Book vs. Film: The Hobbit

# HUGE SPOILER WARNING!!! I will discuss much of the plot in both the book ‘The Hobbit’ and associated movies.

This is my 33rd book read for the year 🙂 I need to be clear upfront that I loved the book and really liked the movies so don’t think that all the negatives I am about to throw at you mean I didn’t like the movies. If I hadn’t read the book I would have loved them, but there were some changes made (especially a big one towards the end) that really p’d me off 🙂

Here. We. Go.

Azog – You all remember Azog from the movies right, big white dude, missing part of his arm, very central to the entire plot of the movies? Well the thing is that apart from saying he died many years before (killed by Thorin), he wasn’t in the book. Whilst I agree that the constant threat of attack and pursuit from Azog did give a certain urgency to the plot it kind of stuck in my gullet a bit too because this role was really supposed to be for Bolg.

Galadriel – Gorgeously played by fellow Aussie Cate Blanchett, she was amazing and I love her in this role and I felt that this character was a good addition to the films, but she wasn’t in the books, at all. This is interesting when she was so integral to parts of the movie’s plot.

The character of Saruman was also not in the book, I didn’t really understand the point of him being in the movie apart from at one point being difficult and rude about Radagast and the next minute fighting like the dickens. I also was annoyed because I couldn’t figure out whether they were insinuating that he was already a bad guy when this took place… frustrating.

Legolas – Oh I feel bad even writing this part because who doesn’t love Legolas? He is a great character. He is also not in the book, at all. However if memory serves he is identified as the son of Thranduil in The Lord of the Rings so I suppose it is feasible that he was in Mirkwood, but there are whole extra side stories that are added here which were not in the book at all. They are nice and all and as I said before I enjoyed the films, but they are not true to the book.

Tauriel – This character does not exist in any Tolkien book I know of. I feel like this character was just added so there could be a love interest for Kili because apparently there has to be some kind of romance thing happening in all movies… sigh. Whilst the actress was good and the character was well written there was no need to add another character and it pissed me off because I felt that this character and the ensuing romance with Kili was the reason that they had to change the ending.

Another interesting change was how the group came to be captured by the elves in Mirkwood. In the book the group was drawn to the elves celebrations by laughter and music, in the movie the elves saved them from the spiders and then took them hostage. I guess doing it this way quickened things up, but considering they stretched the book out into three movies you wouldn’t really think there was a need for that. I also felt as though the elves in the films were portrayed very differently from in the book, whilst in the book they were warriors certainly they were also musical and the majority of interactions with them included them singing. This was never shown in the movie, not at Mirkwood or at Rivendell, their entrance to Rivendell was also very different from in the book. I do wonder why the writers wanted the elves to seem so serious, severe, unfriendly and apart from the rest of the world. Interesting.

What are ‘were-worms’? I honestly don’t remember Tolkien writing about them, they reminded me of the things from Dune. Am I wrong in not remembering these things from the books?

Fili and Kili, I felt like they were robbed of a warriors death and it pissed me off. Poor Fili is basically executed to hurt Thorin and Kili is only killed because he tried to stop Tauriel being killed. Grr. In the book these characters have a fine death, meeting their end protecting their king. I was really frustrated by this.

I thought Thorin’s death in the movie was crap too, at first I was yelling at him to just get off the ice and it would capsize then once he did that and Azog was ‘dead’ he slowly watched him float along under the ice… *GROAN* seriously?! What moron would do this. They always come back Peter Jackson, always! So then Thorin gets a crappy death because he didn’t stab twice. At least he gets to have the meaningful conversation with Bilbo and they renew their bromance 🙂

This is hard because like I said in the beginning I liked both the books and the movies, but there was things that the movie changed that as a lover of the book I was disappointed in some parts. I also wanted to see more of the Green Dragon, which I am pretty sure all fans want.

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House update

We have progress! Progress you guys, PROGRESS! Can you believe it?!?!?!?! I almost can’t. In fact as soon as they rang us and said they had done something I said we had to go for a drive because I couldn’t believe it.

So the Friday before last we went to see our organised dirt…

Organised dirt woohoo!

Then the following Monday Hubby got the all clear from the specialist to ride his bike again and Tuesday morning promptly took off for a jaunt down to the lot and back and low and behold what did he find???

Concrete!!!!

Slab party everyone… slab party hahaha.

Can’t believe we finally have movement on this 🙂 I finally feel able to have some excitement about our soon to be new home! Our first real home together 🙂

Post surgery update

Hi everyone, sorry I didn’t put an update sooner. Surgery on the Saturday went really well and they were all lovely to me. I am pretty sure the anesthesiologist slipped me a pre shot without me even knowing about it because I was panicked (like I felt on the brink of a panic attack, but was trying to hide it), then I felt something cool in my arm and all of a sudden I couldn’t feel panic anymore. Everything was sweet. They took me into this big operating room and I thought the lights were huge and looked like flying saucers, this should have made me nervous, but didn’t. They asked me to get myself on the table and I did it, no sweat, no hesitation and that is the last thing I remember until I woke up in recovery… holy crap… I was roofied! 🙂

Everyone at the hospital was very lovely, it was probably the best first hospital experience one could have. I was REALLY in and out of it the first couple of days, I found it really hard to sleep in solid blocks and it was mostly and hour or two here then up for 2 hours then back to bed which was just completely frustrating. I couldn’t get comfortable at all. Drove hubby mental because he just wanted me to be resting. Everything seemed to be going well.

Come the Monday I wasn’t having any pain from the two wounds on the bottom of my stomache, but the one in my belly button was giving me grief. No matter what position I was in it hurt, it made me feel nauseated and just not great and I spent most of Monday in bed.

Come Tuesday I didn’t get out of bed until lunchtime, felt like crap and didn’t want to eat. I was back in bed by 2.30. Walked out to hubby just before 5 and said I feel really ill, he took one look at me (apparently I was a lovely shade of grey) and declared we were going to the doctors. My temperature was up to 37.6 which might not see that high for a normal person, but if you remember back to my temperature tracking my normal temp is in the low 36’s… I should also mention that I had taken panadeine forte just 1.5hours before which should have taken care of a temperature.

So it turned out that my belly button wound was infected… yay. As soon as they cleaned it out I felt a bit better (not as nauseated), it mean all of last week off work and some heavy meds, but I was feeling a lot better within 24 hours so that was good. I am back at work now and I am finding that I am super tired at night. Although today’s tiredness can be blamed on a reading hangover… damn book getting up to a really good part just as I was going to bed hahaha.

Anyways the diagnosis. I was really happy with my specialist a) he was super lovely when I saw him pre-operation b) he didn’t get to see me before I was discharged so I get a call at 7.30pm that night from him to talk to me about what they found, or more precisely what they didn’t find. There was no sign of any kind of endometriosis at all! I couldn’t believe it, going in both the doc and I were pretty sure they’d find some, but no, nothing. There were also no tube blockages, well he said it seemed like there was a slight one, but he didn’t think that was a true blockage. Honestly I will have to get more off him about that later… I was pretty drowsy at the time. They did the ovarian drilling and gave my womb a good clean out, but didn’t have to do anything else.

I was super excited about there being no endometriosis, it might sound awful to you guys, but I just felt like I had failed so many times at this making babies business over the past four years and I sort of felt like I had at least passed this test, but then I also feel a bit deflated because it means if the ovarian drilling doesn’t work then we are back to the drawing board.

Come on baby making 🙂

Surgery time

Disclaimer: there are over shares in the following

I know I haven’t been the most regular blogger of late. There has been a lot going on, Mr T has been in for two neck surgeries, we have had a lot on life wise and I have been preparing for the fact that I will be going in for laparoscopic surgery on the 12th of September.

Fast forward to now and I just got a call from the specialist… they want to do it this Saturday… eik! At first I went into what I like to call ‘deal with it’ mode; I spoke to my boss, we worked out the rosters and staff availability to make sure the swap was possible (especially because it also means that I will be off for 3 days next week). Luckily staff wise it turned out there are less people off next week than the one after. It also works out SO much better cycle wise, originally I was probably going to be going in for surgery whilst on my period and the doctor was like, ‘that’s fine, just wear a pad or something and I will remove it when I am ready for that area’ EWW!!! I think a lot of my anxiety was around that too, logically I know he is a doctor who has dealt with much icker stuff than that, but illogically it freaked me out a little hahaha.

So now that I have pretty much organised everything so it can be done this week I am sitting here going, “Shit! It is actually happening!” and am freaking out a bit. I have a fair amount of anxiety when it comes to hospitals and I have never been in for what I think of as proper surgery before… they removed my wisdom teeth, but that is very superficial surgery compared to what I will be having done this time.

What is he doing? Well I said to him if he was going in I wanted him to do everything he could at the one time because I didn’t want to deal with the anxiety and recovery time required from having to go under for another surgery. So we are doing four things this surgery:

• Search for and clean out of any endometriosis
• tubal flush (checking for any blockages)
• ovarian drilling
• and he’s going to karcher my womb … just kidding, but you get what I mean. I am referring to it as a ‘womb cleansing’

So hopefully all this will make a baby 🙂