The Hobbit, a children’s fantasy novel, was first published on September 21, 1937. It was so popular that a sequel was required. That sequel, much different and more adult, was the Lord of the Rings and set in Middle-Earth, Tolkien’s mythological world.

Ever since the final minutes of the final movie of the trilogy in 2003, Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King, there has been clambering for The Hobbit to be made as a movie by Peter Jackson, the director of The Lord of the Rings. And finally in December of 2012 The Hobbit will hit the screen.

I was first introduced to the Hobbit and Tolkien’s world in summer of 1977. I don’t really remember why, but I picked up a 4 book package set that included The Hobbit and the three volume Lord of the Rings. I was introduced to Hobbits like all by reading the words, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

Those that read The Hobbit after the Lord of the Rings, may be disappointed since the tone of the telling of the story is much different.

From now until December 14th, the scheduled date for the release of the first of the two Hobbit movies, much will be written and discussed. About the books, the author, and how the movie will presented. And to me, a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world and stories, this is a very good thing. I am looking forward to the Year of the Hobbit.

The story is divided into Staves and not chapters. A stave, which is similar to a stanza, is found in music as a recurring pattern of meter and rhyme. Dickens felt this added humor as it relates to the title.

When Scrooge is visited on Christmas Eve by the ghost of his old partner and friend Jacob Marley, Marley’s ghost informs “Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one. … Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The Third, upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has cease to vibrate.” In the end the three spirits visited him on one night.

A Christmas Carol has been adapted for nearly every form of entertainment including theatre, opera, film, radio and television. The first film version was made in 1901 called Scrooge. In 1908 Thomas Edison also produced a film version of the story.

Lionel Barrymore’s radio production of him playing Scrooge was so popular that plans were made for him to do a film version. However, before it was filmed he was confined to a wheelchair with crippling arthritis and the role was played by Reginald Owen.

One of the best acclaimed film version of A Christmas Carol starred Alastair Sim as Ebeneser Scrooge. The English produced film was released with the title Scrooge in England and A Christmas Carol in the United States. It however did not attain its stature until the 1970′s when it turned up each year on US TV. Prior to this the most popular version of the filmed story in the US was the 1938 version with Reginald Owen.

This first edition had a printing of 500 copies. The work was not popular, but people did request a larger printing which one was finally printed.

While Hitler was in prison serving his prison term for high treason, he began writing (actually dictating) his autobiography so that the German public would know what he stood for. He was release on December 20, 1924 about a year after beginning his five year term.

The second volume Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung or The National Socialist Movement was released in December 1926. This was a few months after a second edition of the first volume was published.

After Hitler became chancellor in 1933, the book was extremely popular. In reality it became the Nazi Bible with over 10 million copies distributed in Germany. Every Soldier received a copy as did every newly-wed couple.

In 1928, Hitler felt that even with Mein Kampf the German public did not understand his ideas and brought his loss of the elections of 1928. He began a sequel, which was never finished, that he called Zweites Buch or Secret Book.

Synopsis: After an accident happens at a miltary biological weapon facility a guard escapes infected with adeadly virus known as Captain Tripps, a rapidly mutating flu that.  The flu wipes out most of the world’s population and  the survivors choose between following an elderly black woman to Boulder or the dark man, Randall Flagg, in Las Vegas. The two factions prepare for a confrontation between the forces of good and evil.

For accounting reasons and not editorial ones, King was forced to delete 400 manuscript pages from his original draft.  The reason was that Doubleday wanted to publish a book with the cover price of $12.95, they felt that was all the market could handle.

The novel was re-released as The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition in 1990. King restored some text originally cut for brevity, added and revised sections. He changed the setting of the novel from 1980 to 1990, and updated a few pop culture references.

In 1994 ABC television produces an 8 hour mini-series  of The Stand.  It was scripted by Stephen King, based more on the original 1978 version than the updated 1990 one.

It is considered by many (including me) to be his best novel and it is also one of his most popular.

The National Guard had been called to the campus after a war protest of May 1st got out of hand. They arrived on campus on the morning of May 2nd. At the time of the shooting they were in the process of clearing a scheduled but a campus declared unauthorized protest.

The students who died as a result of the wounds they suffered that day were:
(Name, distance from Guard, Injury)
Jeffrey Glen Miller, 265 ft, shot through the mouth – killed instantly
Allison Krause, 343 ft, fatal left chest wound
William Knox Schroeder, 382 ft, fatal chest wound
Sandra Lee Scheuer, 390 ft, fatal neck wound

The Wounded:
Joseph Lewis Jr., 71 ft, hit twice in the right abdomen and left lower leg
John R. Cleary, 110 ft, upper left chest wound
Thomas Mark Grace, 225 ft, struck in left ankle
Alan Canfora, 225 ft, hit in his right wrist
Dean Kahler, 300 ft, back wound fracturing the vertebrae – permanently paralyzed from the chest down
Douglas A. Wrentmore, 329 ft, hit in his right knee
James Dennis Russell, 375 ft, hit in his right thigh from a bullet and in the right forehead by birdshot – both wounds minor {died 2007}
Robert F. Stamps, 495 ft, hit in his right buttock {died June 11, 2008}
Donald Scott MacKenzie, 750 ft, neck wound

Even now 41 years later the reason for the shooting has not been fully determined. It may have been that the Guardsmen felt in danger. Some students were approaching them throwing objects and one reports has it that a sniper fired upon the guard.

One of the widely read book about the shootings is James Michener Kent State: What Happened and Why published in 1971. The book does contain a number of errors probably because it was produced so quickly and release so soon after the event. The Kent May 4 Center (www.may4.org) does list this as a non-recommended book. They offer a list of recommended and non-recommended books.

Neil Young after seeing pictures of the shooting wrote the song Ohio. Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recorded the song on May 15 and released it as a single in June. The song became to many an anthem for the times giving a tribute that may last forever to the ‘Four dead in Ohio’.

Two years later a younger brother, Hilary Arthur Reuel, was born. Mabel and her two sons had returned to England to visit with family when Arthur died unexpectedly of rheumatic fever in 1896. His mother would die in 1904 leaving the two boys orphaned under the guardianship of Fr. Francis Xavier Morgan of the Birmingham Oratory.

Ronald, the name he went in his youth, first met Edith Mary Bratt, the girl who would be his wife for over 55 years, when he was 16. She was three years older than he. They soon fell in love, but Father Francis Morgan, feeling that Edith was a distraction to Tolkien’s studies forbid him from contacting her until he reached the age of 21. Shortly after his 21st birthday, he asked her to marry him. At first she refused since she had agreed to marry another and felt that Tolkien had lost interest in her. But soon she changed her mind and agreed to marry him. Although they became engaged in 1913 it wasn’t until March 22, 1916 that they married.

As with many Europeans who lived in the 1910′s, the Great War, also known as World World I, impacted his life greatly. In 1915 he was sent to France to fight in the trenches and by the end of the War all but one of his closest friends had died.

During his time in France he developed Trench Fever, a disease carried by the lice which were common in the dugouts. In late 1916 he was sent back to England to recover. It was during this time of recovery that he began work on what he called the Book of Lost Tales. This was the the start of his creation of the Mythology that would become Middle-earth and lead to the writing of the Lord of the Rings.

One of the first Lost Tales was the story of meeting of Beren and Lúthien. One of the inspiration for the story came from an afternoon while he was in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, when Edith began to dance for him. He considered Edith as “my Lúthien”.