Roadside Picnic is a 1972 philosophical science fiction novel by Soviet writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It inspired the iconic film from acclaimed director Andrei Tarkovsky and still feels as relevant today as when it was written.
After seeing it pop up on my TikTok fyp a few times, I decided I had to check out The Six Deaths of The Saint by Alix E. Harrow; because, after all why shouldn’t I when it is only a 30-page short story?
And by Jove, was I glad that I gave it a go. This little story packs quite the punch. It’s a modern chivalric romance with an undercurrent of fantasy.
It asks questions of destiny, duty and love. Would you sell your soul to be remembered? Or is pure unflinching love enough to sustain you?
The language is spellbinding and will have you underlining passage after passage. By the close of this 30-page wonder, you will shed a tear and perhaps be compelled to start straight over or stare into space, coming to terms with the story before you can finally continue with life again.
These are the books I've acquired over the winter months, the bookworm version of stockpiling if you will. Rather than getting food and warm materials like an animal, I have collected books to warm my soul.
There's a few Christmas presents, books I can't remember why I bought and a few with some rather random reasonings behind them...
Afrori Books: https://afroribooks.co.uk/
I've decided to do the Booktube Newbie Tag, because I'm starting my Youtube channel again as a predominantly book orientated space, of course, I'll still most likely talk about films because I just can't help myself but I thought it would be fun to do this tag. And let's be honest its almost a right of passage at this point.
Just a heads up, this review is rather chaotic…
Reading The Two Towers curiously took me longer to read than The Fellowship of the Ring, not for any book-related reasons but for the fact that I hit a bit of a weird patch. You know the kind of mood where you can’t seem to focus on anything, you try and watch TV, but you're just not feeling it, you pick up a book, read a few sentences and think…meh…I can’t be bothered—that kind of mood.
And then, straight after that, the other kind of mood where you becomes slightly obsessed with something and think that maybe you’ve found your calling in life and you can’t focus on anything else until you come back to reality. But weird really, I get this sometimes, but it’s safe to say that I’m back to normal now.
Real footage below of me getting back to normal:
So what did I love…everything. Lol, at this point, I am such a Tolkien fangirl. I love his prose. The way he describes everything in such rich detail, except maybe Shelob, that description did make me gag slightly!
Tolkien’s whole love affair with nature and trees speaks to my soul, and I feel like the whole story could be read as a fable on climate change. You have champions of good, the elves, the men and the hobbits etc., who live in harmony with nature and then you have Saruman and Sauron agents of darkness whose dwellings are the foul centres of industry. It works as a thematic way to read the LOTR, much like Dune can be read as an anti-imperial / anti-colonial work.
Treebeard and his non-hastiness made me chuckle, and tbh I wrote an article for work about an ancient tree in Surrey called the Crowhurst Yew because I was in that whole vibe. Ents and trees are just awesome, and I love the quote from Legolas in the Fellowship when he says ‘I am at home among trees’ because I would have to agree with him; there’s just something magical and soothing about them.
As I’m on the subject of Legolas, I think I love book Legolas more than movie Legolas! He is funnier, slightly sillier and totally on the same wavelength as me, lol. Like when he can’t think of a logical way the hobbits could have disappeared, he makes up a weird story about them flying off, and when he finds them again, he cares not for how they came across pipeweed like Gimli but says ‘ I would sooner learn how they came by the wine’. Like Legolas is a whole mood, and I love him.
I think the Voice of Saruman was much better in the book than in the movie, and I am curious to see what he does next as Peter Jackson killed him off, yet in the book, he still lives! That’s a crazy difference that I really didn’t see coming, and I’m intrigued to see what he does next…though I don’t expect any good to come out of the actions of the evil wizard.
Another surprise is how the book was formatted. Of course, in the movies, we flick between all the characters all the time, so for the books to be just focusing on Gandalf and co for the first half and then the second half with Frodo, Sam and devious little Gollum was rather interesting. And I guess that will be very much the same for Return of the King as Frodo and Sam are pretty much almost there in terms of how it was in the movies anyway; perhaps there’s some other crazy stuff that gets in the way of them leaving the orc lair and getting to Mount Doom that Jackson didn’t include in the movies!
And what didn’t I like…that I cried when Sam tried to wake Frodo up ‘it’s your sam’ fucking chokes me up every time! And then he tries to get ready to go on without him. Man, tears they were streaming down my face, I feel like Fix You by Coldplay could be the anachronistic soundtrack moment that Peter Jackson just missed out on. Just imagine it, pure cinematic excellence…
Ok, I didn’t mean for this review to get quite so ridiculous but we’ll just roll with it. This is what happens when you blog without a plan. Lol what am I talking about this whole blog is unplanned, I just ramble about books, movies and random stuff and I really wouldn’t have it any other way. But, back to my main man Tolkien. He is brilliant, the book is brilliant. BRING ON THE RETURN OF THE KING!!!!
