Books

The Return of the King

The forces of good win against the forces of evil and the ring melts in mount doom. 

But it’s not quite that simple. 

The forces of good are on the brink of losing, in the middle of a suicidal assault that’s meant only to avert Sauron’s attention. Frodo’s standing on the brink of mount doom. And you know what that little rascal does? HE FLAKES OUT!

Turns out even Frodo can’t resist its power, and he decides not to destroy it after all. Luckily for the west, Gollum bites off his ring finger and stumbles into the fires of mount doom, ring and all. 

And even once the battle is won, there’s still a lot of work to do. Restoring order to the Shire is one of my favorite parts of the book, even though it doesn’t really belong there and the movies were right to omit it. 

In a lot of ways, this is the weakest and messiest of the trilogy. But it comes with so much payoff that it’s hard to gripe about the stilted story arcs, etc. 

It’s gone. It’s done. It’s over now.

A Separate Peace

Two boarding school kids go through a weird phase of their friendship.

I somehow dodged this as high school assigned reading, which is fortuitous, because I suspect adolescent me would have hated it. But reading it now, it feels a lot like adolescence felt.

The newly discovered power, the jealousy, the resentment, the senseless urge to cruelty, the unforgiving introduction to big and irreversible consequences. While no single piece of Gene’s experience made me say, “ah yeah, I’ve been there, bruv,” they collectively form into a whole that was remarkably evocative of my own. I ended up identifying with Gene in a way I rarely identify with characters. This book tapped into an emotional mainline.

There were times where I couldn’t understand Gene’s motivations, but I still don’t understand my own teenage motivations either.

Its ratio of whole to sum of parts is uncommonly high. If that whole coalesces for you, you’ll like it. If not, you won’t.

I remember learning the word jounce from this book

artist

😶‍🌫️

@gnosischain validator

Not to read too much into it, but that’s the kind of haunting stickiness I was getting at. 

I will never hear the word jounce again without thinking of this book