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posted by janrinok on Friday January 17 2020, @08:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the Namárië dept.

News from the BBC

Christopher Tolkien, who edited and published the posthumous works of his father, Lord of the Rings writer JRR Tolkien, has died aged 95.

The news was confirmed by the Tolkien Society, which described him as "Middle-earth's first scholar".

After his father's death in 1973, Mr Tolkien published the acclaimed work The Silmarillion.

Scholar Dr Dimitra Fimi said the study of JRR Tolkien "would never be what it is today" without his input.

My first introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien's work was The Father Christmas Letters, which were written for Christopher and his siblings. In more recent years, I've dipped into Christopher's work on Middle Earth, both his History of Middle Earth, and the various pieces of his father's work that he edited and expanded upon.

What memories do Soylentils have of the Tolkiens' work?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Friday January 17 2020, @09:12PM (5 children)

    by donkeyhotay (2540) on Friday January 17 2020, @09:12PM (#944724)

    I was in high school, probably 1979. I had taken a literature class taught by an aging spinster, Millie Stovall. Along through the semester, she told us that our next book would be The Hobbit. I groaned. This was very soon after the animated Hobbit movie came out, and I thought it was for kids. But of course, I had no choice in the matter and began the novel, fully prepared to hate it.

    I couldn't put it down.

    It was a beautiful, exciting story and when I reached the end, it left me wanting more. It was my introduction to J.R.R. Tolkien, and by extension, later in life, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis.

    I learned a few important lessons that year: that great literature could be found in unexpected places; and that Millie Stovall was my favorite teacher ever, to name a couple.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:13PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 17 2020, @10:13PM (#944759)

    When my son was about 6 he started to read The Hobbit. He took it on his own initiative and I was thrilled. I wasn't really sure how much he was reading, but we would talk about story details so I knew that he was picking it up. Then after a while I noticed that he wasn't reading it any more. He was about 2/3rds of the way through. It turned out that his motivation came from the fact that I told him there was a dragon in the story, but after about 2/3rds of the way through WITH NO DRAGON, well, he had enough.

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:03AM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday January 18 2020, @12:03AM (#944804) Homepage

      Seconded that, already posted details a few times but similar down to a T what you described. The forest part in particular dragged on and on to no end.

      If there's any advice that should be offered to anybody considering getting into J.R.R. Tolkien, it's "Stay the fuck away from The Hobbit."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:31PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 18 2020, @01:31PM (#944954)

    Name a single female character from the hobbit, it's only good because it marginalizes the majority-minority, pure MRA art, luckily amazon will fix it

  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:07PM (1 child)

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Saturday January 18 2020, @02:07PM (#944968) Homepage Journal

    I was lucky, I'd found The Hobbit book before the movie (I still have the VHS of the movie, bought it for my kids). I'd read LOTR and looked for more Tolkien. I read somewhere that the book The Hobbit was actually intended for children; not sure if that's true, I only read that in a single article.

    --
    mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:59PM

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 18 2020, @07:59PM (#945064)

      The publisher certainly considered The Hobbit to be a children's story: he gave it to his ten-year-old son, who liked it enough that he decided to apublish it. The publisher later asked Tolkien for another book about hobbits, and got LOTR!