Not that I’d ever advise anyone that such a tattoo is a good idea, but… holy crap. That’s kinda beautiful. Looks like it might be inspired by Alan Lee‘s artwork?
Oh, and I know that it’s probably a Lord of the Rings tattoo, with presumably Gimli and Legolas in the two corners, but we’ll just pretend that that’s Glóin and The Hobbit era Legolas, son of Thranduil, so that my pun-tastic title can stay.
Pretty fun, reminds me of The Muppets. And, really, that dwarf at the top is far too good looking. And, I want whatever it is Bombur is eating.
Jumpboarding off of a recent article by Justin Landon of Staffer’s Book Review, also titled ‘The 5 Most Influential Books in My Life,’ I’ve compiled a list of the five books, novel or otherwise, that I feel most influenced me, my reading habits, and my life. As with lists of this nature, I’m sure it would be different if I compiled the list tomorrow, and different again if I compiled it a week from now, but, in this bubble of my life, the (unordered) list looks like:
by Michael Crichton
I discovered Michael Crichton at a young age. I was nine, and a dinosaur nut. With the impending release of the film adaptation of Jurassic Park, excitement filled me in a way that can only happen to little boys and little girls. Jurassic Park was my life. My parents bought me the book, and I still remember sitting in the theatre, lights dimming, trying desperately to finish it before the movie began. I didn’t, the theatre grew too dark before I was able to turn the final pages, but then I became lost in Spieberg’s vision of the iconic novel. Nine might seem young to get into Crichton’s work (most of my friends were reading the books assigned in school, more inline with our grade level, if reading at all), but, to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever been so enveloped by a novel as I was with Jurassic Park. I went on to re-read the novel several times over the next handful of years. It was the first book that I was absolutely obsessed with and helped introduce me to the world of speculative fiction.
Presented without comment. (Since I’m going into full-on media blackout on The Hobbit, and haven’t watched it myself!)
UPDATE: The YouTube trailer was taken down, but you can watch it here. Also, I may or may not have broken my media blackout, due to extreme pressure from my readers and innate curiosity.
Jian Guo, a Chinese artist known as Breathing2004 on DeviantArt, almost literally took my breath away when I first saw these images. Wonderful, haunting, fun and endlessly explorable, these stained-glass visions of J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic classic scence from Lord of the Rings are simply wonderful.
More of Jian Guo’s art, including some equally wonderful, though stylistically different, artwork of World of Warcraft, can be found on his DeviantArt page. Somebody’s got to snap this guy up to do some cover art.
