Lord of the Rings

(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

The Two Towers: Dark Pegasus

(TBF the Rankin-Bass ROTK made the same mistake.)

Anyway, as I promised/threatened: my collection of the books and everything else related to them and/or the films:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50891825966_e2657fb3d2_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50891114613_26c1fab2ec_b.jpg

Though TBF there's also the WETA art books for the Hobbit films in another bookcase plus a shelf with the various Jackson productions and Tolkien's own readings on CD and etc.

And yes that does mean I own three physical copies of LOTR...plus one on Kindle. You know, just to have around.

Woof

"You can't be too careful!" < / Jackson Bree guard voice, for that extra elan >

No shame in that Ned, I own multiple editions of Oscar and Lucinda & Black Beauty.

I hope Deems won’t count this as a spoiler, but I’m just gonna say that of all the scenes where the books shit all over the movies from a great height, the Council of Elrond might be first among them.

Also greatly enjoying just how many scenes there are where Sam gets the last word in.

Im allowing it for political convenience

Feeling wonder at Ned's collection like seeing Smaug's treasure.

nerd city lol <3

Indeed and If you even took one item from it I would react like Smaug and seek to burn you alive. Whether or not I do so while speaking like Benedict Cumberbatch is debatable.

Anyway let us celebrate the poetry of the films.

sam’s response always breaks my heart into a million pieces pic.twitter.com/gYmQPXtSpi

— Nariman△⃒⃘ (@slytherinus) January 30, 2021

Since folks were sharing their LOTR editions, these are mine from mid-70s. They have Tolkien's paintings on the covers. (hoping the formatting works)

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

for it seemed to me that these books were dull, ill-written, whimsical and childish. And for me this had a reassuring outcome, for most of his more ardent supporters were soon beginning to sell out their shares in Professor Tolkien, and today those books have passed into a merciful oblivion.

this was one of the great literary predictions by big Phil Toynbee (Polly's dad) just before they couldn't print them fast enough to fill the shelves in bookstores in the US and subsequently everywhere else in the world!

cool covers!

behold the hideously ugly cover art from these 2004 paperbacks i got for cheap. i hate the covers so much, one day I will swap them out for a nicer edition

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/6EgAAOSwwbdWImTK/s-l500.jpg

https://2f96be1b505f7f7a63c3-837c961929b51c21ec10b9658b068d6c.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/products/061486.jpg

https://2f96be1b505f7f7a63c3-837c961929b51c21ec10b9658b068d6c.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/products/061485.jpg

I would like to find this version of the Hobbit illustrated by Tove Jannson:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2696/4448/products/9789510427927_frontcover_final_original_large.jpg?v=1522525558

oh hell yes

beautiful colour sense there. All the others are ugly, overworked mud and gravy!

only downside is the text is in Finnish but that's fine with me (I have the Jannson-illustrated English-language versions of Alice in Wonderland the Hunting of the Snark and they are awesome)

My version of The Hobbit is the same version posted above by that's not my post, but I've never seen the LOTR's from that version. They're really great.

https://assets.moomin.com/uploads/2017/09/Tove-Jansson-Hobbit-original-2_2.jpg

"moomin characters"

^^^correct

Love the Jansson take on Gollum:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/bf/e7/32/bfe7329a2137d3a7199ac2c51f6651f1.jpg

Caption conteeeeest!

All I can think of is a minimalist shittynewyorkercartooncaptions type one where Bilbo is just like "ah,fuck"

norse riddles where the answer is "an asshole"

"a sphincter says"

"wheres zig?"

I find I've come to resent the notion espoused by the likes of Terry Pratchett that if LOTR is still your favourite book when you're an adult you must have something wrong with you (this goes hand in hand with the unfortunate realisation despite the humanitarian concerns expressed in his work, Pratchett could be a bit of an unpleasant cynical old git at times). It's not even my actual favourite book, but it's this idea that you instantly jettison things that were a formative experience once you become a supposedly mature adult that can see things for what they really are that I take issue with.

I mean, I guess if your experience of reading ended there it could be a problem. But for me(and I'm sure many others) LOTR was my transition from children's books to adult reading, a massively significant stepping stone. I had a tatty copy of the complete trilogy that went everywhere with me (it didn't start off tatty much to my dad's chagrin) and I read the fuck out of that thing. I remember comparing the size of "Fellowship" to the number of pages in something I'd been reading prior to that(which was probably around 120 pages) and my mind boggling at the difference in scale.

Well the general idea that you can tell anything about anyone based on anything is flawed afaict

Who are your favorite fantasy novelists?

O.K., I give in. J. R. R. Tolkien. I wrote a letter to him once and got a very nice reply. Just think how busy he would have been, and yet he took the time out to write to a fan.

I'm not entirely convinced of merit-via-weight, I'd have to say.

Well, I wasn't dismissing the books I read prior to LOTR(as that would kind-of invalidate the point I was making beforehand), and I feel you're wilfully misinterpreting what I said. It wasn't the weight that made it a valuable experience, but comparing the size of the books brought home how much of a different and more involved reading experience this was.

If that's not a good enough answer, I shall depart this thread henceforth and leave you to your petty quibbles. GOOD DAY, SIR.

Giz your address, I'll send you a copy of the Deathly Hallows.

lol cmon andrew. size is everything to kids! my son literally asks me twice a day at least how tall various basketball players are (which i do get annoyed with, tbf)

size matters to kids, as tove jansson teaches us: "all small creatures should have bows in their tails!"

the legendary dr vick and i once delivered a superb lecture on this exact theme, featuring pictures by IVAN BILIBIN which i can't currently find on the internet :(

Lorien chapters are a slog, stop the narrative dead. Should have let them grieve after Moria, tbh, rather than plunging them into a 3-chapter epsom salt bath.

Also finding it weird that Lorien is about 5 minutes’ drive from Orc-n’-Balrog Central (yeah yeah there’s a river but still).

Never clocked before that Galadriel is Arwen’s grandma

Yeah, I agree, that is one of the weakest sections of the book. Not terrible by any means, but still, it could have been two chapters.

I'm trying to remember if I guessed the Gollum reveal before Tolkien made it explicit. It's kind of funny how long he drags that out.

(The fact that Gollum is the thing following them, I mean.)