The two are actually somewhat connected.

The day before yesterday I gave in and bought the new Jamie Oliver cookbook, . Yesterday I went on a fundraising walk and then ended up doing some more walking (to the stores the second time).

How the two are connected is this: At the first walk, I won the silent auction on a Magic Bullet Blender. Then, I needed to get the ingredients for a cheesecake recipe from the new book. I'd forgotten that it is the beginning of summer, neglecting to put on sunscreen, leading to sunburned arms (and neck). Ouch.

The cheesecake turned out (although it's not as firm as I'd like), and has been a hit. The previous day's recipe (and one of the reasons I bought the cookbook), the Macaroni and Cauliflower Bake, was also delicious (and easy to make).

Today, I tried the smoothie recipe for breakfast. Yum.

If you like simple recipes, I recommend the new Jamie Oliver book. I've already matched the number of recipes I've done from his other book in the last year, in three days.

Had a nice surprise this morning over at my book blog All Booked Up.

Waiting as a comment there was an offer from Penguin books of a review copy of Defenders of the Faith. Of course I've taken them up on it, so now I'm just waiting for the book to arrive.

My first review copy of a book. For me at least, it's a sign that my book blog isn't just a waste of my time, but is actually being seen now and again (I have to admit, that sometimes I wonder).

I just finished rereading Time Enough For Love by Robert Heinlein (review is at All Booked Up, my book blog), and as I was reading the book, I couldn't help but wonder what Methos would think of Lazarus Long, and vice-versa.

The November books list. Not too many this month. Between work and classes, I haven't really had time to read.

( The books list )

Seeing as I'm going to have to start double shelving soon now (there are about five more than fit on the shelf) if it keeps growing, I thought I'd do a count of my Tolkien book collection and break it down, adding some opinions along the way.

Edited to add:
I've got the shelf fitting all the Tolkien books now, and even sorted, with room to add a few more books. For now, at least.
The newest book is the Early English Text Society edition of the Ancrene Wisse, edited by J.R.R. Tolkien. Published in 1962. Now at the beginning of August, the newest book is a copy of .
( List of the books )
The grand total is 83 volumes by or about Tolkien and his writings
Last time I did a count, it was only around sixty or so. Can someone check my count please? I didn't think it had grown this much in the last year. LOL

I've been starting and abandoning numerous books this month. These are the ones I've actually finished reading:

( Read The Book List... )

I've been doing a fair amount of reading this month.

September:
( The books )

August Monthly Book List

( August Monthly Book List )

If you could only ever have a maximum of a hundred books from your personal collection to read for the rest of your life, what would they be?

( My hundred books )

Now, a maximum of twenty five books you don't own. They don't have to be in print now, but you must know the title. I've only got four of these.

( The books I don't own but would choose to take )

What would your books be?

There's a new Darkover novel out: The Alton Gift, by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Deborah J. Ross. It's supposed to be a sequel to Traitor's Sun.

This surprised me as I hadn't heard even a whisper of it's existence.

Yesterday, I ordered a copy of the Ancrene Wisse, the Tolkien translation. Published in 1962, this may well be the gem of my collection so far. (Status previously held for a very short time by the Chronology and Guide set I got last week LOL)

Speaking of that book set, it helped me confirm that yes it was the correct version I ordered.

Also, I'm finding the Chronology fascinating. I've gotten to 1916 in a week, and the start of the Book of Lost Tales.

My order of The J.R.R. Tolkien Chronology and Guide arrived this morning, beautifully slip-cased. Also, I bought the latest Laurell K. Hamilton yesterday.

( Copied from my upcoming Monthly Books List )

The other day I ordered the Wayne G. Hammond/Christina Scull pair of books: . I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival. Everything I've heard about the books so far is good.

While I've bought the book, I have yet to read it.

Anyway, there's what appears to be a really good review at http://superversive.livejournal.com/49730.html#cutid1.

I'm reading my way through this book of essays/lectures by Tolkien for the first time in several years, as I finally have my own copy.

I've finished the first two essays as best I could. Not knowing Old English makes it difficult as there is a large amount of Old English in use in these two essays. Usually, you can see that the point is being made with the unknown words. If anyone knows of a site which lists translations for these essays into modern English, I'd love to know about it.

Near the beginning of the third essay, on , there is a quote where Tolkien is talking about the poem. To me though, the quote is equally descriptive of his own works:
about . HarperCollins Paperback page 73.

My tags had gotten out of control so I've spent the last few hours going back and tagging everything from the very first entry onwards. This allowed me to deal with duplicate tags, which should reduce things somewhat. In the process I came up with the following comments and thoughts relating to things I've previously posted in my journal.

The most frequently used tags here are 'website update' and 'life', often used in combination.

I've had Rome: Total War for over two years and have yet to beat it.

Two years later, Gladiator is still one of my favourite movies. As is it's soundtrack, one of only a few I listen to.

The number of typos in my entries. And I never noticed them until now. I'm not fixing them though.

The stamps from that bucket two years ago have yet to be fully dealt with, much less the reorganization that I thought to start. I've since learned that the photo album pages were actually damaging the stamps. Now I'm in the process of moving them to new albums. Proper stamp ones this time, and I'm trying to organize them by set and in chronological order. This has been going since fall 2005. And, I've been buying more stamps. Every time I think I've got them sorted for one country or another, I end up getting more and have to start all over again.

The yard work situation has not changed any, except that I've more or less given up.

Since the EzBoard disaster and the switch to my own messageboard, the number of posts have gone down (from miniscule to none) and the spam has gone up. On the other hand, there's no advertising and my messageboard follows the layout of the website now.

I've noticed how may times I mention an idea I have/had for fanfic and it never gets written. Some of them have been completely forgotten and some of them are still floating around in my head. Whether they'll eventually get written or not, I don't know. As for the Tolkien essay on Divine Interference, it's still waiting to be written.

I just ran across a mention of a sequel to my fic Valentines Surprise. Sequel? What sequel? I have no idea what I was planning for it now.

First Man in Rome did not end up on the May 2006 list as I had predicted it would. Instead it languished until this month. It will be on the April 2007 list, almost a year after I'd planned on reading it.

Its been over 6 months since I got the fic site going, and I still haven't uploaded all my fic to it. This is atrocious. The main stories left are the Feet series and the arda100 prompts, which I really should try harder to write.

Not one of my New Years resolutions has been done yet.

On another topic, the website switch is going well, though slowly. I've got the characters through to F, the Books, and the Quotes partially done (all of The Hobbit and part of the LOTR) into the database. However, I have yet to figure out how it is going to be re-formed into HTML. I think a particularly computer savvy friend of mine is going to have to help. Anyway, I get part of this done each day. Might take more than the forecasted month though.

I just updated the list of my Tolkien books. Not too much has changed since I first did it, but there are a couple of new additions, including one I've been looking for for about five years (could have used it last year with my term papers though): The Monsters and the Critics and other Essays.

I also found out today that the local bookstore is going to be getting The Children of Hurin.

Trailers for movies, trailes for video games, trailers for T.V. Shows. Now there's trailers for upcoming books. In this case it's the Children of Hurin which is being released this month. It's pretty decent.

The Children of Hurin trailer

For a shorter month, there's more or less the usual number of books on the list (and a few on the way to being on the March list).

( The February List... )

Still exhausted from the New Year's Party! However, I'm getting some of the things on my to do list dealt with.

Finally, I got my beads collection transfered from the chest of drawers it was in (which was discovered to be to easy to spill, and even when it didn't spill, the beads transfered themselves from one drawer to another) to a series of compartmented boxes. In the process, I discovered that about a third to a half of the collection was tacky trash.

My textbooks/history shelf of books is about to explode for lack of room (and I've got to get this terms books into it still (in other words, I've been trying to organize my book collection).

The major New Years Resolutions are:
1. get book shelves for my room (the books are stacked up against the walls in the basement and I swear, they are breeding when my back is turned)
2. Get my room tidied (I am a pack rat and the place is a high clutter zone)
3. Get my stamp collection transfered to the new albums

I hope everyone had a happy new years eve and that the new year will bring happiness and health to all.