Three volumes to rule them all, one author to bind them...

Yes! The video magic worked! You wouldn't believe how happy this has made me; I realise it's a very simple piece of HTML code, but I seem to have hands that cause destruction in my wake, which can be a little frustrating at times. The world will be in grave peril the day I actually find myself with real responsibilities...being a student, I've managed to avoid these for a little while, but that time left is slowly running out!

Anyway, enough about me, hello! Bonjour! I apologise for my mild euphoria (because I'm British, and there's a law against happiness that isn't derived from cynicism), so please, have my slice of cake. I also apologise for speaking in French, there was really no excuse for this. Forgive me.

However, I'm in a bit of a French mood as in a few short hours I'm heading off on holiday avec la familie! I'm not quite sure how an hour can be short, considering it's always the same amount of time (which incidentally is never enough!). I'm only going for a week, so I have time to post this blog, but next weeks one will either be a few days late or I might just skip it and save my energy for a proper blog the week aftrer! We'll see.

I've recently got myself back into reading fairly regularly. While I technically do this anyway as an English student, there's a difference between reading something because someone has told you to do it, and reading it because you've chosen to. Obviously you can still enjoy a coursebook, and often I do, but there's definitely a satisfaction in finishing a book, closing it and putting it down and feeling like you've achieved something.

The reason for this reintroduction to the land of literary genius (or lack of, depending on how you classify literature and how much you actually give a shit about it) is my impending third year of my English and Creative Writing course at university, including the much dreaded Dissertation!

Cue dramatic music here, something Wagnerian might be nice.

And since I'm going on holiday, I'll need plenty of reading material, so I think that caused me to read more in the recent weeks as well. As a result, I recently completed one of my life goals: to read each of the Harry Potter novels in succession without any other books in between. Obviously I ate (a lot) and went outside (occaisonally) in between, but I wanted to see how it all ran together if you read them in sequence, as previously I'd read each as it was released. While you may say it's quite a feeble achievement since they're not exactly hard to read, and you'd be sort of right, I still feel quite proud of myself! Despite the fact that in my opinion, Rowling isn't the world's best writer, she definitely has a brilliant imagination and I have no problem in admitting I love anything to do with Harry Potter. I'm still holding out hope that Hogwarts is available as a postgraduate course...

After finishing this mammoth task of heroicly epic proportions, I decided to try something a little harder. Namely, J.R.R. Tolkein's 'The Lord of the Rings'. I've read 'The Hobbit' before, and half of the first book, but I got distracted by something shiny along the way and never finished them. I've seen the films (extended editions, I expect nothing less), so I know the essential plot details, but everyone knows books are better than films, and so I imagine there's probably a lot of stuff still left out even from these lengthy motion pictures. Plus, it would be an even better feeling to be able to say I'd done it; so, starting as holiday reading and likely carrying on over, I will attempt to read 'The Hobbit' followed by the three LOTR books (interesting, they are technically "one novel often released in three volumes, erroneously called a trilogy", in the words of the great Tolkein himself).

I'll let you know how I get on...if I ever resurface! Now I think I've waffled on long enough, so have a good week, I'm off to visit Middle-Earth...I mean France, and I will see you all in a week or two!

~ Toby