Will give those a try, too!

"The Club Dumas" by Arturo Perez-Reverte

The first 100 or so pages were awful. After that it picked up enormously. I'd still say the movie version "The Ninth Gate" condensed and made more cohesive the elements of the book though.

The Watchman - Chris Ryan

Nothing to do with the Watchmen super heroes. I picked it up completely randomly, it was one of the most action packed novels I've read, it was awesome. Chris Ryan is an ex SAS guy I think. It was a bit like Tears of the Sun movie with Bruce Willis but also partly about an awesome rogue spy.

I'm looking out for any more Chris Ryan novels, really great stuff. Recommended.

* French Fractures * by Christophe Guilluy

This is a social-demographic-geographic essay on France and its different classes of people across the territory. It explains why the big cities (and their suburbs) are now filling up with a new model of society divided between the upper classes and the "new" immigration (extra-European) while the "historical" Frenchs (from the middle and poor class) and the "old" immigration (intra-European) settles in small towns and rural areas. Pretty interesting and with a lot of reliable sources. I also have the two later books of this author where he expands about the new rural population and the new upper class but I think this one already has enough infos and ideas to think on so it's a MUST READ if you want to understand the current French society.

https://www.amazon.fr/Fractures-fran%C3%A7aises-Christophe-Guilluy/dp/208128961X/

I was just as excited in my late 40s, so don't worry about it. They're a ton of fun.

I'm onto The Goblet of Fire now, seems like the best one yet. The Quidditch World Cup is a much bigger deal than in the movies, which is nice.

Forgot to post yesterday... Poking at freebies again. This one was supposedly a NaNoWriMo project, though says there in it that it actually took 3 months from planning to completion. Insane either way, seeing as it's actually quite passable for what it aims to be.

<span class="bold">Free-Wrench</span>

Sure, it's barely about half the minimum size of a book I'd normally look at, the events depicted are indeed rushed, the characters not particularly developed and the otherwise potentially very interesting world shown in just a few glimpses, plus that there are a few places where it could use more editing. However, this book actually was written in a hurry, insanely so, and while that isn't in itself an excuse, what is contained in it is quite nicely put together, the action carrying the reader from one scene to the next, even if it may require some suspension of disbelief.
Would the above be enough to not consider myself cheated if I'd have paid for it, or to not consider it barely worth a second thought before being dismissed if it'd have been the whole of the story? Highly unlikely. Yet Free-Wrench is given away for free and marks the start of a series which may allow the world and characters to develop more. Plus, it includes some very obvious references to things that are awfully wrong in our world and a pretty clear call to fight against them. And all of this does make me somewhat interested in the rest of the series... Though the next books in it, which aren't free, also seem too short for me to feel they may be worth paying for.

So I am reading the Silmarillion for the first time.

My question is this:

Is it fair to say that the closet thing to a central protaginist in this entire book...is Morgoth/Melkor?

Because he is present in the majority of the story and history of Arda?

I wouldn't really consider there to be a protagonist in The Silmarillion, since it's not written as a novel but more of a historical account. So it's kind of like picking up GIbbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and asking who the protagonist is, IMO.

I am at the Flight of the Noldor chapter.

For a minor spoiler can you tell me which chapter do the Dwarves finally appaer?

I honestly don't recall. Although I've read the book 6 or 7 times, it's been years since my last reading, so can't remember.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (Jules Verne)

Apart from the scientific theories this book has aged extremely well. It's a page-turning adventure without getting bogged down in trivial details as other Victorian novels have a tendancy to do. Definitely recommended!

*** GUERILLA *** by Laurent Obertone

In the French litterature market, there's this big tradition that most of the new books must be released in September so every year, it's a big battle between thousands of books to win media coverages in order to be a best-seller. In this case, due to its subject, "Guerilla" didn't get any coverage from medias but since its release, it blew up expectations by staying in the Top 5 of Amazon (in all books category) and being the current N°1 bestseller in the French novels category.

Story: in a not-so-distant future, France has become the country of extreme political correctness. In a poor suburb of Paris, a police intervention goes wrong and one local delinquent is killed by a police oficer who tried to protect his team.It starts an uproar which spreads in other suburbs too. Chaos grows further and in 3 days, France is no more....

While it's a pure fiction, this book comes at a time where the mere possibility of a civil war comes up sometimes in discussions. Despite the subject being heavily serious, the author makes some humor when describing this orwellian France where native people have been so brainwashed that they don't even understand why they're hated and defend the rioters even when they kill innocent people. Like it's written, the ideoly of "living together" isn't enough so the the ida of the "living very well together" society prevails. This parody of the actual political correctness unexpectedly made me laugh for a good half of the book (it's 400 pages long). Naturally after a while, death , horror and despair becomes the norm so it gets bleaker and bleaker as the story of the downfall of France progress through multiple rapes, brutal murders and massacres. The events are seen through many characters, each chapters is dedicated to one of them. Maybe one default of the book is that each different character is a kind of stereotype so it puts the reader at some distance and prevents him/her to root for one specifically. Anyway, the story is quite catchy and it reads quickly so while it's not great litterature, it's somehow "enjoyable" and who knows, maybe in 20 years we will laugh at all the paranoia contained within. :o)
Recommended.

https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/B01E88BT36/

Killing Floor (The first Jack Reacher novel)

I can see why this series is so popular, it was excellent. I laughed out loud when he got sent to jail and some gang members tried to get tough on him. Read it and you'll probably be a Jack Reacher fan too. Looking forward to the next Jack Reacher movie with Tom Cruise released this month. Really enjoyed the first movie as well.