fantasy
fairy-tale
interrupted
The Ducks In The Bathroom Are Not Mine: A decade of procrastination 2007 - 2017
David Thorne - 2017
Includes Overdue Account, Walter's Cargo Shorts, Simon's Piecharts, Missing Missy, Obviously a Foggot, Formal Complaints, Justin’s Floodlight, Matthew’s Party, Permission Slip and many more.
Backwoods Genius
Julia Scully - 2012
After his death, the contents of his studio, including thousands of glass negatives, were sold off for five dollars. For years the fragile negatives sat forgotten and deteriorating in cardboard boxes in an open carport. How did it happen, then, that the most implausible of events took place? That Disfarmer’s haunting portraits were retrieved from oblivion, that today they sell for upwards of $12,000 each at posh New York art galleries; his photographs proclaimed works of art by prestigious critics and journals and exhibited around the world? The story of Disfarmer’s rise to fame is a colorful, improbable, and ultimately fascinating one that involves an unlikely assortment of individuals. Would any of this have happened if a young New York photographer hadn't been so in love with a pretty model that he was willing to give up his career for her; if a preacher’s son from Arkansas hadn't spent 30 years in the Army Corps of Engineers mapping the U.S. from an airplane; if a magazine editor hadn't felt a strange and powerful connection to the work? The cast of characters includes these, plus a restless and wealthy young Chicago aristocrat and even a grandson of FDR. It’s a compelling story which reveals how these diverse people were part of a chain of events whose far-reaching consequences none of them could have foreseen, least of all the strange and reclusive genius of Heber Springs. Until now, the whole story has not been told.
Sly Flourish's Dungeon Master Tips
Michael E. Shea - 2010
You’ve read both Dungeon Master’s guides. You’ve run a few games. You pick up ideas here and there on the net. Or maybe you're an old grizzled vet who has run games for 20 years.Maybe your game is feeling a little stale. Maybe your encounters didn’t run exactly as you wanted them too. Maybe you feel like you're stuck in a rut. Maybe you feel a bit overwhelmed when you have to come up with an exciting, creative game every week.You’re not looking for a huge tome on game theory. You don’t need yet another take on world-building. You’re looking for some practical tips you can use today to help you focus your energy in the right places and make some kick-ass D&D games for you and your friends. You want something you can read quick and start using right away.My friend, here is the book for you.This book was written to give you solid usable tips to help you build your story, design exciting encounters, and run a great game when you’re at the table. It’s a short book, designed to be read quickly and referenced often.Oh yeah, and it’s got some awesome original artwork by Jared Von Hindman of Head Injury Theater.This is a completely original book. Every chapter was written from scratch to help you focus on what’s important and get past some of the roadblocks we all face when designing a D&D game.
The Ragged Stranger: The Hero, The Hobo, And The Crime That Shocked Jazz Age Chicago
Harold Schechter - 2019
Guns are drawn, and in the ensuing hail of bullets, only the husband walks away. However, police soon find out, that what seems to be a robbery gone wrong is anything but. The Case of the Ragged Stranger, as the tabloids dubbed it, is a tale of deceit, betrayal, and depravity, a stranger-than-fiction mystery story whose shocking solution riveted the nation and made it one of the most sensational crimes of the Jazz Age.
Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale
Marina Warner - 2014
These fantastic stories have travelled across cultural borders, and been passed down from generation to generation, ever-changing, renewed with each re-telling. Few forms of literature have greater power to enchant us and rekindle our imagination than a fairy tale. But what is a fairy tale? Where do they come from and what do they mean? What do they try and communicate to us about morality, sexuality, and society? The range of fairy tales stretches across great distances and time; their history is entangled with folklore and myth, and their inspiration draws on ideas about nature and the supernatural, imagination and fantasy, psychoanalysis, and feminism. Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over her long writing career, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and The Sleeping Beauty, the Grimm Brothers' Hansel and Gretel, and Hans Andersen's The Little Mermaid, to modern-day realizations including Walt Disney's Snow White and gothic interpretations such as Pan's Labyrinth. In ten succinct chapters, Marina Warner digs into a rich collection of fairy tales in their brilliant and fantastical variations, in order to define a genre and evaluate a literary form that keeps shifting through time and history. She makes a persuasive case for fairy tale as a crucial repository of human understanding and culture.
Text Fails: 101 Epic Text Fails that Temporarily Ruined People's Lives (Autocorrect Fails)
Chris Chappelle - 2015
Note: These texting fails contain profanity, not for children.When are people going to learn that autocorrect can't be trusted? With FAILS like these, we actually hope that's not for a long time.This book complies 101 of the funniest, most viral and cringeworthy autocorrect screenshots to date.Guaranteed to put you on the floor laughing!
Art's Cello (Kindle Single)
James N. McKean - 2014
Told in eloquent, honest prose, Art’s Cello is a story about coming to terms with the past and letting go of the failures we allow to define us — and, in the process, honoring the lives of those we’ve lost. Jim McKean is an international award-winning violinmaker, author, and corresponding editor of Strings Magazine. He is a graduate of the first violinmaking school in America and the former president of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers. His novel, Quattrocento, was published in 2002. Cover design by Evan Twohy.
The Christian World of the Hobbit
Devin Brown - 2012
Tolkien takes readers into a world unlike any other, yet so much seems familiar. As Bilbo journeys there and back again, glimpses of the spiritual are seen.The Christian World of The Hobbit does what no book has done: it brings Tolkien fans new delight by introducing a side of Tolkien that is rarely explored but vitally important to his writings--especially The Hobbit. Written by internationally regarded Tolkien-scholar Devin Brown, this approachable, witty, and highly entertaining book offers up fresh perspectives to fans of The Hobbit, both the book and the film adaptation.
Stronger: Courage, Hope, and Humor in My Life with John McCain
Cindy Mccain - 2021
Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien's World
Verlyn Flieger - 1983
R. R. Tolkien is perhaps best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but it is in The Silmarillion that the true depth of Tolkien's Middle-earth can be understood. The Silmarillion was written before, during, and after Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. A collection of stories, it provides information alluded to in Tolkien's better known works and, in doing so, turns The Lord of the Rings into much more than a sequel to The Hobbit, making it instead a continuation of the mythology of Middle-earth. Verlyn Flieger's expanded and updated edition of Splintered Light, a classic study of Tolkien's fiction first published in 1983, examines The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings in light of Owen Barfield's linguistic theory of the fragmentation of meaning. Flieger demonstrates Tolkien's use of Barfield's concept throughout the fiction, showing how his central image of primary light splintered and refracted acts as a metaphor for the languages, peoples, and history of Middle-earth.
Air Crashes and Miracle Landings: 85 CASES - How and Why
Christopher Bartlett - 2018
Air Crashes and Miracle landings is a great resource for every pilot who wants a clear summary of the Whats, Hows and Whys behind the key aviation accidents. This book should be part of Human Factors and Crew Resource Management training." Richard de Crespigny--captain of Qantas QF32 Now has eighty-five accounts, some short, some long, with hard-hitting analyses, ranging from the disappearance of Amelia Earhart to that of Malaysian Airlines MH370, not forgetting AF447 where many human factors in addition to technical ones were responsible. Each chapter covers a specific type of incident in chronological order showing the evolution of accidents over time, and how many should never happen again because of advances in technology. Covering so many incidents, it provides background facts and insights for professionals and aficionados of the Air Accident Investigations/MAYDAY TV series, amongst others Lessons from these incidents made flying so safe today.
WE ALL FALL DOWN: THE TRUE STORY OF THE 9/11 SURFER
Pasquale Buzzelli - 2012
He spoke to his pregnant wife on the telephone before he began his evacuation after the South Tower fell. Sensing something ominous, Pasquale crouched down and huddled into a corner of the stairwell as the 110-story tower came crashing down around him. He survived the tower collapse and woke up in the open air hours later on The Pile, a stack of debris seven stories high. The firemen who rescued Pasquale shared his remarkable story of survival with the media, as did others who cared for him that day. His story became a myth, an urban legend, and an enigma that gave rise to much speculation. Here he tells his story in captivating detail of falling and "surfing' the collapse of the North Tower.Visit www.911surfer.com for more details.
Tennis Ball Self Massage: Stop Your Muscle and Joint Pain
Lauren Bertolacci - 2013
You’ve deloaded, done your recovery session, even taken a hot bath. Oh how nice a massage would be right now. The problem is not all of us have the time or the money to invest in some good soft tissue work. Want a cheap yet extremely effective way to get rid of your aches and pains? This easy to understand guide will help you address all of those problems and more. Best of all, you don't even need to leave your house or buy any expensive tool. Just grab a tennis ball and get started.Being able to treat your own pain is a very valuable tool. It can save you a lot of money and mean less trips to the physiotherapist as well as ensuring that you are keeping your body in good condition. Trigger points and tight muscles are a common cause of muscle and joint pain. They can refer pain to other areas as well as causing problems at the site itself. Although they don't count for all the pain you might be suffering from, releasing them can certainly help get rid of a lot of the pain, if not clear up your problem entirely. Have you ever been to the doctor and he or she told you that theres nothing wrong, even after extensive scans? You might simply need some work on your muscles. Keeping the muscle tissue quality high will help reduce the amount of injuries you suffer from, improve your posture as well as help a lot of muscle and joint pain.In this book you can learn how to effectively get rid of shoulder pain, neck pain, upper and lower back pain, hip and glute pain and stiffness, leg and knee pain, calf pain, ankle stiffness, Achilles problems and much more.Actual excerpt from the book of how I discovered this great technique."When I was playing in Germany, I had really bad shoulder pain. The kind that ran down to my fingers and made me unable to put my arms over my head. One night trying to get relief I grabbed my old Motorola and started laying on it, with it digging in under my shoulder. Slowly and excruciatingly I released the rotator cuff muscles and gave myself a pain free range of motion that I had only dreamed of before. Needless to say, I thought I was a genius and upgraded to a tennis ball pretty quickly."
The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life
Geoff Tibballs - 2011
We all know one! They like to groan and grumble, offering their own commentary on the shortcomings of modern life. Whether it is queues at the supermarket, the state of the health system, the price of a pint these days, the hairstyles of teenagers, or the number of Maltesers you actually get in a bag, there is always something that will get their goat. 'The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life' is a hilarious celebration of all these grumps, how to identify one, what exactly they find so irritating and why we find their rants quite so amusing.
Lost Humanity: The Mythology and Themes of LOST (Kindle Edition)
Pearson Moore - 2011
Pearson Moore goes to the heart of LOST, uncovering and explaining the fascinating core concepts: Faith versus Science, the Numbers, the nature of good and evil, and the struggle between free will and destiny. He will lead you to ideas and conclusions you never imagined, opening the world of LOST in fresh and exciting ways.Whether you understood LOST or were completely baffled, whether you loved it or hated it, Moore will show you concepts and ways of thinking about LOST you will find nowhere else.Moore's innovative thoughts and vibrant prose will keep you engaged as he explores the Island and its characters. He approaches LOST from four "nonlinear" points of view: Disorientation, Metadrama, Literary Analysis, and Chaos Theory. This is in-depth analysis that never lets go, keeping you immersed in the LOST world from cover to cover.There's no filler here. No interviews with stars about the cars they drive or the planes they fly. No weird theories. Just solid, thoroughly-researched, rapid-fire analysis from one of the most cited LOST authorities on the Internet. You may feel exhausted after a chapter. You may be shocked. You may become upset. But you will never be bored.This in-depth exploration spans nineteen chapters across roughly 350 pages. The first chapter sets up the problem, focussing on the complexities of LOST and identifying the means Moore will use to make the concepts accessible. The second chapter defines the thesis of LOST, which acts as a guide to understanding the major themes. Chapters Three through Nine cover major "linear" topics.The heart of the book begins with Chapter Ten. It is here that Moore unleashes the four "nonlinear" tactical devices to reveal the hidden meanings of LOST. He discusses the need for disorientation, and how this is essential to understanding LOST. He proposes the idea that LOST is metadrama, and he explains how understanding LOST in this way is useful to unraveling its secrets. He makes fresh use of literary theory, in ways never before applied to LOST. Finally, Moore brings an astounding, completely new perspective on television analysis with his concept of the Strange Attractor, an idea borrowed from chaos theory. It is here that Moore's analysis shines, allowing a depth of understanding never before achieved.For less than the cost of a cup of coffee, you can explore the stimulating world of LOST with an animated, engaging, thought-provoking guide. The Island awaits. Prepare to get LOST.