Good Vs. Evil

At the moment two books are sitting on my bed...one is The Lord of the Rings and the other is The Once and Future King...truly the opposite ends of the spectum of goodness....of course, it could be ( rightly) argued that TOaFK is good literature...but personally I find it HORRIBLE....and Amy was right a few days ago to comment that it was the loss of innocence for King Aurthur and for me the reader...anyway, its sitting on my bed because my mother just gave me back my copy...which she's been using in her freshman english classroom for years now. She uses my copy as an example of how to "get through" books that you dont like, but have to read as an assignment...you see, years ago...*i* took freshman english-back when my mother wasnt teaching it and THIS horrible book was taught ( of course, as soon as my mother took over the class she switched from TOaFK straight on over to TLotR...and never looked back)...and my good friend Amy took the class too...except in the FIRST semester...while I took it in the second, so we shared the book...and did what any 15 year old girl that hates a book will do: We wrote commentary throughout...along with helpful notes and hints for the class....this beloved/hated book was then passed on to future generations...and in the end a total of five girls read the book and wrote comments in it....making a horrible book full of scarring stories about boiling cats alive into a book you can read without having ( too) many nightmares...because of all the satire and jokes about various assignments that we thought were pointless...
And all these years later I can read through all those comments and smile at my fifteen year old self ! :-) So, Amy, Tiffany, Emily, and Jodee...thanks for making the words of T.H. White bareable.

Now, last night I read arguably my FAVORITE chapter in The Fellowship..."Lothlorien" here are my fav. quotes from this WONERFUL passage:

Boromir: "But of that perilous land we have heard in Gondor, and it is said that few come out who once go in; and of that few none have escaped unscathed."
"Say no unscathed, but if you say unchanged, then maybe you will speak the truth, said Aragorn. "

About sleeping up in the trees:
I hope, if I do go to sleep in this bed-loft, that I shan't roll of, (Pippin) said.
Once I go do get to sleep,' said Sam, "I shall go on sleeping, whether I roll off or no. And the less said, the sooner I'll drop off, if you take my meaning."

" Alas for the folly of these days! said Legola. "Here all are enemies of the one Enemy, and yet I must walk blind, while the sun is merry in the woodland under leaves of gold!"

Said of Lothlorien: The world is indeed full of peril and in the it there are many dark places, but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater."

"A light was upon it for which his language had no name. All that he saw was shapely , but the shapes seemed at once clear cut, as if they had been first conceived and drawn at the uncovering of his eyes, and ancient as if they had endured forever. He saw no color but those he knew, gold and white and blue and green, but they were fresh and poignant, as if he had at that moment first perceived them and made for them names new and wonderful. In winter here no heart could mourn for summer or for spring. No blemish or sickness or deformity could be seen in anything that grew upon the earth. On the land of Lorien thee was no stain."

Aragorn to Frodo:

"Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth, and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread you and I. Come with me!" And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as living man."


*whew!* Now THAT that gives me goosebumps!