The Children of Hurin

By J.R.R. Tolkien

'The Children of Hurin' - in many ways an expanded chapter of 'The Silmarillion' - is the dark and tragic tale of Turin, the great Hero of Men in the First Age of Middle Earth.

Thousands of years before the events of 'The Hobbit' or 'The Lord of the Rings' the race of Men is proud and the Elves have yet to start their long decline which culminated with their leaving Middle Earth at the end of LOTR. The struggle between Morgoth and the Free Races in 'The Children of Hurin' is the struggle between great powers at their height. There are no reluctant heros in this tale.

After 'The Battle of Unnumbered Tears' Hurin, Human King of Belirand, was captured by Morgoth. When Hurin refused to give Morgoth the location of the hidden Elven city of Gondolin, Morgoth cursed Hurin's children. 'The Children of Hurin' is their tortured story.

Other reviewers have recounted the basic plot and I won't bore you by rehashing it. Instead, I'll give you my impression of the book.

'The Children of Hurin' is Tolkien at his darkest. You imagine this Middle Earth as a dark and frightening place, where even the power and fierceness of those on the side of 'good' is terrifying. This is the story of a cursed man. There are no bright spots, no comic turns, no Samwise Gamgee or Pippin to lighten the mood. This is a story where every character is some version of Boromir, Farimir, and the Last Steward of Gondor. Pride, deceit, struggle, violence and defeat dominate.

The language is slightly more archaic than that of 'The Lord of the Rings' but far less so than 'The Silmarillion,' giving us a very readable story. 'The Children of Hurin' is full of all the same detail and history that we are used to from Tolkien's other works. This story is every bit as good as the rest of the Tolkien canon. The Dragons, the swords, the magical cities and power of fate that Tolkien gave us in 'The Lord of the Rings' is here in spades.

For any true Tolkien fan, 'The Children of Hurin' is unmissable. For those who enjoyed 'The Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' but failed to get through 'The Silmarillion' this new posthumous release is a great inroad into the history of Middle Earth.

Invisible Cities

By Italo Calvino

When I was in architecture school one of my assignments was to draw three cities from those described in Calvino's 'Invisible Cities.' His amazingly descriptive and yet vague recollections made for a great jumping off point.

Each chapter of 'Invisible Cities' is the narrator's evocative recollection of a fanciful and fantastic city. The descriptions are perfectly distilled in strikingly vivid yet dreamy prose photographs.

Loosen your ties to reality and let this book take you. Read it uncritically and let the scenery wash over you. There is no plot. There are no characters. This is a book about the intersection of reality, language, and the senses. It isn't to be missed.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

By Jared Diamond

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" examined the environmental reasons for the collapses of various societies including the Mayan civilization in Mexico, the Vikings in Greenland, and the Polynesian societies on Easter Island, Pitcairn and Henderson Island, among other various societies. Not limited to examining failure, Diamond also provided explanations of the ways that societies recognized and avoided environmental collapse. Examples of these successes include Japan at the time of Tokugawa and the New Guinea highlands.

Diamond arranged his examination of collapsing societies around the five stress points that cause societies to fail: Environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, loss of friendly trade partners, and a society's responses to its environmental problems. Any one, though usually two or more can cause a society to collapse. Obviously, the more problems a society has the more difficult it is to avoid collapse. (The presence of hostile neighbors, climate change, environmental damage and a poor response to environmental problems is usually a more dire situation than just the loss of a trading partner - though not always.)

For all the time spent citing examples from history, "Collapse" isn't just a collections of facts about the past. Diamond also provides up-to-date evidence of the problems we face now. He exposes our own society as no more permanent than that of the Maya.

Diamond finds evidence of the coming collapse of our society in Montana, which he examines extensively. Lack of water to grow food is one of the great causes of societal collapse and Diamond shows the problems the western U.S. is having supporting its population. He also points to the many other small 'first signs' of coming problems such as the rich insulating themselves in gated communities.

For all the dire examples, Diamond doesn't damn western society. He doesn't declare that we've already driven off the cliff of un-sustainability but he does show us that we're quickly racing towards it. His examinations of what worked in the past, what didn't work in the past, and what is going on right now, show that the most important 'point' out of the five is the response a society has to the new environmental pressures. If we can formulate the right response, there's no reason why our society shouldn't be among the list of civilizations that side-stepped collapse.

Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

By Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian' is an examination of man's nature when the constraints of civilization are broken.

Like McCarthy's other works, 'Blood Meridian' is set in 'The West.' Not Hollywood's 'Wild West' mind you, but a violent and frightening landscape of emptiness, dust and blood. You will find no show-downs between 'white hats' and 'black hats' at high noon here. America's national myth is drawn and examined and opened and destroyed to drive home the idea that 'Blood Meridian' is about us.

As everyone notes, the violence starts early in the book and it never abates. Mr. McCarthy forces the reader to look, compels us not to turn away. The horrific violence is the vehicle McCarthy uses to move the novel from a story on his pages to a narrative within the reader's mind. Once the reader follows the characters across the border between civilization and chaos we find that, like McCarthy's characters, the violence has stripped us of our humanity. We've left it behind.

As we read, Glanton and 'The Judge' become OUR king and OUR high priest. As The Kid's humanity slowly withers, we are compelled to recognize the degradable nature of our own humanity. The Kid is both the reader personally and a representation of the individual, both as part of society and opposed to society. If we are honest with ourselves we must allow Mr. McCarthy to show us that when faced with humanity's ever-present interior horrors (represented perfectly by 'The Judge') we are just as helpless as the pointedly nameless protagonist.

That is the true horror of 'Blood Meridian.' Not the blood. Not the guts. Not even the dead babies. The horror of 'Blood Meridian' is that at any time we are a one choice, one action, away from the world of 'The Judge.' The constraining forces of 'civilization' are tenuous at best. And once the thread of humanity has been broken we are all either members of Glanton's gang or its victims.

Mr. McCarthy's dense and at times difficult language paints a strikingly vivid picture. His word choice can be archaic and obscure, but no word (or sentence) in 'Blood Meridian' ever seems awkward or out of place. 'Blood Meridian' makes you work to understand what's going on, especially when McCarthy writes dialog. The 300 page book seemed much longer to me. While I occasionally found myself rereading passages the more likely reason was that Mr. McCarthy can construct two or three paragraphs that impart every detail of a hundred mile journey, all within half of a page.

'Blood Meridian' is not a pretty book. It does not fit within today's entertainment consumer's expectations. 'Blood Meridian' is Hieronymus Bosch, not Claude Monet. Don't let that dissuade you. Mr. McCarthy has created a novel sublime in its ability to frighten and disgust you. It's well worth the effort.