In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.
Great adventure and fantasy for all ages. Read it. It is short at 370 pages.
Woo Young-Woo is extremely smart and she also has autism spectrum disorder. She never forgets what she sees, but she lacks in social skills and empathy. Woo Young-Woo begins to work as a trainee lawyer at a large law firm. While working there, she faces prejudice and irrationality against her, but she solves cases with her own unique perspective and grows as a lawyer.
Although the main character Attorney Woo is a 28 year-old lawyer, the drama is kinda bildungsroman because she has autism and only becomes fully an adult towards the end of the first season. The writing is absolutely perfect. I love her immediate boss, Jung Myeong-Seok's admirable and warm personality, that I was rooting for him when he fell ill. I read there will be a second season because fans around the globe love the series. I'm looking forward to the second season.
Alchemy Of Souls
20 episodes, 62 - 70 minutes, Season 1 complete
tags: fantasy, mages, magic, romance, sageuk
The fate of these people become twisted due to "hwanhonsool" (the soul of the dead takes over the body of another living person).
In the country of Daeho, Jang Uk comes from the noble Jang family. He holds an unpleasant secret about his birth, which people all around the country talk about. He is a troublemaker. Jang Uk happens to meet Mu-Deok. She is an elite warrior, but her soul is trapped in a physically weak body. She becomes Jang Uk’s servant and secretly teaches him how to fight.
Seo Yul comes from the noble Seo family. He seems perfect with good appearance, intelligence, and strong martial arts skills.
Go Won is the crown prince of Daeho. He hopes to become a generous king.
A period drama, comedy, horror, shamans, mages, the baddest villains, romance, lots of sword fight, pretty and cute young leads, and the obligatory love triangle. Here the triangle becomes a polygon with 4 young men and 2 young women, it is dizzying at first but eventually settled to a rectangle, then a triangle. Whew! 😄Second season with 10 episodes will be aired in December, 2022.
The love polygon - Crown Prince, nobles and mages Jang-Uk and Seo Yul are all in love with maidservant Mu-Deok. Crown Prince calls her Filthy Mu-Deok because she used to wear tatty clothes.
Little Women
12 episodes, 60+ minutes, ongoing Saturday and Sunday
tags: 3 sisters, corruption, loosely based on Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, mystery
Three sisters get involved in a case that leads them to fight against the richest and most influential family in South Korea. They grew up in a terribly poor environment with an inattentive mother and absent father who lives abroad.
Oh In-Joo is the oldest sister. Since she was a young child, she realized that money was the most important thing to protect herself and her family. Her dream is to live an ordinary life like other people. She gets involved in a case that could change her life.
Oh In-Kyung is the middle sister. She is an enthusiastic reporter at a news station. She believes in doing the right things. She believes money doesn't rule life. She now begins to dig into a mysterious case that she first faced when she first became a reporter.
Oh In-Hye is the youngest of the three sisters. She is a student at a prestigious arts high school and she has a natural talent for painting. She often feels her two older sisters' love for her is too much.
There are only 3 sisters, not 4. I'm guessing Beth is not included because nobody will want to watch if the middle sister dies. The story is a mystery involving an ambitious wealthy politician and his involvement in a series of deaths in the present and 4 years before. Interesting story line and the acting and script are really good.
Jack Parker didn’t set out to be a stay-at-home dad, but his professional dreams went up in smoke after he accidentally burned down his office building.Six years later, Jack’s got parenting his two kids down cold.
Then comes an unwelcome blast from Jack’s past: high school nemesis Chad Henson. He beat out Jack for class president, stole his girlfriend, and never had so much as a pimple in his four years of adolescent bliss. Now Chad has moved to the same midwestern town Jack calls home.
When Jack learns Chad is running for president of his daughter’s school board, he decides to run to settle old scores.But parent politics prove more cutthroat than Jack could have imagined, and he’s facing unexpected challenges in his marriage, too, forcing him to question his role in the family. Suddenly, the election is about more than Jack’s past. It’s an opportunity to discover the person he wants to become.
People grow up, but some high school rivalries never die. It’s time Chad Henson got schooled once and for all—and for Jack to learn a few things of his own.
False advertisement by Amazon Kindle First...again. Supposed to be funny and relatable. Big NO! What is funny about burning down your place of work because of negligence, heating pizza in the microwave on a piece of aluminum foil and leaving it to go to the parking lot??? This stupidity is on the very early part of the book and the reason he lost his job and eventually becomes a stay-at-home dad. At the playground, his daughter loses her underwear to a squirrel yet he is not concerned and continues talking to a former classmate and bully, the antagonist Chad. I skimmed through but finished the darned book because I'm a masochist and because I want to give it the least star on Goodreads.
They Came to Baghdad is one of Agatha Christie's highly successful forays into the spy thriller genre. In this novel, Baghdad is the chosen location for a secret superpower summit. But the word is out, and an underground organisation is plotting to sabotage the talks.
Into this explosive situation stumbles Victoria Jones, a young woman with a yearning for adventure who gets more than she bargains for when a wounded secret agent dies in her hotel room. Now, if only she could make sense of his final words: 'Lucifer ... Basrah ... Lefarge ...'
I don't think I can rate any Agatha Christie's novel lower than 4 stars. I wasn't expecting much with this short story but surprised I really loved it. The story and writing are superb as usual.
The book is more of a spy thriller than a murder mystery. The main protagonist is Victoria Jones, a young woman who is bored with her low paying job as a typist. She meets and gets enamored with a very charming and handsome young man, Edward who is going to Baghdad in a few days. Victoria, on a whim, decides she wants to follow him without knowing his full name and with just 4 pounds in her pocket.
Victoria is a pathological liar who invents stuff without batting an eyelash and people believe her because she is resourceful, pretty, and charming herself. She succeeds in going to Baghdad armed with just her lies and meets Edward. Victoria gets to know a lot of people, some are famous personalities, who are also in Baghdad for some reason. She gets into dangerous situations and is able to get out of them, of course, and helps in preventing a crazy group of people from implementing their sinister plan during a summit with the American President and Russian Premier.
Bequeathed a rare diamond by her late uncle, heiress Rachel Verinder has no idea it was stolen from an Indian temple or that it has a cursed history. When the diamond disappears on her eighteenth birthday, multiple suspects - including Rachel’s suitor, Franklin Blake - are implicated in its theft. Determined to prove his innocence, Franklin begins his own investigation. Did one of his fellow Englishmen steal the jewel? Or was it whisked back to India?
The case, which unfolds through multiple narratives, takes startling twists and turns in pursuit of the truth.
Widely considered the first great detective novel written in English, The Moonstone is one of Wilkie Collins’s most famous works.
It is considered the first detective novel but I beg to disagree. The Moonstone was written in 1848 and Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders In The Rue Morgue came out first in 1841. Yes it is a very short story with less than 100 pages but C. Auguste Dupin was the first fictional detective in the first detective story ever written and the most brilliant IMHO. M. Dupin and Poe's story inspired both Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Moonstone is unnecessary long and not very exciting. I was bored to death and finishing it was a chore. It's more like a family drama and the center of the story is the missing moonstone. I didn't like the writing style with multiple points of view divided into their own chapters written in the first person - my pet peeve.
I find the book too simple and pedestrian. And too contrived. The detective, Sergeant Cuff is sharp and smart but I never warmed up to his character. His character is as dry as the Sahara. The rest of the characters are not likable specially the housemaid who has a physical defect and not pretty. She fell in love with a young man way above her station. Adoration and unreasonable protection of a person who doesn't look at or even acknowledge her is crazy and it isn't the fault of the man. She is a housemaid in the 1800s! The whole mystery is revolved around him and he isn't even aware that it is so.
I find the story very weak and doesn't need to be 600 pages long. It was serialized so understandable but the editors should have trimmed it to just a third because the rest is just group of words that do not contribute much to the story. I skipped one chapter after realizing it has nothing to do with the narrative and is totally totally not needed. Totally. I'm not kidding.
tags: Korean movie, mystery, Park Chan-Wook, police investigation, thriller
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
An insomniac detective becomes infatuated with a young and beautiful widow after she becomes the prime suspect in his latest murder investigation.
Park Chan-Wook (director of Old Boy) deftly tackles a "platonic love story" between a police detective and his main murder suspect. The highly stylized movie is almost perfect with its story, screenplay, acting, directing, cinematography, music, and a touch of humor. The movie is long at 2 hours 18 minutes and too complicated [maybe just for me] that it needs a second and maybe a third viewing to fully appreciate. I was entertained and liked it nevertheless.
Quirky lead detective Hae-Joon has trouble sleeping and his relationship with his wife looks headed towards divorce territory. He carries several small stuff, example - eyedrops, in his jacket that has 12 pockets and his pants has extra pockets too. Then he meets the beautiful and enigmatic widow who is much younger than her deceased husband who died while climbing a steep and rocky mountain. One of the detectives asks why anyone would want to climb it and that it should be illegal to climb the said peak. Detective Hae-Joon is too nice to the suspect from the get-go even buying sushi boxes for their lunch which means he is already infatuated with her. He keeps an eye on her almost 24/7, sleeping and spying on her in his car on the parking lot, recording her every movement including her eating habits like ice cream and leaving the left over melting outside of the fridge. In other words, he is obsessed but at the same time trying to find if she killed her husband.
I like these dialogues
Det. Hae-Joon to murder suspect Seo-Rae, thereby confessing to her how he feels
You said I have "class". Do you know where that comes from? Confidence. I used to be a very confident police officer. But...Because of this obsession I have for a woman...I screwed up the investigation. I am collapsing.
Detective's wife to him and when she took a phone call for him
You're only happy when surrounded by murderers and violence. Congratulations. There's been a murder.
The murderous widow is played by Chinese actress Tang Wei who became famous in the 2007 Ang Lee movie Lust, Caution. She doesn't seem to age since that movie came out. She's 42 now but still looks early 30s. She's so pretty, has a very nice voice both in Korean and Mandarin languages, and is a very good actress. She's married to Korean director screenwriter Kim Tae-Yong and speaks very good Korean. In the movie she occasionally speaks Mandarin to her telephone app to translate into Korean.
Worldwide excitement is escalating in Seoul in the days leading up to the opening of the 1988 Summer Olympics. The fashion is old school, the music is sentimental and the racing is the best in the world. The drivers of the Sanggye-dong Supreme Team receive an offer they can’t refuse and become mired in a VIP slush fund investigation.
I love this movie 💗💗💗because I love movies set in the 80s. What's not to love? 1988 Seoul, the clothes, music, the actors.
I remember when I went to Seoul a few months before the 1988 Olympics and everything was Olympics Olympics Olympics. I even bought a hand fan with the swirly logo. I think it's kept somewhere in the basement. LOL
American brands, culture, clothing, and food were very popular at the time, specially Pizza Hut and McD's. Koreans were obsessed with anything American. In the movie Park Yoon-Hee wore a jacket with Washington Redskins and her brother Park Dong-Wook, played by Yoo Ah-In was wearing a jacket with Oakland Raiders at the end of the movie. The pair of Nike shoes offered to a rival is so spot on.
Most of my favorite Korean actors are in the movie but I specially love Lee Kyu-Hyung and his 80s clothes. He is one of the more versatile Korean actors in Korean dramas and movies.
Highly recommended for fans of Korean movies and set in the 80s.
Leni and Gina are identical twins who have secretly swapped their lives since they were children, culminating in a double life as adults, but one of the sisters goes missing and everything in their perfectly schemed world turns into chaos.
I couldn't even finish Episode 1. The leads, Michelle Monahan and Matt Bomer, are both terrible actors. Why are they whispering all the time? Why? Do the director and these actors think this is good acting? It is exasperating. On the opposite side, the lead policewoman is loud and overacting. Not a single actor is believable and acts natural. What you see are ACTORS IN FRONT OF A CAMERA RECITING THEIR LINES. Who could finish watching this lame series? Not me.
tags: favorite, hardboiled detective-crime, mystery, Philip Marlowe
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
From GoodRreads
Down-and-out drunk Terry Lennox has a problem: his millionaire wife is dead and he needs to get out of LA fast. So he turns to the only friend he can trust: private investigator Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is willing to help a man down on his luck, but later Lennox commits suicide in Mexico and things start to turn nasty. Marlowe is drawn into a sordid crowd of adulterers and alcoholics in LA's Idle Valley, where the rich are suffering one big suntanned hangover. Marlowe is sure Lennox didn't kill his wife, but how many stiffs will turn up before he gets to the truth?
The Long Goodbye is Raymond Chandler's 6th Philip Marlowe novel, written in 1953. I consider it a masterpiece and have added it to my favorites list. The first book, The Big Sleep, is also a 5-star book and I loved it but it didn't earn a spot on my favorites list. Books 2 to 5 got 3 and 4 stars from me.
Philip Marlowe developed a friendship with and a "savior" complex for the down on his luck Terry Lennox. Twice, 3 times, 4 times he helped Terry. The short [about 400 pages] novel's prose is IMHO most brilliant sometimes poetic has numerous memorable characters - the most beatiful blonde femme fatale, cuckoos, vicious thugs. Throughout the story, Chandler has seamlessly inserted his opinion on law agencies, politicians, media, society's morals and ethics, rich people, consumerism, etc. without sounding preachy, just matter of fact. They were true in the 1950s and even truer nowadays.
The first time I laid eyes on Terry Lennox he was drunk in a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith outside the terrace of The Dancers.
The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.
A dead man is the best fall guy in the world. He never talks back.
He was a guy who talked with commas, like a heavy novel. Over the phone anyway.
And these
We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return.
What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don’t like them. I regard them as a constant menace to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on.
Sheriff Petersen just went right on getting re-elected, a living testimonial to the fact that you can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.
Let the law enforcement people do their dirty work. Let the lawyers work it out. They write the laws for other lawyers to dissect in front of other lawyers called judges so that other judges can say the first judges were wrong and the Supreme Court can say the second lot were wrong. Sure there's such a thing called law. We're up to our necks in it. About all it does is make business for lawyers.
Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of war, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation – all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can’t afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can’t expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can’t have quality with mass production. You don’t want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn’t sell its goods next year unless it made what is sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average [person] can’t produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk.
