The Tower and the Ruin: J. R. R. Tolkien's Creation, by Michael D. C. Drout (hardcover, 384 pages, W. W. Norton, Dec. 2 2025)
Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruins of Ymir, by John Crowley (softcover, 464 pages, S&S/Saga Press, July 24 2018)
The Magic Shop, by Maurice Dolbier, Fritz Eichenberg (illustrator), (hardcover, 75 pages, Random House, Jan 1 1946)
These books came in last week, and I'd like to say a few short words about each. Usually I'd have abstracts about each from Amazon, but circumstances are making that difficult for me right now.
Of course I love a good scholarly take on any aspect of Tolkien, and that's what Drout's volume promises to be. It came just in time for September 22, and any Tolkien fan knows what that means.
I'vebeen dancing around Ka for some time now, and Crowley's recent passing has made me finally drop the hammer. It promises to be a return to magical realism saga secret history, but I'll have to read it before I'm sure.
But what really intrigued me was The Magic Shop. The Eichenberg illustrations have been teasing me for a while, and when I was ordering the other books and saw a copy going for only $50 (it's usually $100) I felt I had to jump on it. And it's a good thing I did. When I looked again, the only copy available was again $100. It's a surprisingly thin volume, rebound in Library binding at some point, with that inexplicable process that replicates the book cover illustration right into the cover. It was a short read, of that peculiar era that romanticized New York City ... for kids. It's a nostalgic hoot.
So there we are, for now.
