Mary Catelli's Erraticly Updated and Exceedingly Ill-Organized Journal

These Spindrift Pages by Theodore Dalrymple

He had a notebook. He decided to use it by taking notes about his reading. A jaunt over mostly non-fiction, but not all. Ranges back in time to Arthur Conan Doyle, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and G.K. Chesterton, but a lot over time. And all sorts of subjects.

Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud

This book is aimed at the aspiring comic-book writer. I read it as a comic-book reader and a prose writer. So a bit of an interesting review. . . .

Discusses all sorts of elements. Angles, characterization, details, choice of focus, story time. Tools for hand and computer. Collaboration. (Actually that one struck me as short, given its frequency. Writerly proverb: In any collaboration, you have to do 90% of the work. The other collaborator does the other 90%.) Expressions and body language. and more.

Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories by C.S. Lewis

I review only the essays, the fiction being most curiosities.

But it includes his treatment of stories, and science fiction, with many interesting insights, and his own work in some respects. Two essays are incomplete.

Trolls: An Unnatural History by John Lindow

An overview of trolls from the oldest records to the current day.

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From Barsoom to Malacandra: Musings on Things Past and Things to Come by John C. Wright

A collection of essays.  Mostly centered on specific works of science fiction, but touching on issues of aesthetics and writing, and broader questions of philosophy.  Differences between science fiction and fantasy and between soft SF and hard SF.  Introducing his children to books.  And more.

The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx

Discussion of views on machinery and rural life.

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The Last Unicorn: The Lost Journey by Peter S. Beagle

The original draft. Interesting for people who want to see how things can change. It's a dragon that tells her she's the last in the world, at that, and her interactions with the butterfly seem to convey more. (Hard to tell, it's incomplete.)

I think the plot and characters did not jell as well, partly because some elements in incongruous. But it has charming moments that had to go

The Fall of Gondolin by J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien

I don't think this is as good as Beren and Luthien. This is not so much a flaw in the compilation as a lack in the original material. His last stab at the story was the most dramatic, but stopped when Tuor reached Gondolin.

The Peoples of Middle-earth by J.R.R. Tolkien

This is more about the writing of The Lord of the Rings -- to be more precise, of its Appendices. It fares wide and far over the whole of Middle-Earth. From scraps about making Celerimbor a descendant of Feanor, which made it necessary to work out which of his sons married, to Tolkien working out the "original" hobbit names that were "translated" to the forms in LOTR, down to the solemn observation that "Lobelia" is merely his best guess as to the flower she was named after. Ideas he played with, such as the question of whether Tar-Miriel was unwilling to marry Ar-Pharazon, and the story where one of Feanor's twin sons died at the Burning of the Ships.