Getting there! I finished book 5 of 6 last night - one more to go, and I have set myself the goal of finishing it before going on holiday so I can read something other than Tolkien with a clear conscience - it's not sunbed reading!
I still don't have any desire to watch the films. But I do feel that I'm reading something which is a significant contribution to English language(ish!) literature, and it is worth the hype. It is the first book/set of books that I've read since starting to work through this list that I have felt really justified its position on the "top 100" on any grounds other than being pretty pretentious!
Will post one final time when I finish it!
Wednesday 28 April 2010
Saturday 17 April 2010
The best chocolate brownie recipe in the world
I've just reached the half way point in LOTR - finished book 3 of 6. Still interested, but I don't really have anything more to say about it so far. Except, that I'm admiring the way that Tolkien, on a regular basis, seems to have thought "Hmm - story needs moving along. I know! I'll bring in a character who can carry them and cover vast distances with one step." This device could have been useful in the last Harry Potter!
Anyway - so it was Martin's birthday this week, and rather than making him a birthday cake as such, I decided to make triple chocolate brownies. This is a recipe I came across in Delicious magazine in 2008, and it truly is the best chocolate brownie recipe ever. It justified a year's subscription all by itself (not that I paid for it - thank you Susan :-) )!
It's so good that I thought I'd share it - and it can really easily be made gluten free without tasting any different.
So, you will need:
150g unsalted butter
200g plain chocolate, broken into squares
175g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
75g plain flour, sifted (replace this with gluten-free flour for the g-f version, I used Dove Farm)
100g white chocolate, cut into 5mm - 1cm chunks
100g milk chocolate, cut into 5mm - 1cm chunks.
Preheat the oven to 160 C/140 c fan/gas 3 - adjust accordingly if your oven is fierce as you really don't want to overcook these.
Grease & line the base and 2 sides of a 20cm square cake tin with 1 piece of baking paper, which makes it easier to lift out of the tin.
Place the plain chocolate & butter in a large heatproof bowl set over a pan of gently simmering water and melt, stirring occasionally - I've discovered that the chocolate melts loads quicker than the butter, so chop the butter up if you want to speed up the process. Remove the bowl from the pan once melted and cool slightly.
Using electric beaters, beat the caster sugar and vanilla into the chocolate mixture. Whisk in theeggs, one at a time, until well combined. Add flour and beat until the mixture is smooth.
Stir in the white & milk chocolate chunks.
Pour into tin and bake for 30 mins or until a skewer inserted into the middle of the brownie comes out with a few moist crumbs (I tend to undercook it by 3 or 4 minutes so it is still gooier than this when it comes out - it then isn't very structurally sound but it is ammmmmmmmmmazing.)
Allow to cool completely in the tin before lifting out and cutting into squares.
Try and restrain yourself or anyone else in the house from eating them all at one sitting, and don't think about the calorie count.
Once you have melted the chocolate & butter it is really easy, and genuinely the best brownies I've ever had. I suppose you could add nuts if you wanted to, but I feel that nuts in a cake spoil a perfectly good cake! As it is, it's pretty allergy friendly.
Have fun :-)
Right, back to Lord of the Rings next time, but we're off to Knaresborough today to enjoy the sunshine!
Saturday 10 April 2010
Lord of the Rings #2
Just a quick one to mark the finishing of the second book of 6 (1 of 3 in film terms!). As a mark of how much I'm actually enjoying this, I will be straight on with the next to find out what happens to Frodo and Sam as they stride off into the wilderness.
I was reading it last night as I watched one of the Harry Potter films (Goblet of Fire) which really hammered home the derivitiveness (that clearly isn't a word but you know what I mean) of HP - particularly the moment where Dumbledore used his Pensieve just as Frodo was introduced to the mirror of Galadriel.
I don't think LOTR will become one of my favourite books, but I am definitely withdrawing my previous comments about it being over-rated/geeky/just for children. Sorry, Tolkien. :-)
Tuesday 6 April 2010
Lord of the Rings #1
I suspect this won't be the last time I write about Lord of the Rings.
So, the uninitiated among you may believe that there are three books in the Lord of the Rings series. If you were a true fan, you would realise that there are in fact 6 books, plus an appendix. I can't help but feel that the publisher chose to present them in this way because there are 7 letters in Tolkien...one for each spine in the box set.
I'm currently about half way through the second book, which means that the ring has set out and is now on its way south. Or, alternatively, about a quarter of the way through in total (I'm not planning to read the appendix!).
I have always resolutely avoided LOTR - haven't seen the films, had no interest at all in the books. The Hobbit as an hors d'oeuvre didn't exactly whet my appetite either, and I approached this box set with trepidation, reluctance, and chiefly a desire to get them ticked off the list. Please don't judge me but (whispers) I am actually enjoying them so far. Shhhhhhhhhhh.
The story is much more gripping when there's action going on - I found myself skim-reading at the beginning of book two, when there was feasting, re-capping, songs and tales of times past. However, once the quest is ongoing...I struggled to put it down.
I have to say, though, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, that I'd never realised how heavily the Harry Potter books draw from the concepts in LOTR. Dementors? Surely based on the Black Riders. The name of an evil that cannot be spoken lest the attention of that evil be drawn to you? And don't get me started on the Gandalf/Dumbledore parallels. It may be unfair to comment on the Gandalf/Dumbledore similarities, and I don't mean just the use of a wizard - more the figure who is pivotal to the story, and has knowledge and power beyond that of the rest of the characters, but has frailties and weaknesses too. I feel slightly disappointed in J K Rowling - perhaps I should have read LOTR first!
More thoughts will, I'm sure, follow, when I've finished reading it...
So, the uninitiated among you may believe that there are three books in the Lord of the Rings series. If you were a true fan, you would realise that there are in fact 6 books, plus an appendix. I can't help but feel that the publisher chose to present them in this way because there are 7 letters in Tolkien...one for each spine in the box set.
I'm currently about half way through the second book, which means that the ring has set out and is now on its way south. Or, alternatively, about a quarter of the way through in total (I'm not planning to read the appendix!).
I have always resolutely avoided LOTR - haven't seen the films, had no interest at all in the books. The Hobbit as an hors d'oeuvre didn't exactly whet my appetite either, and I approached this box set with trepidation, reluctance, and chiefly a desire to get them ticked off the list. Please don't judge me but (whispers) I am actually enjoying them so far. Shhhhhhhhhhh.
The story is much more gripping when there's action going on - I found myself skim-reading at the beginning of book two, when there was feasting, re-capping, songs and tales of times past. However, once the quest is ongoing...I struggled to put it down.
I have to say, though, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, that I'd never realised how heavily the Harry Potter books draw from the concepts in LOTR. Dementors? Surely based on the Black Riders. The name of an evil that cannot be spoken lest the attention of that evil be drawn to you? And don't get me started on the Gandalf/Dumbledore parallels. It may be unfair to comment on the Gandalf/Dumbledore similarities, and I don't mean just the use of a wizard - more the figure who is pivotal to the story, and has knowledge and power beyond that of the rest of the characters, but has frailties and weaknesses too. I feel slightly disappointed in J K Rowling - perhaps I should have read LOTR first!
More thoughts will, I'm sure, follow, when I've finished reading it...
Saturday 3 April 2010
Crime and Punishment
I have finished Crime and Punishment! This feels like an enormous achievement, given the confusing names, density of the text and scale of the concepts involved. It is a hard but satisfying read, and I'd recommend it, as long as you have a bit of time on your hands...which I didn't, hence the time it has taken me to get through.
There is a lot to consider in this book. First, the main storyline - Rodion commits a murder, in the belief that he is one of a special breed of men who have responsibility to carry out grand actions to change the course of society and therefore are above the law. Even in the act of the murder, his conscience leads him to doubt this and he spirals into a madness driven by his guilt & conflicted conscience. The remainder of the novel then follows him as he wrestles with whether he should confess, flee or kill himself - which is most honourable, will he be found out etc.
The events of this work are then, in the main, viewed through a filter of his madness, and you can never quite be sure whether they are as they seem, or they are his interpretation. For example, Svidrigailoff enters the narrative in pursuit of Rodion's sister, discovers his guilt and then tries to use this to convince the sister to marry him. This conflict leads him too into madness. However, before he reachs this point, he toys with Rodion. On one occasion, Rodion (in one of his many fevered wanderings of the streets) believes he is going to Svidrigailoff's home, and instead ends up in a completely different part of the city, where he sees Svidrigailoff in the window of a tea house. He sees this as fate, coincidence etc, but Svidrigailoff says that he has told Rodion to meet him there...he has no recollection. There are many of these coincidental events throughout, and this gives an insight - perhaps they are not fate, driving Rodion towards a confession, as he believes, but normal, planned meetings, which he is misinterpreting due to the depth of his confusion & madness!
Catherine Ivanovna adds a welcome lightness to the mid-part of the novel - in particular, the funeral dinner following the death of her husband is the only section that made me smile. The fact that a funeral dinner is the funniest part of the work does give an indication of its bleakness! All of the key characters are subsisting at the lowest echelons of society, hand-to-mouth in terms of their financial situation, and at the mercy of those with money and position. It highlights how the justice system did not really offer justice for the poor, but just for those with the most influential voice, and those with money have a disproportionate amount of power & influence over those without. This is obviously not a new idea in society, lest you think I believe I'm making a revolutionary observation, but it does come across very starkly here.
I won't give away the ending, as I would highly recommend reading it, but will just say that it resolves, and felt like a satisfactory conclusion (take note, Grapes of Wrath - this is how to finish!). I feel like I have achieved something in this one - it was hard work, but it was worthy of the hard work.
Phew. Now to some shopping. And perhaps Lord of the Rings next!
There is a lot to consider in this book. First, the main storyline - Rodion commits a murder, in the belief that he is one of a special breed of men who have responsibility to carry out grand actions to change the course of society and therefore are above the law. Even in the act of the murder, his conscience leads him to doubt this and he spirals into a madness driven by his guilt & conflicted conscience. The remainder of the novel then follows him as he wrestles with whether he should confess, flee or kill himself - which is most honourable, will he be found out etc.
The events of this work are then, in the main, viewed through a filter of his madness, and you can never quite be sure whether they are as they seem, or they are his interpretation. For example, Svidrigailoff enters the narrative in pursuit of Rodion's sister, discovers his guilt and then tries to use this to convince the sister to marry him. This conflict leads him too into madness. However, before he reachs this point, he toys with Rodion. On one occasion, Rodion (in one of his many fevered wanderings of the streets) believes he is going to Svidrigailoff's home, and instead ends up in a completely different part of the city, where he sees Svidrigailoff in the window of a tea house. He sees this as fate, coincidence etc, but Svidrigailoff says that he has told Rodion to meet him there...he has no recollection. There are many of these coincidental events throughout, and this gives an insight - perhaps they are not fate, driving Rodion towards a confession, as he believes, but normal, planned meetings, which he is misinterpreting due to the depth of his confusion & madness!
Catherine Ivanovna adds a welcome lightness to the mid-part of the novel - in particular, the funeral dinner following the death of her husband is the only section that made me smile. The fact that a funeral dinner is the funniest part of the work does give an indication of its bleakness! All of the key characters are subsisting at the lowest echelons of society, hand-to-mouth in terms of their financial situation, and at the mercy of those with money and position. It highlights how the justice system did not really offer justice for the poor, but just for those with the most influential voice, and those with money have a disproportionate amount of power & influence over those without. This is obviously not a new idea in society, lest you think I believe I'm making a revolutionary observation, but it does come across very starkly here.
I won't give away the ending, as I would highly recommend reading it, but will just say that it resolves, and felt like a satisfactory conclusion (take note, Grapes of Wrath - this is how to finish!). I feel like I have achieved something in this one - it was hard work, but it was worthy of the hard work.
Phew. Now to some shopping. And perhaps Lord of the Rings next!
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