Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

Tolkien Reading Day takes place annually on March 25th, the anniversary of the destruction of the One Ring and the Fall of Sauron. In celebration of this momentous literary occasion, here’s an expanded update of my previous Tolkien music playlist “Hobbit Day 2021”. This takes us through the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and

Happy Hobbit Day!

My sister and I put together a playlist of festive hobbity music for our celebrations that I just had to share with you because honestly I think it’s just perfect. Well, we worked long and hard on it so it better be! This year we wanted to combine the pagan celebration of the autumn equinox

Medieval Monday: The Labors of May — Allison D. Reid

May Day marks the beginning of summer in the medieval world. The weather is really warming up, and there are lots of new chores to begin. Planting and harrowing continues, and weeding the grain fields becomes an important chore. Cabbages, leeks, onions, and garlic are ready to be planted, as are those plants used in […]

Ren Faires, Robin Hood, and the Merry Month of May

Throughout our adult lives, the New York Renaissance Faire has been something for my sister and I to look forward to every year. When we could afford to, we would often go every weekend during its run. But even when we were broke, we managed to make it at least once a year, usually because

Easter With Excalibur

This post includes spoilers for the 1981 film Excalibur. Watching John Boorman’s epic 1981 fantasy film Excalibur has become an Easter tradition in my family, not just because at one point a priest praying for deliverance from the film’s main villain, Morgana, intones the words: “and on this Easter day, when Christ rose from the

Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

This post contains spoilers for both the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings. March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day, because that’s the day J. R. R. Tolkien gave for the climactic event of his epic fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings, when the One Ring went into the fire and the

Another Tolkien-themed Birthday!

This post contains spoilers for both the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings. Some of you may recall that for my 50th birthday I decided to celebrate Hobbit-style, since Bilbo and Frodo were both fifty years old when they each set out on their respective adventures. Well, my sister’s birthday was on

Wishing Well: An Original Fairy Tale

Today is National Tell a Fairy Tale Day, and I’ll be celebrating it by tweeting about some of my favourite fairy tales, but I also can’t resist this opportunity to share one of my own original fairy tales with you, Beloved Reader, so here’s one I wrote several years ago with the intention of self-publishing

Medieval Monday: The Green Valley in February — Allison D. Reid

Today’s post is actually a video that I really think you’re going to enjoy! It’s half an hour long, but well worth the time to watch! A small group of historians and archaeologists restored and brought back to life an abandoned village in Wales, re-creating over an entire year what life was like in the […]

A Few of My Favourite Things, Part I

One of the things I love about blogging is that I get to tell perfect strangers all about the things I love. Imagine trying to do that during a long flight, or sitting in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. The difference is that I don’t have a captive audience. This blog is more