Lord of the Rings

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

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