Gift Ideas

The Legend of Zelda is a high-fantasy adventure based on the wildly successful and long-running video game series by game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. In February 2000, Shogakukan began publication of manga artist Akira Himekawa’s adaptation of nine of the most well known Nintendo games in the series.

Each story follows the adventures of Link, the hero of the video game series, as he battles the forces of evil to save the Sacred Realm.

There is a far-future Earth-like planet, Arbre, where scientists, philosophers and mathematicians—a religious order unto themselves – have been cloistered behind concent (convent) walls. Their role is to nurture all knowledge while safeguarding it from the vagaries of the irrational secular outside world.

Among the monastic scholars is 19-year-old Raz, collected into the concent at age 8 and now a decenarian, or tenner (someone allowed contact with the world beyond the stronghold walls only once a decade). But millennia-old rules are cataclysmically shattered when extraterrestrial catastrophe looms, and Raz and his teenage companions – engaging in intense intellectual debate one moment, wrestling like rambunctious adolescents the next – are summoned to save the world.

Anathem is another intellectually amazing novel from Neal Stephenson.

Get into the thick of a tremendous battle. The Lord of the Rings: Conquest plays out battles from both sides of the confrontation. Take control of many of the characters and creatures from the series and pit them on any of the franchise’s famous battlefields.

From Cave-trolls to Oliphaunts to the Balrog and even Sauron, practically the entire universe will be available for battle with up to 150 characters on-screen at any one time. Up to 16 players will be able to clash online, with four players able to play cooperatively through the main campaign either online or via four-player split-screen. And with two distinct campaigns to play through, including an original take on what would happen if Sauron regained control of the One Ring, the game promises plenty of scenarios to wage battle through.

A must for any LOTR fan!!! This set is an amazing collection of the extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies.

While purists complained about these changes and about characters and scenes left out of the films, the almost two additional hours of material in the extended editions (about 11 hours total) help appease them by delving more deeply into Tolkien’s music, the characters, and loose ends that enrich the story, such as an explanation of the Faramir-Denethor relationship, and the appearance of the Mouth of Sauron at the gates of Mordor.

In addition, the extended editions offer more bridge material between the films, further confirming that the trilogy is really one long film presented in three pieces (which is why it’s the greatest trilogy ever–there’s no weak link). The scene of Galadriel’s gifts to the Fellowship added to the first film proves significant over the course of the story, while the new Faramir scene at the end of the second film helps set up the third and the new Saruman scene at the beginning of the third film helps conclude the plot of the second.