I really like it! It's cute, and I like the idea that the evil isn't inborn, that raised peacefully an orc is good. If inclined to bite things! I especially love Fnz naq Ebfvr'f acceptance at the end.

That is HILARIOUS.

A thought I had on the LOTR movies related to racism:

It’s interesting all the discussion on Mark Reads of Tolkien’s imagining orcs as looking like debased Mongols, because after seeing the movie I wished it had made at least one of the main human groups be a different race. (There were so many characters in this made up world, and ALL of them were white?) And what occurred to me would have been perfect is if the Rohrrim had been based on the (obviously, beautiful and normal) Kazakh people, some of whom live in Mongolia. If you think about it, they have the right cultural characteristics: really good with horses and hawks, nomadic, and make really beautiful textiles the style of which could have been used by the set and costume designers. I know this would have been inaccurate to the book’s British-mythology-creating goal and probably most people who love the book would have hated such an enormous change (and I do love the actors they cast), but I think an argument could be made that it would have improved and enriched the film, to have more racial and cultural diversity. What do you guys think? Is that just completely off-base and silly, or do you think it could have worked?

That's VERY interesting. As we read on, I hope you'll share more of your thoughts on the beauty of the narrative structure, because I love that kind of analysis.

Sorry for the following Wall of Text - I'm mostly a lurker hear, but this discussion made me have All the Thoughts.

I totally know what you mean about the ending, and in some moods I agree, but in thinking about it another way of interpreting it occurred to me: At the beginning of that last chapter, where she says "Reader, I married him," it sounds to me like Jane (and by extension, Bronte) is doing something she knows will be seen as controversial and somewhat transgressive. I mean, reading it now we may see it as, Oh dear, she's just going back to her man, but I think in the context of the culture then it may have come across as a woman doing what SHE wanted, following her desires rather than the rules of society that had dogged her from childhood.

If you think about it, she's always wanting to be passionate and always being told that she must not be, that she'll go to hell, and the process of the novel is her searching for some place where she can be free from all those messages beating her down. She thinks she has found it with her cousins, but even that turns out to be a source of those same bindings (St John), trying to make her appropriately small. Rochester is the only person in the novel that speaks the same language as her, that she can really be herself with, so she chooses a life with him even though society didn't and doesn't approve, and even though there's some nasty baggage there.

Would I make that choice? Nooooooooo. I would go live in town and attend the theater a lot and become a scholar/novelist/composer/patron of the arts. But I can see why she chooses as she does.

TLDR: Definitely the story has MAJOR issues, (especially the racism, blech) and is guilty of starting a lot of unfortunate romance novel tropes, but I do think there's a somewhat of a proto-feminist message hidden in there, if you look at it from a certain direction.

That sounds interesting - could you link to it?

What an interesting tidbit. I've never seen that book - is it worth checking out?

Ooh, that's really nice - thanks for sharing! The lyrics really work for River's story.

I LOVE these illustrations - these are the ones I grew up with, too, and I can completely relate to you not wanting to read any other edition. For me, at least, it almost wouldn't be The Hobbit without these illustrations. All the warm colors make it seem like such an appealing world, a place one would really want to visit. Thanks for posting them!

That would be SO COOL! I can't even imagine the amazingness that would ensue. Where did you read about it?