The Hobbit -- Happy Anniversary!

September 21st was the 73rd anniversary of the publication of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.

You'd think I would have remembered such an important date. For had The Hobbit not been a financial success, The Lord of the Rings might never have been written. And if it hadn't, the Mythopoeic Society would never have existed. My husband I would never have met; our children would never have existed. (This is beginning to sound like a Twilight Zone episode.) Needless to say, I would never have become acquainted with most of my oldest and closest friends, and the great flowering of fantasy fiction in the late 20th century might not have taken place.

So in belated honor of the day, here is a link to a site with a side by side comparison of the two versions of "Riddles in the Dark," the crucial chapter in The Hobbit in which Biblbo Baggins acquires Gollum's magic ring. (The differences between the two are helpfully marked in blue.)

The Riddle chapter was my first encounter with Tolkien's work. I read it in the early '60s when I was just a kid reading my way through the Azusa public library. It appeared in Just For Fun: Humorous Stories and Poems, edited by Elva Sophronia Smith and Alice Isabel Hazeltine Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company, 1948. Although it was very odd coming into the story in media res (I had no idea what a hobbit was or how Mr. Baggins had gotten into such a tight place), I enjoyed the chapter so much that I tracked down the original book and devoured the whole thing. Of course, I was a bit puzzled by the differences between the version in the anthology and the one in The Hobbit. At the time, I didn't know that Tolkien had made revisions between the first and second editions of The Hobbit in order to make it more consistent with The Lord of the Rings.

By the way, I'm not usually keen on audio recordings of my favorite books because they never match the cadence of my mind's internal voice which I hear when I read. But Nicol Williamson did a skillfully abridged recording of The Hobbit in the '70s which is brilliant. He gives each character a distinct voice with accents from different parts of the British Isles. A friend gave us a copy when our children were young and they never tired of listening to it. Unfortunately, it has never been released on CD, and our cassette copies of the LP degenerated long ago. So you can imagine how pleased I was to discover a recording posted on the Nicol Williamson website.

Finding God in the Everyday

Why God Matters: How to Recognize Him in Daily Life by Karina Lumbert Fabian & Deacon Steven Lumbert, Tribute Books, 2010.

Long ago I read a book written by a well known Catholic convert* who said that one of the things that most surprised him about becoming a Catholic was that everyday life had become suffused with the supernatural, and that the supernatural was now everyday.

Being a sacramental religion, Catholicism does use ordinary, physical things -- oil, water, bread, wine, the marital embrace -- as conduits for God's life giving grace. And simple, tangible items, such as a humble string of beads or two bits of cloth joined by a cord, can actually become a powerful spiritual weapon or a protective shield. Tempted by demons, guarded by angels, and given an occasional assist by the saints, ordinary life is a deceptively disguised battle-field adventure that rivals any fantasy or science fiction epic.

The problem is, it can look so ordinary. God may whap a few of us upside the head with a spiritual two by four, but the vast majority of us will only come to a radical conversion of mind, heart, and spirit through the small, everyday choices we make in classroom, kitchen, or cubicle.

This idea is the major thrust of Why God Matters: How to Recognize Him in Daily Life. This is not a book about figuring out what to believe -- though both authors had to do that at different points in their lives. (Deacon Steven Lumbert is a convert; Karina Fabian is a cradle Catholic who made a full commitment to the Faith as an adult. ) Instead it's about how God led them to a deeper faith through seemingly ordinary incidents in their everyday lives.

Writing alternate chapters, Lumbert and Fabian recount personal stories with elements as disparate as a Puerto Rican chicken and rice dish, a barefoot stranger at Mass, an unexpected flower delivery, an incense-triggered acid reflux attack, and an armed auto thief who couldn't manage to get his gun out of his pocket. Each is followed by a "Life Lesson" meditating on what the author brought away from the experience, how it contributed to his or her relationship with God, and the possible application it might have to the reader's own life. (I could particularly identify with Fabian's chapter about her disorganized approach to housekeeping and how it paralleled her spiritual life. I have so done that deranged drill sergeant thing to my own kids during the rush to clear things up before guests arrive!)

A related scriptural quotation and an extract from the Catholic Catechism rounds off each chapter. And at the end of the book is a list of resources for further reading which may also be seen here. In the mood for a sample? You can read an excerpt of Chapter 2 on the sidebar of this page.

By the way, Karina Fabian is also the author of Magic, Mensa & Mayhem a fantasy novel about Vern, a dragon detective, and his partner Sister Grace, a high mage of the Faerie Catholic Church, as they shepherd a Faerie contingent to a Mensa convention in the mundane world. Fabian is also the editor of and a contributor to Leaps of Faith, an anthology of Christian science fiction and Infinite Space, Infinite God, a collection of Catholic science fiction stories. (Having read all three of these is what made me interested in reviewing Why God Matters.)

[Disclosure: The publisher sent me a free PDF copy of this book.]

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*And my middle-aged brain can't remember his name.

Blog Tour Announcement

Hey, there's a blog tour for Why God Matters: How to Recognize Him in Daily Life by father and daughter team, Steven Lumbert and Karina Lumbert Fabian. Karina is also the author of Magic, Mensa & Mayhem, a fantasy novel, and the editor of (and a contributor to) Leaps of Faith, an anthology of Christian science fiction, and Infinite Space, Infinite God, a collection of Catholic science fiction. (Woo-hoo! How cool is that?) So you can see why I'd have a more than ordinary interest in her new nonfiction title. And that's also why I agreed to write a review for for her blog tour.

You can see the other tour bloggers here. And please come back tomorrow to read my review.

Chinese Fortune Cookie

Yesterday my mother took my daughter Fillia and me out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. Look what came out of one of the fortune cookies! (Had this occurred in a novel, I would have thought it too unbelievable. But real life is not restricted to what is probable.) If the words on this little slip of paper are true, I must live in a house almost completely made of window glass. Except for the bathrooms, I don't think we have a single room without bookcases.

More Catholic Fiction

Only a few days left to enter The Dog Days of Summer Catholic Fiction Giveaway at CatholicMom.com. The deadline is 12:00 midnight Pacific Time. To enter just click on their link above and leave a comment. They have 28 books to give away and will be selecting the winners randomly.

I was surprised to see so many titles, only two of which I had previously read. (They were Bleeder and Awakening, in case you were wondering. And I can recommend both.) So I'm kind of wondering if all of them are Catholic fiction as such or just fiction which Catholic readers like and recommend. Either way I'm looking forward to searching for these titles.

I have a special collection of Catholic fiction housed in a separate bookcase in my bedroom. Since my definition of Catholic fiction is "a work which takes place in a universe in which Catholicism is true," it's a motley collection ranging from Declare by Tim Powers to Catholic Tales for Boys & Girls by Caryll Houselander. And I'm always looking for new books to add. So if you have any titles to recommend (or can tell me anything about the books in the give-away), please speak up in the comments box.

Introducing Youngsters to the Bronte Sisters

No matter what's going on in my life, I never stop reading. In fact, I may find myself reading more than usual because my need for escape is greater. Unfortunately, writing is not as easy as reading, so blogging becomes sparser as real life becomes more . . . um . . . real. However, I am hoping that everything will soon be under control. (Now, if I can just find the off switch for the trash compactor!)

In the meantime, here's a biblio-themed video featuring the Bronte sisters as action figures:

Catholic Book Sales

Aquinas & More is having an Inventory Reduction Sale right now -- 40% off lots of good stuff! Mostly books, of course, but also some gift items.

Father Dwight Longenecker is having a Summer Book Sale until August 15th -- $5.00 off all of his books (except More Christianity which is being reprinted by Ignatius Press this fall.) I particularly recommend The Gargoyle Code, his take-off on C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. It's much better than anyone else's attempts at this genre. Fr. Longenecker extends Lewis's sketchy world building and gives a good sense of the deception and betrayal that is inevitable among Satan's troops.

Sophia Institute Press could use some business right now. (They recently sent out an email to their mailing list pleading for donations or orders.) Although I'm not usually sympathetic to that sort of appeal, I always like to promote Sophia Institute Press because they are one of the few Catholic publishers that print fiction. And so far, every novel I've ordered from them has been pretty good -- which, sad to say, is not often the case with religious fiction.

A few of the titles I've bought and enjoyed:

Bleeder by John J. Desjarlais. Classics professor Reed Stubblefield retreated to rural Illinois to write a book on Aristole while recovering from a disabling injury. Though religiously skeptical, he makes friends with the local Catholic priest, an Aquinas expert with an excellent library who is reputed to be a stigmatic and a healer. When the priest bleeds to death during the Good Friday liturgy, Stubblefield finds that he's the chief suspect. Can he find the real killer before he himself is arrested or killed?

The Tripods Attack! by John McNichol. A young G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells join forces with Father Brown and a mysterious man known only as "The Doctor" (but not the one you're thinking of) when the Martians invade England in this steam-punk novel for kids.

The Blood-Red Crescent by Henry Garnett. This novel about the Battle of Lepanto, originally published in 1960, is just the sort of thing I loved reading when I was a kid. The protagonist is a sixteen year-old boy from Venice who takes part in the historic naval battle and learns important lessons about manhood from Miguel de Cervantes. Homeschooling parents of boys might use this book as an intro to Chesterton's poem, "Lepanto."

Ignatius Press is having a Summer Super Sale which ends on August 31st with some books marked down as low as $3.00.

I recommend Dayspring by Harry Sylvester, a novel originally published in the 1945 which has been marked down to $5.00 ( a real bargain -- especially since Ignatius paperbacks are signature sewn and printed on very good paper). The book is about Spencer Bain, an anthropologist who is studying the Penitentes, a brotherhood of men in New Mexico who practice severe religious penances. Spencer feigns a conversion to Catholicism in hopes of obtaining first hand observations of them. But he gets much more than he bargained for. This book is a little modern for my taste, but the writing is very good.

I'd also recommend Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by Richard Purtill. Originally published in 1974, this revised edition contains two additional essays on Lewis and some new notes on the Silmarillion in Chapter Six. And it's only $3.00!