Dot, I really hope you can see this! As I have mentioned here before, when the musical was playing in Toronto back in 2006, we went three times with three different groups of people. Wonderful, so wonderful! I'm not much of a live theatre person, but this performance struck many heart chords. Gollum was superb! And I will never forget how they showed the flooding of the Ford of Bruinen (amazing!), although for some reason this was changed later on—a disappointing loss. The music was brilliant. 'Now And For Always' is still a treasured song in our home:

(These are the Frodo and Sam actors we saw).

I was able to get, via a credit on Audible, The Return of the King, narrated by Andy Serkis. So, The FotR and TTT I have on CD, but The RotK is digital. Serkis does a magnificent job of bringing to life each character. And, of course when it comes to Gollum ... .

Also, I just read that a The Lord of the Rings opera has been approved by the Tolkien estate:

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/lord-of-the-rings-opera-approved-tolkien-estate/

I've just ordered a Tolkien commentary that I haven't seen before, but I know I've read something else by the same authors (I think it was a book on Tolkien's artwork), which was very good. Here's an excerpt from the blurb:

In The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion internationally acclaimed scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull examine Tolkien's masterpiece chapter by chapter, offering expert insights into its evolution, structure, and meaning. They discuss important influences on its development, connections between that work and other writings by Tolkien, errors and inconsistencies, significant changes to the text, and archaic and unusual words used by Tolkien. Thousands of notes, keyed to standard editions of The Lord of the Rings but universally accessible, reveal the richness and complexity of one of the most popular works of fiction in our time.

Extensive reference is made also to writings by Tolkien not previously or widely published, including elaborate time-schemes, an unfinished manuscript index to The Lord of the Rings, and most notably, the important Nomenclature or guide to names in The Lord of the Rings prepared for the use of translators, long out of print and now newly transcribed and printed in its entirety.

It was apparently first published in 2005 and won an award from the Mythopoeic Society (a literary society that focuses on the works of Tolkien, Lewis and the other Inklings), but the copy I've bought is the new edition for the 60th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings. That was 10 years ago, so this must have been published in 2014, but it seems to still be the edition currently in print.

Anyway, it should be waiting for me when I get back to England at the end of this week, so that's something to look forward to! I will share some impressions here and would be interested to hear what others here think of it, if any of you have it. 

I like reference books to Tolkien’s works. Tolkien’s World from A to Z is the book I am borrowing right now.  I wish there were more reference books to C. S. Lewis and Narnia.  Are the books about Lewis and Tolkien helpful in your understanding of both authors? 

@narnian78 Some of them are, some of them aren't! I've found some wonderful commentaries on the Narnia books that have really deepened my appreciation of them, and some that have just been mediocre stating-the-obvious stuff, or that seemed to be more about the commentary author's opinions and prejudices than about what Lewis actually wrote.

I haven't read as many Tolkien commentaries, but David Day's The Tolkien Companion was a big help to me as a new and young reader of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in the early 1990s, as it's a straightforward A-Z guide to the characters and places and so on in those books and The Silmarillion, which I hadn't yet tackled at that stage.

I will be picking up the Reader's Companion later today, along with another Tolkien-related book I ordered soon after (I had them delivered to my workplace, as there's no safe place for leaving parcels outside the block of flats where I live), so I will post my thoughts in due course!  

@jo I finally looked at your little video (lovely), and the link to the news about the Opera!  I watched and listened to the Lament for Boromir, beautifully done with 3 voices.

I mischievously thought that the three hunters might have caught the Orcs sooner, if they hadn't spent so long singing!  

I am now reading Tales from the Perilous Realm by J.R.R. Tolkien.  It is mainly fairy tales and stories, some  of which are included in other collections. If you are interested in Tolkien’s shorter works I definitely recommend it. The stories appear to have been published long after Tolkien passed away. Roverandom is one of the most interesting and is about a toy dog becoming a real one. Tom Bombadil is a poem and is one of Tolkien’s occasional works of poetry. As I remember he was usually considered a minor character who also appeared briefly in The Lord of the Rings. It is a nice collection, and I am glad that the stories were published.

So the first images from "War of the Rohirrim" are now online, and whilst it probably looks more "anime-ish" than I was expecting (even for an anime) I'm definitely still excited for this.

https://www.theonering.net/torwp/2024/06/11/118653-war-of-the-rohirrim-images-and-an-exclusive-interview/