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The second part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers takes up where The Fellowship of the Ring left off. When the trust that was so necessary to the fellowship comes undone so does the fellowship itself. The quest splits off and the first half of the book is instead focused on the fellowship that was left behind and their hunt for those members that were taken by the orcs. Even though you don’t pick up with Frodo and the ring until half way through the book it was still very exciting to hear about the adventures of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli, not to mention the remaining hobbits.

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A long time ago the Rings of Power were forged by the Elves and distributed amongst the leaders of Middle Earth. An evil Dark Lord named Sauron then forged the One Ring to rule them all and used it to gain completely dominion over the people of Middle Earth. He fell in a great battle and the Ring was taken from him and everyone thought it was lost forever. Then the events of The Hobbit occurred and the Ring passed by chance onto a Hobbit named Bilbo.

Now years have passed, the Dark Lord Sauron has been slowly regaining power and the fact that the One Ring has fallen into the hands of a Hobbit has become known to him. The Ring passes to Frodo, Bilbo’s cousin and heir. With the help of his friends Frodo must flee the Shire and manage to take the Ring to the Cracks of Doom, the only place the Ring can be destroyed, or risk having Sauron rise to power once again. With the help of the elves a Fellowship is formed to help Frodo with his quest to bear the Ring to its destruction. But, can this quest possibly succeed when so much depends on one so very small?

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It’s hard to write a review about a classic like The Hobbit. You can’t help but be awed by the history and literary significance of the books (and I include both The Hobbit and the trilogy that follows when I say this) upon which so much of epic fantasy literature is now based. Everything from the heroes quest to the world building, from the wizards and dragons to the goblins and elves scream fantasy to you and you can’t help but realize that this was one of the first, and that definitely gives you pause and something to think about.

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The book Dracula is nothing like any of the movies or TV shows that try to depict him. There are no capes, unnaturally pointed faces or strangely coiffed hair, and no one ever says, “I vant to suck your blood!” Dracula is actually a fairly handsome gentleman with good manners (to a point) that does everything he can to appear as a normal human being: fashionable mode of dress, normal hair, polite conversation and if he is a little pale and his teeth just the slightly bit pointed, what of it? His good manners extend even to the point of entertaining his guests with jokes and stories that keep them laughing and listening well into the small hours of the morning. To his advantage.

If you take everything you ever heard or have seen about Dracula from modern media and toss it aside, the book Dracula is actually a fairly creepy tome in it’s own right, and with it’s own unique nature actually can be construed as even scarier. The best of the technology they had on hand seemed to do nothing to stop him and old wives tales and primitive treatments were their only protection in a war that no respectable person would have believed they were fighting. The insane that did believe them had their own ends for their belief, and I believe the lunatic in the novel was one of the freakiest literary characters I’ve ever come across, Dracula and his brides not withstanding. This was one of the original horror novels, upon which all others are today based.

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The first time I read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes would have been in the summer between fifth and sixth grade. My parents had gotten me a boxed set of classics and this particular one was my favorite. I had always loved mysteries whether in the form of Clue or The Boxcar Children and these seemed so much more polished, not to mention were much harder to guess out how it was going to end to my eleven year old mind. I read them again in the seventh grade when I had to take a bus to school for the first time and the novel acted like the proverbial security blanket as I sat and read it every morning in the increasing cold temperatures in the strange environment.

Some time before I moved out I gave away 90% of my book collection (some 100+ books) so that when I left home it was only with a mere handful of ten or twelve. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was one of the books to go. I have since thunked my head on my desk many times wishing to have many of those books back. My parents repurchased The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes for me in far more adult binding then the lovingly tattered paperback I had before and I sat and re-read these beloved stories to my husband. He tended to fall asleep during them, but I quite enjoyed the trip down memory lane.