fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
When we first meet him, King Théoden of Rohan is in thrall to his laughably evil advisor, Gríma Wormtongue. Through the efforts of Gandalf, Théoden throws off the yoke of his oppressor and rediscovers his strength and his sanity. But, for all his bonding with Pippin and his gracious speeches to Eomer and Eowyn, he [...]
The final chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Breaking of the Fellowship," is broken into two parts: The first ends with Boromir falling to the temptation of the Ring while the second ends with Frodo and Sam heading out to Mordor as chaos rages behind them. These two passages lay out [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien was an academic with a vibrant interest in storytelling traditions and, because it was a lot easier for 13th century bards to remember rhyming stanzas than one long string of prose text, most of those traditions involve stories written in verse or performed as songs outright. Not content to merely translate and rewrite those existing verse [...]
Reading is an inherently independent activity so if there's anything unusual about my reading The Lord of the Rings every year, it's limited to the fact that I read The Lord of the Rings every year and not that I do so alone. Most years, after I finish that reading, I watch Peter Jackson's trilogy [...]
J.R.R. Tolkien was not known for his comedic stylings as evidenced by the fact that his work has been referred to as "dry" and "a slog." And yet the esteemed philologist was not without humor or the ability to turn an amusing phrase. The Lord of the Rings will never be mistaken for a comedy [...]
Before reading The Silmarillion, there are some questions that you should probably ask yourself: Do you know the basic stories of Gil-Galad and Beren One-Hand? Do you recognize names like Barahir, Grond and Fëanor and want to know more about them? Have you figured out, through context alone, what (fictional) words like dagor and ithil [...]
I recently finished reading Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh which has given me plenty to think about, including a consideration of the roles that women are assigned in male-created art. It'll be a few days before I've pulled my thoughts into order regarding Chabon's work though, so in the meantime - and since we've only just passed Hobbit [...]
When I review books on this site, I'm generally reviewing them for my own sake. I'm making myself write a book report, basically, in the hopes that doing so will force/allow me to dig deeper into a given work and therefore learn something that betters me as a reader/writer/person. I'm the only person who works on [...]
I've read The Lord of the Rings a number of times. As a result of all that repetition, I've internalized most of the story's primary aspects and plot points. And though I've not read it with the same frequency, I've also read The Hobbit a not-insignificant number of times. So I was surprised to find, [...]
It's just about time. As is the case every year, I simultaneously feel like it's snuck up on me and that I've been awaiting it for months. I'm talking, of course, about my annual reading of The Lord of the Rings. For those of you previously unaware of this annual tradition, which I've been doing [...]
