Have you read...can you recommend...

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Dave_LF
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Dave_LF »

Heck, until just now when I went and looked it up, I always thought Oz was a black-and-white film that had been colorized later when such things became possible.
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Alatar »

Nope. And in fact, the Kansas scenes aren't even true Black and White. They're sepia toned.
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Frelga
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Frelga »

*Wikies* Huh. Technicolor goes back to 1916, although it started as a two-color process. Cool story, actually. They had full color by 1929 but then Depression hit and they rolled back to save money. The Wizard of Oz came out in 1939.

And the Brits had a two-color process back in 1906!
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Dave_LF
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Dave_LF »

Well; to further embarrass myself, I also thought Technicolor was a process used to convert black-and-white films to color.

Kinda takes some of the subtext out of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."
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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

Continuing with the Oz books - in "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" (1913) there's an episode where Ojo and his companions are captured (swallowed) by tree-like plants. They are rescued by The Shaggy Man who uses music to release them (actually whistling instead of singing).

I wonder if Tolkien had read this and either consciously or unconsciously had this episode in mind when Frodo and his companions reached the Old Forest? Considering the popularity of the Oz books in the early 20th century, it's not unreasonable to think that he read them.
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Inanna
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Inanna »

I wouldn't be surprised if there was another, ancient, myth in which a tree swallowed people and had to be sung to. I tried googling for it right now, but I got a million results.
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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

Did one of those results cite an actual real myth? I'd be interested to read it...
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Inanna
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Inanna »

I got a gazillion results for tree/plant myths and music myths. But nothing that popped out specific to the one we are thinking of. Am intrigued, I’ll try again.
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Primula Baggins
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

This has been bugging me, but I finally remembered something. How about this (Wikipedia's article on the witch Sycorax):
In The Tempest, Prospero describes Sycorax as an ancient and foul witch native to Algiers, and banished to the island for practising sorcery "so strong / That [she] could control the Moon".[2] Prospero further relates that many years earlier, sailors had brought her to the island, while she was pregnant with her bestial son, Caliban, and abandoned her there, as by some ambiguous reason, she was spared being put to death. She proceeded to enslave the spirits there, chief among them Ariel, whom she eventually imprisoned in a pine tree for disobedience. Sycorax birthed Caliban and taught him to worship the demonic god Setebos. She dies long before the arrival of Prospero and his daughter, Miranda. Caliban grows to hate Prospero's presence and power on the island, claiming that the land belongs to him since it was his mother's before Prospero appeared.
Prospero to Ariel:
What torment I did find thee in; thy groans
Did make wolves howl and penetrate the breasts
Of ever angry bears: it was a torment
To lay upon the damn'd, which Sycorax
Could not again undo: it was mine art,
When I arrived and heard thee, that made gape
The pine and let thee out.
Prospero didn't sing (necessarily); he was a magician ("mine art").
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

Was it today's xkcd that reminded you of the witch Sycorax? :D

My impression of L. Frank Baum, from all the other Oz books up to this one, is that he's not influenced by any traditional mythology but just makes up randomly weird creatures on the spot out of his own head.

From your description, I think the Old Forest episode in Tolkien has more in common with the Oz incident than the Sycorax myth. But who knows? Is he on record discussing either of these sources?
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Primula Baggins
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

That must be it! I read it this morning and rushed on to work, but it was in the back of my mind.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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yovargas
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by yovargas »

Jude wrote: real myth
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists


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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

Yeah, I wondered about that right after I wrote it...
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yovargas
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by yovargas »

:D
I wanna love somebody but I don't know how
I wanna throw my body in the river and drown
-The Decemberists


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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

"Full Disclosure" by Beverley McLachlin - one of the absolute best books I've read in a long time, and I've been reading a lot of books lately. It's a courtroom drama, and what I very much hope is the first of a series.

Incidentally, McLachlin is the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and the first woman to hold the position. If you need any more persuading, vison once posted that McLachlin was one of her most admired people.

Seriously, do yourself a favour and read this book. I finished it in a couple of days because I was torn between not being able to put it down and wanting to stretch it out as long as possible.
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Impenitent
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Impenitent »

I'll be checking it out. Thanks Jude.

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Primula Baggins
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Primula Baggins »

I will too. It sounds like a great, absorbing book to read on vacation, and unbelievably I have another chunk of vacation coming up next month.

Just ordered it. As a physical book—that's what I like to read on vacation; the rest of the time my reading is gobbled up in bits on Kindle on my iPhone.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

Let me know what you both think!
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Impenitent
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Impenitent »

The Painted Queen is bad. Barbara Mertz' family should have left her notes to languish rather than hand them over to Joan Hess.

I can detect the clever skeleton of the plot that Mertz sketched out before her death, but the wonderful characters are flat and uninteresting caricatures of themselves, and the dialogue is atrocious. I had to force myself to finish the book.

Better if it had not been written to besmirch the series.

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Jude
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Re: Have you read...can you recommend...

Post by Jude »

I enjoyed it more than you did. In fact, there was a definite point in the book when the dialogue and narration abruptly went downhill - I'm guessing that's the point where Mertz passed away.
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