Fun Stuff

I suppose if I were to be strict about definitions, this installation, "Transparency in Time," is more "fantastic adjacent" than strictly "fantastic," but it is beautiful, and it makes me think of magic, so I am sharing it with you.

Elizabeth Bear is one of my favorite writers. I love her precise and intelligent use of language, and her ability to write works that rip your heart out of your chest, and then show you the beauty in the sadness. She has a gift for seeing the monstrous in the human, and the humanity in the monsters.

Happy Friday everyone!  We hope that you have enjoyed our magician-themed week in honor of Lev Grossman's latest book, but even more importantly, we hope that you have had a chance to enjoy The Magician King yourself!  It rocks.

NPR has announced its list of the top 100 science fiction and fantasy books (as chosen by their readers/listeners).  The top 3? Lord of the Rings, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Ender's Game.  Check out the rest of the list--it should keep you busy for a while!

Speaking of The Lord of the Rings, if you're in the Chicago area, you can watch a screening of The Fellowship of the Ring with live music, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, next Thursday and Friday night at Ravinia.  Travelzoo has a good deal on tickets--$15 lawn seats on Thursday, $20 pavilion tickets on Thursday and Friday.

Here are some of the other fun things we found around the internet this week:

For anyone who has seen any of The Lord of the Rings movies, the soundtrack to the movies becomes as familiar as the faces of Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn.  As someone who loves these movies and who also plays the piano, I was very excited, then, when I came across arrangments of the music from Lord of the Rings for solo piano, published by Alfred Music.

Separate books for each of the movies are available, but I purchased the volume containing songs from all  three of the movies.  The selection is quite good and very representative of the trilogy as a whole; the volume contains the most recognizable theme music for the various characters (such as "Concerning Hobbits"), as well as many of the vocal pieces originally performed by artists such as Enya, Emiliana Torrini, and Annie Lennox.  What is perhaps most impressive about the collection is the way it maintains the sound of the original orchestral arrangement while still being easily playable by an intermediate-level pianist.

Theodora Goss is another writer who appeared at the original Fantasy Matters convention. While there, she read part of "Singing of Mount Abora," a story I loved so much I purchased the anthology it was in (Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories) without knowing anything other than I needed to know what happened at the end of Goss's story.