Oxford is home to C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Lewis Carroll. At one point or another I have had trouble finishing their works, but I eventually did and am so glad I did.

1. White Teeth, by Zadie Smith (I read about half of it before putting it down at the start of a semester in grad school. I still haven’t gotten back to it yet.)
2. Ulysses, by James Joyce (I only made it through a few pages of it before I had to return it to the library.)
3. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (I got further into this one than Ulysses, but not much further. But at least I own my copy of this one.)
4. How to Be Good, by Nick Hornby (I hated it from the beginning. Really couldn’t get into it.)
5. How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn (I read a surprising amount of this before reaching one of those moments in the text where the main character, whom you’ve come to love, is about to screw up his life. I couldn’t prevent him, so I just stopped reading. I’m not sure I’ll ever go back.)

We’re visiting Hay-on-Wye today, so I thought I’d share some favorite authors.

1. Jane Austen
2. J.R.R. Tolkein
3. J.K. Rowling
4. Jasper Fforde
5. James Herriot

George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm turns 60 today.

I picked Animal Farm up off my parents’ book shelves in the living room when I was 10 or so. I don’t remember ever being told I couldn’t read things off their shelves, but I believe this marked the first occasion where I availed myself of the option. (It wasn’t until after my freshman year English class at Conn when three of us shared a copy of a tale of Giants in the Earth that I discovered my mother’s college copy on the shelf. Come to think of it, maybe I should read it now, since I’m pretty sure I didn’t have time to finish it before I wrote the paper.)

I’m sure I wasn’t expecting an allegory when I started and I’m sure I missed much of the undercurrent of the book (not being up on facism or socialist ideals in the fourth grade), but I do know that I understood a certain amount of the intended message. And I remember having a conversation with Dad about it while we were doing dishes one night (although I don’t recall what we talked about — 1984, perhaps, given that it would have been around that time?).

So, if you haven’t read it, do. From what I remember, it features pigs — of all sorts.

And if you have read it, feel free to do what I’m going to do at some point — see if you can track down the 1999 live-action made-for-tv movie voiced by Patrick Stewart, Kelsey Grammar, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Ian Holm (of LOTR fame), among others.

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince early this evening. I cried.

I went two-for-five. Not terrible odds, if we were playing baseball. But not great for literature. But still a good read. Jo Rowling says she won’t start writing book seven until 2006, so I will have a while to come up with some new predictions for the final volume.

Y’know, it never struck me until right now, that both one of my favorite books and one of my favorite movies feature wizards. How odd.

Of course, Dumbledore is a very good wizard, and the Wizard of Oz was “a bad wizard,” although bad in another way.

Heading up to Bethesda now…

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince arrives at midnight tomorrow night. I have just completed my re-read of the first five books and thought I’d share my thoughts in anticipation of my weekend readathon. But in deference to anyone who has not caught up on the series yet, I’ll do it on the other side of a jump. (more…)