Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Sept 8, 2019 8:36:37 GMT -5
I've always found The Silmarillion to be pretty impenetrable. I've tried unsecessfully to read it four times so far. I fully intend to get through it one of these days, but yeah...it hasn't happened so far. I've read and re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings many times, and always enjoyed them whether I was 14 or 45. But with the exception of The Silmarillion, I've never tried any of the other posthumously released collections. is actually my favourite title, now. I had a hard time getting into it the first time around, mostly because it wasn’t what I expected (it’s not a novel) and because there were so many names to remember! However, upon re-reading it with Foster’s Guide to Middle Earth close at hand, I was flabbergasted by the scope of Tolkien’s vision. Since then I must have re-read it a half dozen times, each time with renewed interest. The Book of Lost Tales, of which the first chapters are a more ancient version of the Quenta Silmarillion, contributed to the overall impression that this was a real mythology (since mythological tales usually have different versions). Concerning the more recent books... I don’t really see the point (apart from milking the franchise). Especially the tale of the children of Hurin, which is kind of depressing to begin with and has been told numerous times already. |
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Post by dbutler69 on Sept 16, 2019 14:32:04 GMT -5
I've always found The Silmarillion to be pretty impenetrable. I've tried unsecessfully to read it four times so far. I fully intend to get through it one of these days, but yeah...it hasn't happened so far. I've read and re-read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings many times, and always enjoyed them whether I was 14 or 45. But with the exception of The Silmarillion, I've never tried any of the other posthumously released collections. I've read The Silmarillion twice in my life and yeah, it does seem a bit like taking a college course. I feel like I should be taking notes and looking things up whilst I'm reading it. It's something worth reading if I'm really in a Tolkien mood, but in general I'll just re-read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. |
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Post by berkley on Sept 16, 2019 23:33:31 GMT -5
Unless you're really into Tolkien's mythology (as opposed to the story and characters of The Lord of the Rings) nearly to the point of obsession, perhaps the Silmarillion isn't a book that should be read cover to cover, as if it were a novel - because as RR pointed out, it is anything but that. It might be more enjoyable to dip into it here and there as the mood takes you - and with the new tv series coming out, it might be fun to read up on the relevant bits from the Silmarillion - if there are any: now that I think of it, I realise that I forget if all that Second Age material is in the appendices to LotR or if there was some in The Silmarillion as well.
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Post by sunofdarkchild on Sept 17, 2019 2:44:37 GMT -5
I find the Silmarillion to be the easiest of Tolkien's works to get through. I think it fits his style and interests as a writer more than regular novels do. The Lord of the Rings books really got to be a chore with all the tangents and seemingly unnecessary world-building and characters who appear for a line and then disappear. With the Silmarillion Tolkien could focus totally on the world-building which was where I feel his true interest lay, and not have to worry so much about character and story.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 7, 2019 13:27:48 GMT -5
Mego Lord of the Rings, Aragorn and Legolas in the house...  -M |
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Post by berkley on Oct 7, 2019 22:29:33 GMT -5
In a book store the other day I saw what looks like a new publication called Tolkien's Dark Powers, by one David Day. Looking up the author when I got home, I learned that he's written several other Tolkien-related books, including one I've often seen around and thought about trying called Tolkien's Ring. Anyone have any opinions about Day and his Tolkien work? Dark Powers looks like a kind of reference book, with an alphabetically arranged set of entries on Balrogs, Witch Kings, and all the things you'd expect, while Tolkien's Ring is about the various sources that influenced Tolkien in creating his mythology, with the title presumably an echo of "Wagner's Ring [Cycle]".
Actually, to make the question more general, what do all our Tolkien readers here think of these reference books, whoever they're written by? Are there any in particular you like, or any in particular to avoid? Is there a consensus list of a few such works considered essential, something analogous to the list of Beatles references Confessor wrote about once in the Beatles thread? Or if not essential, then maybe a few that are a cut above the rest of the crowd?
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Roquefort Raider
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 8, 2019 14:20:16 GMT -5
In a book store the other day I saw what looks like a new publication called Tolkien's Dark Powers, by one David Day. Looking up the author when I got home, I learned that he's written several other Tolkien-related books, including one I've often seen around and thought about trying called Tolkien's Ring. Anyone have any opinions about Day and his Tolkien work? Dark Powers looks like a kind of reference book, with an alphabetically arranged set of entries on Balrogs, Witch Kings, and all the things you'd expect, while Tolkien's Ring is about the various sources that influenced Tolkien in creating his mythology, with the title presumably an echo of "Wagner's Ring [Cycle]". Actually, to make the question more general, what do all our Tolkien readers here think of these reference books, whoever they're written by? Are there any in particular you like, or any in particular to avoid? Is there a consensus list of a few such works considered essential, something analogous to the list of Beatles references Confessor wrote about once in the Beatles thread? Or if not essential, then maybe a few that are a cut above the rest of the crowd? I received Tolkien’s Ring as a gift many years ago. It was all right as far as making links between the man’s creation and other Europeans myths go, but is not something I would actually call a scholarly work... more like reflections by a well-read fan. The two reference books I really could not do without are Foster’s Guide to Middle-Earth and Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-Earth. Apart from those two, I find most books about Tolkien to be pretty forgettable. (I’m not counting art books featuring Tolkien's own watercolours!) |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2019 23:45:57 GMT -5
Someone did a Lego recreation of the Battle of Helm's Deep, using 150,000 Lego Bricks and 1700 Lego mini figures...       This is the first Lego recreation I have seen, but I have seen some other impressive recreations before. I was at Origins about a decade ago and someone had a Helm's Deep set for a tabletop wargame they were running there that covered 8 of the long tables they used at the convention, 2 wide, 4 long, Done in the 35 mm scale, all the pieces were sculpted and molded and every miniature had been hand painted. It was pretty fricking impressive, as is this Lego build. -M |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2019 0:03:20 GMT -5
Excerpts from Humphrey Carter's Tolkien bio... I am amazed how such epic fantasy is created in such mundane circumstances...  hmmph let's take them to Mordor and then go mow the lawn. Oh, we're inthe Dead Marshes but I need to unclog a pipe... -M |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2019 0:06:34 GMT -5
Has anyone watched the Tolkien biopic that came out earlier this year yet? I just picked up a copy form my local library but haven't had a chance to watch it yet and might not until next week, but am curious if anyone has seen it yet and what they thought...
-M
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Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2019 1:04:36 GMT -5
Out of curiosity after hearing a radio commercial extolling podcasts and you can find a podcast on any subject, I googled Tolkien podcasts and got a list of about 30 or so. Has anyone checked out any Tolkien podcasts? Any recommendations? Any to stay away from?
-M
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 15, 2019 6:12:10 GMT -5
Has anyone watched the Tolkien biopic that came out earlier this year yet? I just picked up a copy form my local library but haven't had a chance to watch it yet and might not until next week, but am curious if anyone has seen it yet and what they thought... I was initially quite interested in this, but the reviews I saw for it were all pretty bad, plus I read about how fast and loose it played with the real events of Tolkien's life. Apparently there's also lots of, what British film critic Mark Kermode calls, " Hmmmm...chubby?" moments. This term is derived from a bad Carpenter's biopic in which the reason for Karen Carpenter's anorexia is shown to have all been down to her having read a concert review that called her chubby: essentially it's the cinematic reducing of a complex issue or reason for doing something down to one easily accessible throwaway line or reference, and the Tolkien biopic is full of those, apparently. Something else that put me off is the anachronistic "modern sounding" dialogue I saw in the few clips I watched on YouTube -- I just couldn't reconcile the way the guy playing Tolkien talked with the older Tolkien I know from audio recordings of TV footage. So yeah, I got put off of it by reviews and the few clips I saw. It'll be interesting to see what you make of it. |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Nov 15, 2019 12:48:21 GMT -5
Has anyone watched the Tolkien biopic that came out earlier this year yet? I just picked up a copy form my local library but haven't had a chance to watch it yet and might not until next week, but am curious if anyone has seen it yet and what they thought... -M Its worldwide box office was $9 million. Pretty much nobody saw it. |
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Post by berkley on Nov 16, 2019 2:14:41 GMT -5
I don't like bio-pics in general, especially of subjects from the past 90 years or so for which we have lots of documentary footage. I can't imagine wanting to see Will Smith pretend to be Muhammad Ali or some other guy pretending to be Freddie Mercury or whoever.
But in any case, no matter when the person lived, I think a bio-pic is prone to all the flaws Confessor mentioned in regard to the Tolkien movie, since by definition they're an attempt to encapsulate an entire life within a 2-hour story. So I tend to avoid them in general, though I don't make it a strict rule.
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Confessor
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Post by Confessor on Nov 16, 2019 10:36:47 GMT -5
...I can't imagine wanting to see Will Smith pretend to be Muhammad Ali... As an off-topic aside, I'm no fan of Will Smith, but Ali is a fantastic film and well worth a watch if you're at all interested in the subject. |
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