My Birthday Haul This Year

I have great friends. They know that the best gifts that I could ever get are books. I want to thank all of them.

These are the books that they have given me.

This was gifted to me by my colleagues. They know my love of books but did not know that I have not read the first part of this series or have the books. But it has turned out to be a good thing as it gives me an excuse to get the rest of the books.

I have already read this book but I didn't have a physical copy. For this I thank Vikrant.

My father is as avid a reader as I am. He has a huge collection of Books & Comics. One of them is the Calvin & Hobbes collection. My friend Ankur was lucky to have xhosen the 2 that we didn't have back home :)

I love the LOTR series and connected books. I tend to read LOTR at least once a year (if not more). I already have the 3 books along with The Hobbit and Silmarillion. The person who got this should have known that. But he still got this for me because this is the 75th Anniversary special of The Hobbit. So he has made a proper LOTR Geek out of me with a copy to read and another to Keep on the shelf :P Thank You Aashith.

I recently discovered the works of Brandon Sanderson. I really loved the Final Empire, and have said so in an entry on this blog. I also went on to read The Emperor's Soul and Legion. I like the worlds he has created. So this is a great gift from my sister Babbi. I get to read it in a book form and not online.

I discovered Manga quite accidentally. But I have been reading a lot of it in recent times. And Akira is one of my favorite Mangas. I gifted myself the 1st volume. The rest were given to be by Ashish and and my best friend Chaitra. Because of them I now have the whole Akira collection. I now plan on acquiring another Manga collection. Probably Monster.

This years birthday was the best in terms of my gifts. I want to thank all my friends for the love they have shown.

The Hobbit:An Unexpected Journey

I have been waiting for over an year to watch this movie. And boy was it worth it. I only have 2 friends who love the LotR movies as much as I do. And both of them were out of the city so I had to go to the theater alone. It actually turned out to be great. I had the whole row to myself so I could giggle, cry and say the dialogues out loud along with the actors.

I am glad that this book is being made into a trilogy. I know there are people who say that the book doesn't have enough content to be made into 3 movies. But i think it's mostly people who have not read both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings who say this. As both the books are connected a lot of the back story for LotR that is not in the Hobbit but in the appendices of the LotR books can be included in the movie as they occur in the same timeline. Plus the characters are more fleshed out in the movie. I mean there are 14 in the dwarves company and we are given time to get to know them.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy was a bit more dark while The Hobbit has a lot more lighter moments. This is not just in the way the movie was made out to be but the way the book was written too as The Hobbit was more of a Children's book. To that effect Martin Freeman in the role of Bilbo is great. One of my favorite parts in the book is when the dwarves come to Bilbo's door and he has no idea why. He is just too polite to ask them to leave too. This scene was directed and acted out well in the movie.

With everything said and done I am an LotR Geek. I loved the movie and for me it is way up there with some of the greatest movies adapted from a book. For me this movie would be rated a 4.8/5.