Lord of the Rings

_Fonstad's editions of The Atlas of Middle-earth_

I still have my first edition hardcover of this with the dustjacket. It played such a huge role in my love of Middle Earth because I loved maps and they were so insanely detailed. The white, brown, black scheme also made little me think the maps were somehow insanely old. You could just spend an afternoon looking at the travel maps and it was like reading the trilogy over again in a couple of hours.

Ned, any First Age esp Children of Hurin (my absolutely favorite Tolkien story)?

We haven't done Turin and company yet -- we definitely will though. But as for the First Age in general, here and there -- episodes 2 and 3 are about death in Middle-earth and about Melian, so you may find things to chew over there though again we hadn't quite figured out our best format until episode 4. 5 on Galadriel and 7 on Ghan-buri-Ghan touch on elements as do others in lesser degrees; at some point we'll get around to grappling with that material more in discussion. It's all down to our continuing whims! (The smartest thing we did out of the gate was decide NOT to simply march through a close reading of any of the books.)

As a teenage fan, I enjoyed bits of Unfinished Tales; I did buy a few of the other posthumous books but I honestly can’t remember a thing about them beyond being bored silly.

Which of the posthumous books are of most interest / contain actual complete stories / aren’t basically drafts of the Silmarillion?

Children of Hurin, for me. As absolutely vicious and devastating as Tolkien got, like Greek myths.

Though it is more an expansion of the Turin Turumbar parts of The Silmarillion. It is absolutely a self-contained story.

xxpost You can ignore the first four books in the History series, then. The fifth one, The Lost Road, is of interest because it's where he was with Middle-earth development right before getting into writing LOTR -- a number of paths not taken, some interesting material there about Numenor. Six through eight cover LOTR but the ninth, Sauron Defeated, has the Notion Club Papers and related material that is as meta as Tolkien ever got, lots of meditations on what exactly he was doing or trying to do. The remaining three books, while covering later Silmarillion material, has a LOT with him late in life starting to question and heavily revise his original mythologies -- the last fifteen years of his life is almost him, not quite pulling a Le Guin with later Earthsea move, but him definitely giving lots of things a rethink. The forthcoming Nature of Middle-earth collection may have more in this vein too.

Yeah, I would emphasize The Silmarillion contains excerpted/summarized/streamlined versions of many finished/unfinished First/Second Age stories. Most of the books that came out over the last couple of years expand The Silmarillion versions into full-fledged versions.

versions>versions

Tracer covered the snoozeworthiness of the council of elrond upthread tbf

yeah we normally do 3 or 4-chapter sections a week for bookclub bc chapters are usually quite short

mid-read that week we realized council of elrond was fuckin HUGE so we called it & just did that one chapter that week lol

But as exposition goes, its what allows the glorious mad "evil comes to derbyshire" of everything after the birthday party to that point

Get through that (and tbh if you dont have to read it aloud selon chez hand its not *that* bad) and you're out the door and headlong to moria again

my lore-obsessed ass loved the council of elrond chapter lol. also love it when bilbo (or another character, but usually bilbo) breaks out into a song that lasts multiple pages.

About 40 pages, to be fair. I think it's fine. It puts the rest of the book on sure footing, and helps the reader to buy into the necessity of the quest.

If anything, three whole chapters in Lothlórien is the slog for me.

I’m reading some Wikipedia pages to confirm some half-remembered things and Jesus Christ

Originally, Tolkien intended for Éowyn to marry Aragorn. Later, however, he decided against it because Aragorn was "too old and lordly and grim." He considered making Éowyn the twin sister of Éomund, and having her die "to avenge or save Théoden". He also considered having Aragorn truly love Éowyn and regret never marrying after her death.

Fantasy stories are easy to start- witness the many, many followers-on to the story in question- but at some stage exposition must come in and you're either balls-out with it or you are dribbing and drabbing it and either way its almost impossible to not be either aping or overaware of Tolkien while doing so rly- the council was prob revolutionary enough in its day as an approach and this way we dont become a fantasy tale so in love with its court intrigues that we're stuck with bloody grandkids before things move on again

xp aragorn is ninety in the film also

Thats just what a ninety yr old aragorn looks like

Me: why was Aragorn so old, why did he live to be 210, was it legit just “he’s Numenórean, fuck you”
Google: it’s because he’s Númenorean, fuck you

I was gonna thread in something about how (according to one of the prefaces anyway) tolkien had been working on the story- in fact the entire prehistory and the lot, rly- for decades before the books themselves had to be assembled and how this i think tells in the delivery, feeds into the maps/walks above, the patient knowledge of the bits he has told before ans now leaves out, the sense that not just bombadil but behind every path not taken there are tales you arent hearing this time but may again, the joy in reading it and imagining him as your grandfather and imagining that you have heard those tales, that versions arent reworked nor facts changed so much as the old man tells the story as he remembers it now kr focuses the piece *thusly* in this telling because it pleases him to or because he had thought more on it since the last time we sat with him.

ive always loved that feeling, which it has given me since my first re-read, after id devoured the appendices and read even a bit about how long hed been putting it all together and constantly working it. One half archaeologist of an imaginary world and one half linguist piecing it all together as fragments come back or are discovered or are framed anew when another piece falls into place to cast it so. The lack of a definitive, only what was printed in the moment, adds to the feel of lore and not engineered fiction imo.

Because im currently reading steven erikson and lemme tell ya a ten-book grueller spun out as fast as mavis beacon could whip him based on a fucking card game he invented in college does *not* achieve the same sweet maturity

xp yeah I thought similarly when reading some of the appendices about the languages; they weren’t gibberish or a hobby, they were something he spent time and thought constructing and even if it was only to please himself he adhered to his own rules while writing it. You do get the sense of the story unfolding not merely as an imagining from his mind but as if it was a dear object that had been washed and ironed and folded and mended and taken out many times, and that what you see in the books was only a small fragment of the world he had constructed for himself.

Good comparisons all. The fact that it really was a lifetime's pursuit absolutely shows -- by the time readers would have first encountered as much of the backstory as was set when LOTR first emerged, the basics of the mythology were already almost forty years old. Tolkien himself had hoped for a longer life than he did (and he had a long one) and it does raise the question of what eventually would have come of his later revisions. But the alternate history in my brain is the one where The Hobbit never finds a publisher and he just settles into a career of public academia, private pursuits and his children eventually are bemused at all his old writings and what they might have meant.

Seeing the exhibition at the Morgan two years ago was very lovely on those fronts, and underscored how he just had these literal artistic visions -- the thematic illustrations and more that he worked on as a young man show that much -- and how that might have translated as he could those thoughts into language. More than once it reminded me that while he was never alone per se -- he always had his younger brother at least, and found his friends and colleagues and community -- there was a deep experience of loneliness when young after his mother died that percolates throughout the work.

Most of the books that came out over the last couple of years expand The Silmarillion versions into full-fledged versions.

Kinda, but Children of Hurin is the only one that's a straight read through. Beren and Luthien and The Fall of Gondolin collate and demonstrate the various versions of the story over time (and I still so wish he had done that full revision of the latter that he only got an initial way through -- it was shaping up to be a hell of a detailed story and it does have some of my favorite descriptive passages of his; if he had applied it to the original draft of the story which was strong and vivid enough in its own right, that would have been something).

The other story I wish he had finished was "Aldarion and Erendis," and I'm still pretty convinced we'll see at least some of that in the Amazon series. I've said for a while that a standalone publication of that away from Unfinished Tales, even if it's a short book, wouldn't be a bad idea. It really is unique out of all the core stories.

boring bits of LoTR = all bits wiv elfs, JRRT just too horny to edit at such moments is how i break it down to an extent

(old-skool mark s-style post for yr delectation there)

(up to the comma anyway)

Council of Elrond is where I stalled out as a child, but later realized it's an absolutely critical chapter. It's extremely heavy on exposition, but goes so deep into the lore of Middle Earth and the greater world that was mostly unknown to the Hobbits at that point. It is really the point where the main plot starts to get it's foundation, and it takes off from there.

horny but manifested as a countermotion away from the messy bombadilness of horniness into some ostensibly higher realm

elves are when he goes all art nouveau

werkstaette without the weiner, as it were

Oh dear.

I am a massive Council of Elrond fan. I just like history, and this feigned history is kinda amazing -- but also how it subtly notes that not everyone at the table has the same perspective (which of course is amped up in the film version).

Well i mean is it subtle in the book? Not sure.

Subtler than the comedy dwarf hacking at the wardrobe with the rachel hairdo, yes, granted

I agree that the descriptions of landscapes and travel, and the maps, are Tolkien's greatest strength. Even as a kid I felt that more deeply than the characterization. I never bothered to see the movies because, even from the trailers, I could tell that wasn't where Jackson's interest lay; I guess my ideal director for the trilogy would have been Bela Tarr.

Getting into Dungeons and Dragons at about the same time as I first read the books, the adventure modules fascinated me in a similar way - not as narratives, but with maps and descriptions of places (often dungeons) and creatures (such as dragons) in stasis, waiting for the disruption of an adventuring party.

Two years ago we visited the west coast of Ireland. We went for hikes in the Burren and in Connemara and (especially in the former) the entire time I was just imagining that this was what Middle Earth looked like. For me, the Burren is now the Barrow Downs and no one will convince me otherwise.

Mar dhea and you kept that quiet

I enjoyed the Council of Elrond too - i really enjoy all the lore-talk, plus the backstory of why everyone came to Rivendell was really enlightening, esp Gimli & Boromir, bc in the movie there’s not a ton of backstory given there

Knowing that he wanted the Simarillion to be part of LOTR and the publishers were like LOL NOPE makes me kind of want that version, just because he refers so often to previous ages of men & lore & history that it makes sense that he would have wanted it to be a complete chronicle
But: i have not yet read the Simarillion so maybe thats a careful what u wish for situation lol

Trying to convince my bookclub compatriot that we should try to read the Simarillion together after we are done w the trilogy. The nerd in me is dying to dig into some of these backstories
But I also have a v limited capacity for places & names so also slightly afeared of whats in store

But otm xp

https://i.imgur.com/Zol9Rwy.jpg

[Removed Illegal Image]

https://i.imgur.com/6wtZzOe.jpg

Manys the bad misty day id to go chasing cows across the bog and even if mordor wasnt quite right the mood would be on me

wow yes feeling that!!

xp silmarillion is a different kettle of fish than a fleshed out book now tbh

What deems said. Best way to think of The Silmarillion to keep Tolkien's later framing of it in mind: translations by Bilbo from elvish lore. So, not so much a uniform dramatic story as it is a mythology learned about by a much later figure and attempted to be conveyed in another language. Call it a Bible equivalent if you like, or a Kalevala or a Mahabharata, though not really like any of them. The difference in tone and structure from LOTR is apparent, and best not to expect anything like LOTR.

the bible reads like a christopher tolkien when you'd hope for a jrr tolkien tbh

― k¸ (darraghmac), Thursday, September 16, 2010 7:30 AM (19 minutes ago)

Now with that said, how did you enjoy, for instance, the appendices and all that from the end of LOTR?

Because bthe silmarillion is a lot more of a told narrative than that

Say that its chris telling you the story but its raining and he's looking for a filling station and is rather running through the motions a bit

i havent read any appendices yet *ducks*

Hang on a sec

Ned, can you get two other strong fellas over here, i wanna throw the book at her

I'll have to make some calls. *fires up palantir*

ANYWAY, once you have READ THE APPENDICES, VG, etc.

Anyway- if you want background then the silmarillion has it, and its not *that* dry.

I wouldnt make it book club tho

Among other things you will learn about hobbit month names, like Blooting.

[backs out of thread]

Wait come back there's a breakdown of all the tengwar characters

lol “blooting” ok im down for that

love the silmarillion, would be a disastrous book club book