The Magicians

First of all I would like to point out that this book is way easier to read than the harry potter novels. I also like how the book touches upon sex and drugs. This novel truly is Harry Potter for college students. I like how magic is specified as a craft in the book and how it is extremely hard to do and only a select few can do it. It is more than just waving a wand and saying a bunch of words. I feel that the college in the book mirror's Ringling for me, because like magic (in the book), not everyone can make art and it takes a lot of patience and is hard to do sometimes. Also Ringling is in sunny Florida where I can escape the cold of the northern states. Which, is like the magic dome where it is forever summer at the magic college.

The Hobbit

Tolkien bases races of middle earth on mortality. Such as Dwarfs mine and like gold, hobbits are fat humble and happy introverts, goblins are stupid things, goblins and dragons are evil. There are no exceptions. Except for Bilbo and maybe even Gollum who doesn't seem to have a race. With the help of Gandalf, Bilbo is able to test the boundries of his own race and become more of a daring and adventures person. Something that other Hobbits would frown upon. Tolkien tries to explain that in society we shouldn't always stick to the statues quo because we may not know what other great things we could accomplish. As Tolkien writes the Lord of the Rings Trilogy there is more distinction with moral choices in racial groups. Elves are purest and Orches are evil elves that converted. Evil kings are turned into evil spirits, their is Gandalf the good wizard and Saruman the evil wizard. Their is no grey area except for the trees until they decided to help defend middle earth from Sauron. Although, the humans who live by the lake in the Hobbit are on more of the grey scale but generly dipicted, by Tolkien to be good. They will not help Bilbo's party with the dragon for they fear it to be an invincable evil, but even so they still try to defeat it when it tries to destroy their village.

In the riddle scene with Bilbo and Gollum. Bilbo outsmarts Gollum by asking "What is in my pocket?" which is not a riddle at all but Gollum is too ignorant to know this. Eventually Bilbo outsmarts Gollum again by tricking Gollum to showing him the way out. This part of the book shows that heroes are not always measured by the strength of their body, but the strength of their wit. Another time when Bilbo uses his wit it when tricking the Dragon into showing him his hard underbelly and exposing a soft batch to his heart. This information leads to the defeat of the dragon. Bilbo also grows more heroic and leadership traits through out the novel. When Bilbo kills the spiders in the the next chapters he feels more that of leader. Killing his first enemy in combat gives him confidence and developes his heroic character.

A Wild Sheep Chase

Painfully boring. This maybe a cultural difference, however I do not understand how this novel is categorized under horror, I believe it is more of a mystery novel. The book seemed to go nowhere honestly the over all feeling was stale and mundane. The book was also very bizarre like the part with the woman with the very attractive ears. Again a culture thing but I don't get how someone can have sexy ears. I cannot seem to write that much on this book because I am very confused by it. I'm not sure what was going on.