Ordinary Day

When last we left Thorin’s company in the Lonely Mountain, Bard’s army and that of the Elvenking had shown up to deliver them a Siege-o-gram. Postage due: a share of the treasure of Smaug. Not terribly surprisingly, this didn’t go over well at all. Particularly given how Thorin’s getting crankier what with the lust for the Arkenstone being well and thoroughly on him.

Chapter 16, “A Thief in the Night”, kicks in with that very question. ‘Cause yeah, Thorin, about that Arkenstone? Bilbo might know something about that…

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Well, all this fun with dragons strafing Lake-town is all very well and good, but I know what you’re thinking, Internets: what’s going on with Bilbo? Good question, for which I’m sure that Chapter 15, “The Gathering of the Clouds”, will have answers!

And since I’m so far behind on getting these posts done, I’ve actually read the rest of the English edition as I write this. This post, however, will stay focused on Chapter 15.

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Fell behind on this again due to being in MASSIVE DEADLINE mode with Vengeance of the Hunter–for the past several months. But now that Vengeance is signed off on text-wise, and with the coming of The Desolation of the Smaug VERY NIGH, I feel a mighty need to return to this project.

So let’s get cracking with Chapter 14, shall we? Esgaroth has a pissed-off dragon to contend with, after all!

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Been a while since my last Trilingual Hobbit Reread post, and with my interest renewed by the coming of the trailer for The Desolation of Smaug, let’s get going on chapter 13, shall we?

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

When last we left our hobbit and his merry dwarf boy band, they’d just finally found the secret door into the Lonely Mountain! And we know what this means, yes we do, my precious: SMAUG.

Let’s get right down to the dragon-y goodness, shall we?

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

After another pause, I finally bring you Chapter 11 of The Hobbit, “On the Doorstep”! All prior Hobbit re-read posts can be found here.

Let’s get started, shall we?

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

This post is the French notes for Chapter 10 of the Tri-lingual Hobbit Re-read! Spinning the French notes off into their own post because um, yeah, they got kinda LARGE.

Notes for the German edition will be in a subsequent post!

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Been a bit, but now, getting back to it, let’s do Chapter 10 of The Hobbit!

Objectively speaking, not terribly much actually happens in this chapter. We’re basically talking the following chain of events:

Bilbo and dwarves: *float downriver to Laketown*
Bilbo: *gets dwarves out of barrels*
Thorin: “I am Thorin Oakenshield! KNEEL BEFORE ZOD–” (Wait, wrong movie.)
Lake-town Men and Elves: “Wut just happened? WOO HOO PARTY WITH THE DWARVES!”
Thorin: “We’re all going to go beat up on the dragon now!”
Lake-town Men: “Yeah okay, you have fun with that.”
Bilbo: *spends entire chapter with a cold*

Raise your hand if you’re imagining Martin Freeman looking miserable throughout this chapter. It does rather add an extra element of “aww your poor thing!”

General notes:

It’s going to be amusing to see the shots in the next movie of Thorin and Fili and Kili coming out of those barrels. Somehow, I suspect they’re still going to manage to look dreamy even when bedraggled. And I can see Martin Freeman looking sneezy and unimpressed during their entire visit to Lake-town, too.

The narrator tells us that “I have never heard what happened to the chief of the guards and the butler.” Which, even though I understand that this is being said for effect here, still translates to me as “I didn’t feel like bothering to fill that in”. It’s yet another little thing I’m pretty sure a modern writer would never get away with!

Noticed this actually when going through the French, but since Tolkien phrased it this way in English too, it goes up here: Thorin telling the party that “we must thank our stars and Mr. Baggins”. I note the lack of “lucky” in this phrase, but that would seem to be the intent here.

I have to wonder how trusting the folk of Lake-town are! The town Master clearly isn’t buying Thorin’s arrival for an instant, but the town at large goes pretty much batshit with Happy–and all it takes is this band of ragged-looking dwarves walking up, and the one in front going, “I’m King under the Mountain!” And *bam*, they all start singing. Either they’re very trusting, or else they’re looking for an excuse to party.

French notes in the next post!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Well, Chapter 8 was pretty exciting with all the Bilbo being heroic and OHNOEZ SPIDERS and YAY STING and OHNOEZ THORIN and stuff.

Now, though, we get daring barrel-based escapes from cranky elves! (Because I’m kind of with Thranduil on this; if my house was infested with dwarves I’d be a bit cranky too. Unless the dwarves look like Kili. Then I’m down that. Still, though, those short hairy guys DO put a dent in the beer stash, don’t they?)

Onward to Chapter 9, “Barrels out of Bond”!

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Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Nothing quite like two viewings of the brand new Hobbit movie to get me in the mood to keep up with the Tri-lingual Re-read! Though I gotta say, people, it’s going to be difficult swinging back into Tolkien’s descriptions of the various dwarves, now that I’ve seen the movie–twice now–and have completely fallen in love with the parody Thorin Dreamboatshield: An Unexpected Hotness of Dwarves.

Because, seriously, say what you will about Jackson, love him or hate him, laud or decry his filming in 48 frames per second… the achievement for me in the new movie? Making me swoon for dwarves.

And on that merry note, let’s get back into Chapter 7, shall we? We left off with Bilbo and the dwarves taking it easy at the House of Beorn!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.