Itching to read

Even though I'm still in the middle of The Two Towers, I have been itching to read some other books that are sitting on my shelf, untouched. A lot of them seem like springtime titles to me, so I decided to start one of them, hoping I could finish it quickly. That isn't working out to well. I am not in the middle of both The Two Towers AND The Wind in the Willows.
It's not that The Wind in the Willows isn't good; it's just that it's not what I expected. I was expecting something a little more like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride from Disneyland than a book that reads more like Winnie the Pooh. So far all we've seen Toad do is drive his carriage into a ditch and become obsessed with cars. The story is more about Mole at this point, as a new member of the riverside community.

The picture of toad hypnotized by a motercar was more what I was expecting. When I was little we had that movie and I used to watch it over and over. I guess five chapters into the book I would have expected to see toad a little more. But to be fair, we did just meet Badger.

I may do a little snooping to find out why Grahame wrote this book. For this book, I'm having a hard time believing he just decided to write a random book about some animals who live near a river. There are already several mentions of Badger hating society, and toad being obsessed with the latest greatest invention. Additionally, Mole is innocent and knows hardly anything about life on the river. There's something going on in that, I just don't know enough about the historical context of the book. I'll have to look into that a little bit.

I Love The Two Towers?

Seriously! I never thought I would, and actually judging by my enjoyment of the movies, I was preparing to like this one less than The Fellowship, but I am pleasantly surprised! I'm not sure if it's because I'm actually enjoying it, or if it's because I had such low expectations. I'm not sure which and honestly I don't really care.

So far I'm in the middle of chapter 4, in which Pippin and Merry are at the Ent's house, which I am picturing as a walking tree that took them into a cave, but I'm thinking that's not the whole story.

It's really too bad I have so much stinking work to do, because I would really just like to dedicate my time to this book. I'm thinking as spring approaches and things start to wind down for a month or two, I'll have enough time to really enjoy this one and the one that follows. Yay LOTR!! I'm so glad to be enjoying it finally, since everyone else in the world seems to love it. I'm also glad that the nice looking set of Tolkien books I bought was not a waste of money.