Enjoy, coracle!  

I had to pop into a drug store for a greeting card the other day, and when I got to the cash, to my surprise, there in front of me was a special edition of TIME magazine, the entirety featuring Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. I thought I had gone back twenty years in time. But I had not, so how could I not purchase it?! Most of the info inside we are familiar with, but it's still fun to read through. Great photos too.

    I just read on the J.R.R. Tolkien Facebook page this:

This magical new recording arrives in September, but here’s a sneak peek behind-the-scenes.

And then there is a 5.35 minute clip of Andy reading from The Two Towers, "The Passage of the Marshes", when Sam awakens in the "evil hole", surrounded by mountains of slag, not far from Mordor, and hears Gollum holding a debate with himself/Sméagol. 

 

I will be purchasing this, to be sure ... or possibly ask for the audiobook for a Christmas present.   

Oh my word, that is (you guessed it) preciousssssssssssss!!! Excellent that he has such a good reading voice, too, in between doing Smeagol vs Gollum. It would be very interesting to hear how he handles all the rest of the characters.

Very tempted to say "We... wantsssss... it!!", but gosh, the complete and unabridged audiobook — how many hours' worth must that be?? At least 50, if not 70 (especially if they throw in the foreword and appendices)... I already never have time to fit in all the books I'd love to read or listen to — I can't imagine how I'd ever manage to get to the end of a full-length LOTR!! But that is wonderful to know it's been done, and with just about the best possible reader. Hope you can give us a full review and rating here once you've listened to it, @jo!  

So, it is time for an update! I've completely read through The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. I liked it very much, especially the first two poems. Now I'm making my way through The Lord of the Rings. What surprised me the most about The Fellowship of the Ring was not really about the book itself, but rather about Lord of the Rings Online. I had no idea that the towns of Combe, Staddle, and Archet were actually in Tolkien's text. Apparently the game designers took more care reading the text than I did when I read Fellowship as a teenager.

I'm going through The Two Towers for the first time now. I thought it funny that Treebeard didn't want to be "hasty" but then proceeded to tell the hobbits all sorts of things about himself. I didn't dislike Treebeard in the movie, but I like him much more in the book.

News came out yesterday that the Amazon filming project will be pulling out of New Zealand and will start pre-production for Season 2 in UK early 2022.  This is disappointing for many people here, both technical people and actors.
I thought that Season 1 was going to start screening next month,but looking at it properly, I see it's Sept 2022! I may have lost interest by then.

Meanwhile I am well into my annual reading of Lord of the Rings. Every year I notice new things, and today I read Pippin's encounter with Denethor. 

Pippin told the old man about how his son Boromir died. He said,.: ,"Boromir died to save us..." and presented his sword to him. One of the little pictures of the response of the new believer in Jesus Christ, offering their service to Him.

Happy Hobbit Day, everyone!
If you are still in 21st, it's the anniversary of the publishing of The Hobbit.
If (like me) you are in 22nd, it's Bilbo and Frodo's joint birthday, a good time for a hobbit-style party.

🍹 🍻 ☕
 

I was wondering if the people here would have liked it if Middle Earth was a real place. Could you actually live in a place like Tolkien created for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?  After reading the books I almost feel like the place could have been real in another time, e. g., it was much like England at the time of King Arthur (assuming that King Arthur or someone like him might have lived). If the creatures of Middle Earth like hobbits were just characters in a story it is still possible that something else like them might have once existed. I have much the same feeling about Narnia (that perhaps it wasn’t one hundred percent fiction). Others have seen Middle Earth as civilization in Europe of centuries ago. I think that the real world was once at least like something Tolkien imagined. It would be disappointing if we had nothing of Tolkien’s countries in our own world. 🙂

@narnian78 The volcano in Sisters, Oregon kind makes me think of the Mines of Moria. The cascades would be reminiscent to the Carahdas.

Actually, all over the pacific northwest would be similar to Middle Earth geography. We have a lot of forests and mountain ranges. Even the Pacific ocean would be the Western Sea that leads to the Undying Lands, like Aslan's country on the Eastern sea in Narnia.

@narnian78 Tollkien strongly indicated that he considered Middle Earth to be our world in the past. 'The Age of Men' begins at the end of LOTR, and all the other races clearly disappeared slowly over time following that.

@coracle 

The elves and dwarves disappeared except for in folklore. If they existed there probably would have been some physical evidence such as skeletal remains or artifacts. It does seem that there were humans living a lifestyle similar to Tolkien’s creatures, but they were probably like the people who loved in the time of Beowulf or the time of the King Arthur stories. So one could safely say that at least part of the stories may have really happened. And I guess Tolkien would have wanted it that way. Being a medievalist if he were living today he may not have even visited this website since he had a dislike for modern technology. But the people who love his books don’t stay away from websites about him. 🙂

@narnian78 when I say 'considered' I dont mean he absolutely believed it, but that it was an option for the earlier history of our world especially Europe. He created not only a mythology for England, but also a possible past. 

His subcreation of the world seen in the First and Second Ages does not indicate some sort of mystical revelation to him about it; it shows his own clever and creative mind that used his love of languages and the time before the Norman Conquest of England, and also his love of the natural world and pre-Industrial England. 

@coracle

For an unspoiled Europe you would have to go back much further in time than with a primitive America.  So it does seem like the time of The Lord of the Rings could be Arthurian England or Europe at the time of Grimms’ fairy tales. I’m not sure if the time could be before that since many of the places that Tolkien created were much like medieval civilization, although there were wild forests and wilderness in Middle Earth too.  I think Middle Earth may be more like medieval than ancient Europe, but of course that is my own view. The lifestyle of the creatures living there is definitely medieval.  And Middle Earth is a hypothetical world which may have once existed. 🙂

Posted by: @narnian78

I think Middle Earth may be more like medieval than ancient Europe, but of course that is my own view. The lifestyle of the creatures living there is definitely medieval.  And Middle Earth is a hypothetical world which may have once existed. 🙂

Tolkien started Middle-earth as something that may have once existed, and placed it well before our known history - regardless of the fact that the culture he describes, looks not much older than what we know as medieval. Perhaps we need to include some disaster that wiped out most of the Middle-earth culture so that we had to start again, if not from scratch, so at least closer to the medieval. But still with some memories and perhaps even mementoes of the old world where the Elves hadn't left us or faded yet.

I think it would have been nice if some of it could have been real. (I have created an Elven identity for myself to use as my user name - that's one way of pretending that it's real )