Blog Archive

1 January 2025

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! We showed up for another one!

New Years is often a time for renewal: resolutions and that sort of thing. Sometimes this time of year inspires a moment of reflection, too: about mortality and such. After all, it’s another year. I did reflect upon this briefly yesterday afternoon. Since I’m approaching sixty it’s probably not that unusual. My thoughts went something like this: “Well, that’s another year I made it through.” I wasn’t morbid or depressed. It was just a moment of reflection. Thinking about life.

In fact, I was in such a good mood that last night we decided to get takeaway to make it an easy evening – we’re well past the time when struggling into Sydney on public transport to see the fireworks is appealing – and sit in front of the television to watch an episode of Would I Lie to You. Lee Mack was in the middle of telling a story about a supposed altercation with Brian May, the guitarist from Queen (Spoiler – it was a Lie) when he did an entirely inaccurate but hilarious impersonation of Brian May, speaking. It caught me at an unguarded moment, as I was swallowing a mouthful of Coke. This was a moment when that peculiar word ‘guffawed’ is entirely appropriate. Everything went wrong. Coke ended up in my lungs. I was choking. I couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed from my eyes and I struggled to the bathroom where I tried to cough up whatever I could. I managed to start breathing again, but I was soon reflecting on that overly-confident moment I had had in the afternoon when I thought I had the year under my belt. You never know, do you?

So, it’s 2025, and now begins the ninth year of the Reading Project. Honestly, it’s grown bigger than I anticipated. When we started this website, it was like that moment when I put the glass of Coke to my mouth, not having any idea what was about to happen. In this last year and a half, we’ve introduced a search function for the reviews, we’ve made the website more phone friendly, we introduced an RSS feed and began a newsletter. We’ve redesigned many elements of the website, have involved a local author in our special projects, have continued to publish reviews by us and other generous contributors, and now we have a new Reading Project icon and site header based on our dog, Lucy, which I put up yesterday. Honestly, it was either her reading a book or me, and the photo of me is so grim and unappealing (I find it hard not to look like a prisoner in photos) that you don’t want to see it. People would have been leaving the site in droves, otherwise!

And another thought. Today is Lucy’s sixth birthday. Happy Birthday Lucy. Although, given the fatalistic tone this post has taken, I guess Lucy has even less reason to celebrate another birthday, being a dog. Lucy may be heading to middle age, but she is just as mad as ever. Good for her! She’s a Jack Russell/Basenji cross.

Our goals for the website remain pretty much the same. Victoria has begun a new reading challenge for Agatha Christie: the Reading the Detectives 2025 challenge. This year the challenge showcases the Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot novels. However, of the twelve books in the challenge, Victoria has already read five, and has reviewed three of the first six books already, so that will give her some flexibility.

I have so many different interests and special reading projects I would like to undertake that I feel almost paralysed. To make things easier on myself I’m willing to accept my output will be limited and just focus on reviews and completing The Iliad pages for the moment.

Jenny received a number of new books this Christmas. I bought her a Trent Dalton novel, based upon her interest in the Netflix series, Boy Swallows Universe. She has a number of crime novels to work through.

Whatever happens, I hope to make each day count.

And whatever you do this year, I hope it turns out to be a good year for you, too. Thanks for visiting our site, and if you’re a regular visitor, I say to you thank you, thank you, thank you!

- bikerbuddy

5 January 2025

David Lodge dies

I read yesterday that David Lodge had died, aged 89 years. David Lodge was an English academic and novelist. I was first introduced to his work in first year university while studying modern literature. The first book I read was Changing Places, a story of two academics on a six-month exchange between their universities. Changing Places was the first of what came to be known as his ‘Campus Novels’. It was followed by Small World and Nice Work, both of which I later read on the strength of his first book in the series.

I would later go on to read other works by him: The British Museum is Falling Down, How Far Can You Go, and I found his work about literary technique, The Art of Fiction both entertaining and informative. Lodge divided this book into chapters, each focussing on a literary technique, which he first illustrated with an extract from a well-known book, followed by two or three pages of discussion. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in how texts work.

I’ve returned to David Lodge more recently when I found a copy of his second novel, Ginger, You’re Barmy, in a street library near where I live. The novel is based on Lodge’s short stint in National Service, and like his other books I have read, it is very funny. It’s also the most recent of his books that I’ve read, and the only one I have reviewed. I more recently discovered another of his books, Therapy, in another street library, although that remains unread at this time.

A little piece of trivia: David Lodge’s academic office was next to Ray Bradbury’s at Birmingham University in the 1960s. Bradbury has gained a wider cultural recognition with his novel Fahrenheit 451 and other novels, but Lodge has long been respected as an academic who also wrote accessible and entertaining novels. He was also twice short-listed for the Booker Prize, for Small World (1984) and Nice Work (1988), and he was Longlisted for Out of the Shelter in 1970.

It's sad to see such good authors go. If you haven’t read him, give David Lodge a try. You’ll likely enjoy him.

- bikerbuddy

6 January 2025

Fable

This is not a paid advertisement!

It’s been a while since I’ve contributed to The Reading Project, for one reason or another; one reason being 4 consecutive years of university and subsequently 1 year of full time work; another being that I am inextricably addicted to my phone. I’ve tried to remedy this over the last few years by engaging more with art, particularly film and music. And while I find that I still spend countless waking hours hopelessly scrolling through kilometres of my TikTok feed, I’ve also been able to transform at least some of my screen time into something positive that encourages my hobbies. If you’re unfamiliar with the app Letterboxd, it’s a fantastic social media platform for movie lovers that my friends and I now all use – and it really has made us all connect more with the films we love, and the community of other people who also love those films.

But the issue still remains that despite falling deeper and deeper in love with film through Letterboxd, I simply hadn’t found an equivalent that could spark the same excitement for reading books. Goodreads may have a monopoly on the world of book reviewing in a similar way that IMDb has for film, but I tried it, along with a few other apps, to no real success; none of them really clicked. But then a friend of mine suggested Fable to me, which I loved pretty much instantly. I should again clarify that this isn’t a sponsored post. I’m just very excited to be excited about reading again, since it’s been so long. And I’ve found that Fable is just a really wonderful app that has a great community which I couldn’t recommend enough. For those whose brains aren’t broken and don’t need token motivators like daily reading streaks, it may not be particularly appealing. But I know for a fact that many people, especially around my age, really froth over this sort of thing, and I’m one of them. If you want to check it out, you can click here.

If you are committed to the Goodreads platform but would like to try Fable, the app makes it easy to import your Goodreads history. So there’s really nothing to stop you giving it a try!

- NickoHeap

23 January 2025

The Lord of the Rings Musical

Yesterday we went to see The Lord of the Rings Musical in Sydney. It was Jenny’s idea to go. I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was in high school. Naturally, I saw the Ralph Bakshi animated version when it was released, and later anticipated each of the three movies made by Peter Jackson. I loved them. But the musical was a somewhat strange affair. Some aspects of its presentation were good, others were underwhelming. Jenny, who is normally very generous in her assessments, rated it 3 out of 10. Ouch! For those interested, I’ll briefly mention one aspect of the presentation, and then focus on what was done with the plot, since this is a book website, after all.

The opening of the musical was quite strange. The audience had been kept for quite a while standing in the foyer before we were allowed to enter the theatre. Something wasn’t ready was all that was conveyed to us by the woman with a walkie talkie standing at the head of the stairs to our particular entrance. So, we already had a sense that there was some issue in the theatre. Once we were seated the lights remained up. After a while a guy dressed as a hobbit walked across the back of the stage from left to right and continued off stage. A few others appeared over the next few minutes, as though they had some business on stage which didn’t concern the audience. Then a few of the cast came out and spoke to some members of the audience without their microphones turned on. We were in the front row, so we could hear them. They started engaging members of the audience with some jokes and even got some people up to play a game of quoits. The whole thing had the feeling that they were continuing to play for time while whatever issue that delayed us before was entirely resolved. The length of time this continued became awkward. Eventually, though, more cast members came on stage and things began to coalesce into what was obviously meant to be the gathering for Bilbo’s 111th birthday party. And so it began.

Naturally, with The Lord of the Rings having a lot of plot to cover, we expected the musical would truncate the story somewhat. The barrow wight, Tom Bombadil and Farmer Maggot were obvious cuts. Peter Jackson didn’t even touch them. The attack at Weathertop was also cut, which made sense, since Frodo could be stabbed just as easily at the Prancy Pony inn. Nevertheless, the first half of the musical was mostly faithful to The Fellowship of the Ring. Given that there were two more volumes to cover in the second act, I was expecting some cuts or truncated stories. Afterall, a lot of The Two Towers involving the hobbits’ journey was probably not going to play well on the stage, and the second half of The Return of the King needed to be excised, too.

Here’s a summary of changes. There was no Rohirrim so there was no King Theoden or Wormtongue. So, there was no battle at Helm’s Deep or mention of it. Pippin and Merry are either not captured or immediately escape the Uruk Hai – I didn’t quite catch it – so there is no pursuit by Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. There is a scene in Fangorn Forest with Treebeard, but only a short scene to convey the barest of plot points. No Palantir. No Eowyn. No defence of the gate. The Battle of Pelennor Fields does not take place, so Aragorn does not walk the paths of the dead. Farimir does not appear. Denethor does not go mad and burn himself. The second half of The Return of the King gets axed, as anticipated, although Saruman has been through the Shire and destroyed it by the time the hobbits return, though he has already moved on and therefore does not need to be defeated.

Fear not. The balrog and Shelob make their appearances.

And Gollum’s tortured argument with himself was one of the best moments of the show for me, with a very effective use of the onstage musicians (all the music was played by characters onstage, which I actually liked) surrounding him, helping to convey his state of mind.

There were some weird character changes to accommodate the plot changes, I guess: Saruman creates his army but is only pretending, it seems, to work on Sauron’s side, like a double agent. At least, that’s what he argues until the end, but Gandalf sends him packing, anyway.

And Denethor, the steward of Minis Tirith, bows before Aragorn and accepts him as his king the moment Aragorn whips out his broken sword. They go off to fight some battle together and it’s all good fun. Maybe that was the Battle of Pelennor Fields? It just didn’t seem to fit into the plot just then.

This is a musical that will please some people. Kids will probably love it. A lot of it was well presented and the actors on stage did an excellent job of their parts. Others familiar with the story may find some of the plot and character changes jarring. And as a last point, I didn’t find any song – as few as they were – to stand out or to be moving or memorable. For musical lovers, that itself will be enough.

- bikerbuddy