Meanwhile, in Rivendell . . .

Let's have a good round of bookish Q&A, shall we?  I'm borrowing this tag from Rachel over at The Edge of the Precipice .  The idea is to give your vote on various bookish tropes and design elements; it's jolly good fun.  There are no rules and no tagging protocols, so, let's just dive in! Reading the Last Page First | IN and OUT .  It really depends.  I used to do it a lot when I was younger, actually.  Now it's rarer, but I'm not opposed to it on principle. Enemies to Lovers | IN .  Love a good "sparks flying" couple. Dream Sequences | OUT , I guess.  I mean, they can be cool every now and then, but for the most part . . . eh.  Just don't care for 'em. Love Triangles | IN .  They don't bother me.  As long as they make sense for the story, I'm down. Cracked Spines | IN .  I prefer paperbacks to hardcovers on the whole, and I often need to crack the spine of a paperback at some point in order to make the book easier to hol...

I've been rereading the one true love of my life The Princess Bride this January, so I thought that now would be the perfect time to share an article I wrote about the novel for the online magazine Femnista back in autumn 2020.  As with the  Broken Trail piece I posted for last year's Legends of Western Cinema Week, what you'll read below is my initial submission to Femnista , not the version that appeared on the website after a few moderator edits.  I've also added a couple of my own tweaks to the original (i.e., adding an additional quotation, etc.).  But the gist is very much the same; never fear. So, if you want to learn more about just one of the manifold reasons this book is so dear to me — and if you don't mind spoilers  — then I echo to you Mr. Bennet's immortal advice:  Read on, Lizzy! ⸻ What if I told you that the real story of The Princess Bride was not that of Buttercup and Westley? Or of Inigo and his revenge? What if I told you that, ins...

Surprise! I decided to make that fancast after all. 😉 Rachel's question got the ball rolling in my head, and pretty soon I realized that I did, in fact, want to assemble a full dream cast for a new adaptation of The Princess Bride . For those of you who don't know, the original novel by William Goldman is my favorite book ever.  I do love the 1987 adaptation — not taking anything away from that film; it's wonderful — but it contains none (or virtually none) of the elements that make the book my G.O.A.T.  I don't fault the '87 for that; the themes that captivate me on the page would be tricky to translate to the screen.  (If you're curious, you can read a little more about what those themes are here .) For that reason, my stance on a new adaptation has always been, "Probably not a great idea."  True, there's a lot of depth in the novel that the '87 adaptation did not preserve, but in light of how difficult it would be to preserve a lot of tha...

Also known as, two lovely Christmas tags. 😉 Yes indeedy, two dear friends have both passed me holiday tags!  I don't often double up on tag/award posts, but since we're already halfway through December, it seemed like the best move. 😛   First, let's start with Heidi's tag:  the 12 Delights of Christmas . 1. A favorite Christmas tradition? Watching The Sound of Music on New Year's Eve! 😃💕 2. Say it snowed at your domicile, would you prefer to go out or stay curled up inside? Ideally, I'd have a whole day in which to do both!  It's actually snowing as I write this (😍), and I'm hoping/planning to go outside for picture-taking and hiking, as well as to spend Quite A Bit of time reading in an easy chair.  3. Tea or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate, for sure. 4. Favorite Christmas colors (i.e. white, blue, silver, gold, red and green etc)? I really can't decide . . . in terms of combos, probably white and green.  But I also need some splashes of multi-col...