I hope you’re having a beautiful weekend. ♡
This week and last on ¤ under1000skies ¤

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(¸.•´ (¸.•` ¤ Figuring by Maria Popova ¤

If you haven’t guessed, I loved the book, Figuring, and plan to read it again now that I have a hard copy. I listened to it first, which is a great way to get a lot of reading done while doing other things like dishes and cooking. It’s also a great way to learn how to pronounce words properly. For example, I didn’t know “Goethe” was pronounced “GER-tah” until I heard someone read The Russia House by John le Carré. Otherwise, I would have spent my entire life saying “GO-thee.”

As noted in the video, 12.136 is the only quote not by Maria Popova but by J.R.R. Tolkien. This one Gem is different than the other nine in the series for a specific reason:

You are officially invited to the 20th Annual Éowyn Challenge beginning on Hobbit Day, September 22nd, here:

The KindSpring 21-Day Éowyn Challenge

Count all self-propelled forward motion on Earth, and calculate your miles on Middle-earth. See if you can reach Rivendell when the hobbits and Aragorn do (458 miles in 28 days). Granted, they did the last bit on horseback, but even the most amazing humans would find it a challenge to travel over 16 miles a day by foot over mountains for 28 days in a row.

It usually takes me until February or March to go from Bag End to Rivendell.

As always, the challenge is free and lots of fun. It is inspired by the marvelous stories by J.R.R. Tolkien, and by the beautiful maps and meticulous notes of Karen Fonstad’s The Atlas of Middle-earth. I created the milestone markers and “The Journal of Samwise Gamgee,” which was “read to his daughter Elanor and passed down to all generations in the Shire and beyond. Dassa Fleam of Buckland, one of Sam’s ancestors, saved one of the few written copies Elanor made for her family.“

Created with love,

♥ n.f. (aka Dassa)