Lord of the Rings

This discussion has me ready to tackle some Tolkien I haven't read when I finish my current book. Maybe I'll read Beren and Luthien?

I was given this set of them at the time
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/510DQ2D1RJL._SX346_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

And I know everyone is going to be UGH FILM VERSION U PLEB but the appendices being separate as a volume you can dip into is really good

The appendices detailing the rest of the characters' lives would make a good low-stakes tv series, in an All Creatures Great and Small vein.

the trope that intellectuals be in more peril of losing their soul than doughty burgers working men or even yokels -- that deeper knowledge is a portal to mortal danger -- is all over the fantasy lit of the late 19th and early 20 century (see m.r.james passim for example)

in the UK some of it is burkean-chestertonian but tbh it goes a long way back and has several variants (it's also what the faust myth is largely about)

it's also -- super-hesitant to go far into this as i don't feel adequately equipped except i just finished the most recent hilary mantel, which delves a lot into the 16th century world of this -- a somewhat maybe catholic outlook? catholic of the period? as in, leave the deep stuff to those who've been properly trained, self-taught is self-doomed and so on, incuriousity is a kind of armour (hence sam > bilbo > frodo etc)

tbh not at all sure how much weight id want to put on this reading tho (well aware that the person likely to fall through the thin ice expounding it in present company = me)

https://www.mytolkienbooks.com/books01/pics/lotr28.jpg

I have these uh characterful late 70s Unwin paperbacks I got from the 2nd hand bookshop on the road I grew up on

Those are cool. I've never seen those covers.

Mark i think that could be read, without necessarily being placed in there

Ive also had a few different paperback versions of varying ages and origin over the years, tho i like the current shiny/weighty tomes

I first read these editions which I borrowed off my best friend and kept failing to return (hence getting gifted my own set of books):
https://www.tolkienbooks.be/tolkien-book-store/images/CLP0298b.jpg

when im back from shopping i will take photos of my dad's now exceedingly ancient (and sadly tatty) hardbacks

I rocked the Darrell K Sweet editions here in the US re my first copy:

https://external-preview.redd.it/0sMAKjGlZicmiqe9nE4fOFqiyAyoH2fUIU4UA3-OEyY.jpg?auto=webp&s=88578030d93f23440e35ec26f40534a589502c17

This has since...changed. Will post a photo later showing how.

the relationship of the ring to power isn't that it has it. it is it.
...
the ring is a trap disguised as an escape. the only person for whom it isn't a trap is the person whose desire is a world made-- like the ring-- coterminous with himself. the only effective strategy against him is fusion and renunciation. it's difficult because renouncing the possibility of exerting your will unimpeded can even for a hobbit be like cutting off a part of the self. but if you're not sauron, or final-stage gollum, it's not very much of the self. it is a strange thing that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.

― difficult listening hour, Saturday, January 30, 2021 1:52 AM (twelve hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

*white guy blinking.gif*

DLH is on fire and all y'all are GOOD itt.

Is this where I admit I never warmed up to Tolkien? Not my jam. ilxors talking about it is WAY more my jam. :)

I wish I were at home because I also, somewhere along the way, picked up a verrrry 1970s paperback fantasy trilogy clearly modeled on LOTR? Straining to remember the details but I'm about 80% the wizard's horse was ALSO named Shadowfax?

The covers were trippy iirc.

I am currently living the samwise dream of stove on, teapot steaming, feet up and about to open the red book of westmarch (ed. tolkien, from notes collected by b. baggins)

Oh never mind, it was this:

https://i.etsystatic.com/9030433/r/il/df6eee/1136028440/il_794xN.1136028440_7qc4.jpg

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-completely-bonkers-world-of-niel-hancocks-circle-of-light/

Its no duncton wood tbh

"Hancock was a veteran of the Vietnam war and used his experiences in writing his fantasy books. His world, however, does not seem to have the automatic weapons and helicopters of that war.[citation needed]"

There’s something strangely, weirdly subversive about the original cover art
Created by the author’s wife, the original covers are just… well. Take a gander at the cover for the second volume, Faragorn Fairingay. Look at those tiny bedroom slippers on the floor—for the otter in the bed—and feel reality slipping away from you.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/wp-content/nas-uploads/sites/4/2015/01/faragornfairangay.jpg

lol

faragorn 🤔🤔🤔

Ned, I remember those versions from either the bookstore (Waldenbooks RIP) or library.

https://i.imgur.com/4q0fHzT.jpg

those were my dad's and they are OLD: he was in on the ground floor as a teenager tolkwise and two of them are in fact first edns, plus all three endpaper maps have by a miracle somehow survived

they are also as you can see extremely er pre-loved and thus extremely non-valuable as heirlooms: the pictures in the hobbit have been "coloured in" aka scribbled on by some aunt or uncle as a tot and the three lovely deep crimson covers of LotR (paper jackets long lost) still bear the quickly wiped-up splashmarks of where mark s as a tot (with whooping cough) threw up all over his bedroom oops

(just between us if i ever try and sell them on ABE i will probably say it is spilled water)

That's awesome.

I have the same edition as gyac, but never actually realised that they form a triptych! Partly because the fronts also continue on to the spines and backs:

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/tolkien-book-store/images/CLP0298.jpg

The appendices detailing the rest of the characters' lives would make a good low-stakes tv series, in an All Creatures Great and Small vein.

I mean, detailing is very much what they don't do - something that slightly complicates the Sam story is that one of the Appendices says that 61 years after he returns home, later in the year that Rosie passes on, Sam goes to Grey Havens and (rumor has it) over the sea. It's all presented as a chronological record, so you can read it that Rosie's love overwhelmed the PTSD, or that this was simply an option always available to him but not her.

(also of course the last chronological event is that Legolas goes to the Havens, builds a ship singlehanded and stripped to the waist and goes on one last gay cruise with Gimli)

I’m already 1/3 of the way through Fellowship (they’re just parting with Bombadil to skirt the Barrow-Downs). I meant to take it slow & actually think about the books as they progressed this time, but I find I can’t help myself hurtling through them — I feel myself fairly dragged along, compelled to page-turn.

I have, however, forced myself to actually read all the words mostly, as opposed to my usual habit of skimming long descriptive paragraphs & landing on the next bit of dialogue or action. Can’t stress enough what others observed upthread, that this book about walking is situated in a landscape so thoroughly imagined that it might as well be describing an IRL place.

Ok easy on the spoilers pls tho?

when i called sauron a loser-melt it was just my opinion of his politics not me giving away the final score

Hmmm maybe a thread for those of us that havent read it?

as opposed to my usual habit of skimming long descriptive paragraphs & landing on the next bit of dialogue or action.

And I oop!

fwiw my dad (book-owner cited above) was a professional botanist who also often taught practical geology to university students: he had a very high opinion of tolk's observational knowledge of types of landscape and the plants and tress you find in them

non-botanists refer to them as trees, a rookie error

Hey! Sing derry-dol! Easy on the spoilers!
Some haven’t read it yet! Don’t you mention plot points!

favorite quality of sam from the books is that say for example, when he selfconsciously says to Faramir in Two Towers “i’m no poet but this is what Galadriel’s like” he proceeds to drop ~the~ purest poetry

every doubt he has about his ability (and obv that is mixed in with his perceived lower social status/class), he proves outwardly to possess in spades (no gardening pun intended)

in the books he also has a great ongoing capacity for brief moments of wonder, or to enjoy small new experiences despite being far from home and often in danger

he is also jrr’s mary-sue for elves a bit tbh

rewriting the "down down to goblin town" song except its spoilertown

Ho ho, mark s

thats right

adding: sam is the xander

If you've only read one of those early paperback sets, particularly Ace Books, you've encountered many errors---this 50th Anniversary edition (the "trilogy" in one volume, as intended) has a different cover than the one I read, but the same or similar fast, dense, clear account by xpost Douglas A. Anderson (who describes it as "a single novel, consisting of six books, plus appendices, sometimes published in three volumes," which are incl., along w other materials provided by JRRT) of the garble introduced by "corrections", also typos, and how the author tried to get true corrections (and some revisions!) in for pretty much the last decade of his life (some of them finally made it into posthumous editions), He recommends Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-Earth (soke of which is also in this edition) for a complete history of the novel itself, allll the stages of writing, incl. much later revisions mentioned above, 'til this 2005 edition, which may or may not be the true book (aside from the one in readers' heads and discourse, of course).
You can Look Inside this on its Amazon page and read Anderson's
whole intro.
Giant paperback, also Kindle and hardback if want something less slippery:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51eq24cRtRL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

Anderson does indicate that some errors came from trying to decipher author's handwriting in margins of manuscripts, as w Balzac, Proust, dog knows how many others.

I owned the very AD&D influenced box set, possibly early 80s if I were to guess... let me img srch

https://i.imgur.com/Ja1yfN7.jpg

(1981 Ballantine)

Yup, the Sweet set; posted that above. Sweet also did all the Wheel of Time covers so he's had an impact!

abs <3 mark s heirlooms

(joyce was a terrible man for rewriting and just straight out adding material right there on the galleys at the printers)

(luckily in finnegans wake no one can tell you typo)

whoops, sorry Ned. your pic post didn't trigger my nostalgia for some reason.

Yeah Balzac and Proust would fuck with the galleys too, not sure about T., been a while since I read that intro, but Ballentine was where things started to get better, according to Anderson.

But when somebody consulted w T about a word etc., he might come up with a whole new set of ch-ch-changes, look out ye rock n rollers! (sry)

i bought a set of houghton miflin paperbacks bc they were cheap & on sale & god the cover art is so ugly

This thread is brilliant and very much making me want to re-read the trilogy (only read it once, about 20 years ago).

I remember my parents had the pirated Ace Books editions:

https://www.tolkienguide.com/uploads/newbb/1_5b5cc13d2ff58.jpg