Other Tolkein Books...?

Bravo, Marky. I'd never looked into The Annotated Hobbit. Perhaps I should pick up a copy of the new edition; I can get it at a discount....
 
Green said:
The Silmarillion is the only other one I've read. I really enjoyed its detached style. There are bits that lag like hell (listing all the different maya or whatever they're called, for example), but then parts of the LotR lagged like hell, too.

If you're interested in the history of the elves, then this is a big fat infodump with your name on it.

I found the Simarillion a (enjoyable) history text book. It was complied years after Tolkin's death, so I guess the lag in places was unavoidable.

The good thing about the book was to learn how the rings came to be and the stories before Froddo and the Hobbit.

xx
KS
 
There is also the History of of Middle Earth 12 Vols. in all I think edited by his son Christopher.
 
Was just given The Father Christmas Letters as a gift. You have to take your hat off to a man who took the trouble to write letters complete with different kinds of handwriting (for Father Christmas, the polar bear, the Elf), stamps and even the occasional dusting of snow to give the whole thing added credence.

It's a beautiful book filled with all the drawings Tolkien did in those letters as well as samples of the letters, envelopes and stamps themselves.
 
Oh, yes, I highly recommend The Father Christmas Letters. It's a wonderful book (though I no longer have a copy... *sigh* another replacement to find)... And one can see there many of the same things Tolkien was working with in his tales of Middle-earth....
 
As far as I know, jd, it's still in print over here.

The official title is: Letters from Father Christmas

Pub: HarperCollins ISBN: 0-00-137463-x

Hope you can find a copy - I used to read it every year, about December 23rd.
 
I was also just talking with Nesa about Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator... interesting stuff. It allows you to see Tolkien's own vision of what much of this was like... and has things like reproductions of those "slashed and burned" pages of the book found in the Chamber of Mazarbul....

And there's also the song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On, with Donald Swann, which has text by Tolkien that people might well find interesting...
 
I was also just talking with Nesa about Pictures by J. R. R. Tolkien and J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator... interesting stuff. It allows you to see Tolkien's own vision of what much of this was like... and has things like reproductions of those "slashed and burned" pages of the book found in the Chamber of Mazarbul....

Yes, in spite of the plethora of other artists' interpretations of the books, the only 'real' one for me is Tolkien himself - no-one else seem to get my minds-eye picture right. I think it's from reading the Hobbit at a early age - I got imprinted. I like the simplicity of them - everyone else seems to go for realism (if that's the right word!) and it just does't look right to me. I also find the same thing with the Swallows and Amazons books by Arthur Ransome, and the Doctor Dolittle series by Hugh Lofting.

And there's also the song-cycle The Road Goes Ever On, with Donald Swann, which has text by Tolkien that people might well find interesting...
When I first finished the LotR, I dashed to the library, eager to find everything else by JRRT, and this was the only one they had, apart from the Hobbit. (This was well before the Silmarillion, the HoME, etc.) It's now hard to find over here - people seem not to donate it to charity shops! - and is high on my list of 'when I have the money, I must really get' books.

By the way, jd - talking of Donald Swann, is the partership in comic songs he had with Michael Flanders known over there?
 
By the way, jd - talking of Donald Swann, is the partership in comic songs he had with Michael Flanders known over there?

Known, but not well... I think there was a stir of interest when The Road Goes Ever On was published, and certainly when it was put out by Ballantine in a trade paperback during the big surge of interest in the 1960s... but other than that, I've not run across that many references to it... occasional, but sparse.
 

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