Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
— first paragraph of “The Hobbit”, by JRR Tolkien
On this day in history, 1937, The Hobbit; or, There and Back Again
Just for fun, and to celebrate (if you have, er, 10 hours to read all that crap) – here are some of the long-ass book excerpts and posts I have written about Tolkien:
“Of course, The Lord of the Rings does not belong to me”
Happy birthday, Bilbo!!
oh. my. God. !. I love you, sheila. I mean, I love you for more than this, but if in some parallel dimension this is all the connection we had, I’d love you.
the only problem is that i have homework i’m supposed to be doing today… but no class to speak of — reading time ^_^
Sheila,
If I recall, you also wrote a really killer post about Faramir. Did you exclude it from this list on purpose?
No! I picked these posts at random. I don’t remember the Faramir post. Let me find it.
Hmmm. I found one about Eowyn.
Faramir is KIND of mentioned there.
Disclaimer: I am not pissing on your joy of Tolkien. Not. I swear. Rock on, JRR.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I have never been able to get into these books. It’s not that I don’t like fantasy, I do. Or that I think they’re totally geeky, I don’t. I’ve tried, like, three or four times to read them, telling myself, “These are CLASSICS. People LOVE THEM. What the fuck is WRONG WITH YOU?!”
But then I start and about five pages in I start mixing up characters and the dialogue starts to turn to Esperanto in my head and blah blah zzzzzzzzz.
Y’all get such joy from them, and I wish I could to. I’m on the other side of the window, pressing my nose on the glass, watching you guys have a LOTR party. ::sigh:: I’m a Tolkien-tard.
Hey Sheil, we should get Sean going on this – if you thought he was a Narnia geek you have NO IDEA HOW CRAZY THE TOLKEIN KNOWLEDGE gets. Patrick also, to a lesser degree…
Lisa – yeah, I know a lot of people who feel that way, actually.
I was WAY more into the Narnia books as a kid (not that you have to choose between the 2!!!) – I read The Hobbit, and LOVED it – but the trilogy really lost me. I couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t until WAY later that I read the trilogy and got into it.
But the Narnia books totally transported me from day one, and – there’s still something about them I prefer.
Jean – hahahahahahaha
“What’d you think of the Narnia movie, Sean?”
“I didn’t like Mr. Tumnus’ legs.”
Hilarious.
I wonder how he felt about the Lord of the Rings movies??
Dad read Narnia books to me as bedtime stories before I could read myself, so I’ve loved them from early on. He was always pestering me (in elementary school) to read The Hobbit, but that just made me stubborn and I didn’t read it. Finally I got sick of him pushing them on me, so I said, “Fine! I promise to start The Hobbit on my 13th birthday.” I intended to just read the first word or maybe the first sentence and then never finish it for the rest of my life (I have a VERY stubborn streak), but it was good! And now I’m a big Tolkien fan, and I’ve read and loved the Silmarillion, even if I’m not as up on the minute trivia as I am with Harry Potter.
So, in other words, hooray for Tolkien!
I, too, had trouble getting into LOTR at first. I loved the Hobbit, savored Patricia McKillip’s Riddlemaster trilogy, devoured Ursula K. LeGuin’s Wizard of Earthsea trilogy,and then fell headlong into Stephen Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Ironic that it took me years to read Lord of the Rings, without which a lot of the literature I love wouldn’t have come about.
Its funny how its played out for me – I came across the Hobbit in a department store out of sheer boredom…and read and reread. Then I learned about the Narnia Chronicles and how Lewis was close friends with Tolkien and I thought “oh boy! more goodness!” Then I picked up TLTWaTW – and felt insulted. It was nothing like what I had come across in the Hobbit, at least not as far as in tone or “other worldliness”. It was almost too preachy for me. Only in my adult hood – and this can be said of Tolkien’s works as well – have I gained the appreciation of Lewis that so many others had.
my father read Narnia to us before bedtime. Tolkien’s works i got into myself, but with my father’s encouragement.
..and don’t get my father and i started on the LotR movies. yes, they’re good, they’re okay, but we’re Tolkien FANATICS, and as such can’t stand some discrepancies — especially those that didn’t have to be made. [Faramir’s hair? blonde? what the heck?! — this is also where my dad displayed his awesome memory: when he saw a Two Towers poster with Faramir on it, he had me get ROTK, which he hasn’t read in over 20 years, and he told me almost the EXACT PAGE a quotation was on which showed Faramir to have raven coloured hair.]
..yes, Tolkien is one of my many obsessions, how did you know?
also, for the record, the shire reckoning had frodo’s birthday at 22 September, which is tomorrow. some just follow that date, whilst others try to adjust to our calendar, with an inaccuracy on average of 10 days, putting it at 12 September. Based off information from appendix D, it could actually be 14 September or 16 September…
…shutting up now…
amelie – hahahahahaha the exact page!!!
amelie – seriously, don’t ever shut up. Genius.
i said a lament on 2 September, as that was the 33rd anniversary of Tolkien’s death. the man was genius, i tell you! he invented his first language when was about 11, i think, and although only one sentence now survives of it, and no one knows what it means, it’s still credible. Tolkien, within his many clubs and groups, was in one [whilst teaching at Oxford] where they would take turns reading aloud and translating old Scandinavian texts. a lot of the other professors had difficulties with it, and would stumble here and there. Tolkien would not only help them get through their section, but his was like music. It just moved along smoothly. I’d have loved to hear that.
One of my classmates up here informed me that ‘ent’ used to mean ‘giant’, in Anglo-Saxon, and claimed Tolkien stole all his terminology from that language. This is, of course, distinctly, and utterly false. for one thing, the language most likely to be related was the one Tolkien considered the most beautiful: Finnish. For another, Tolkien invented no less than 3 languages for the Lord of the Rings. [he had maps, and layouts of homes, and battles, and journeys. Tolkien always considered himself more of a historian than a storywriter. He’d pore over the different details, looking for discrepancies, seeing how it all fit together, like a glove.] for a third, he ‘borrowed’ terms from a number of different languages to make his own languages — and he didn’t just string words along that sounded nice together. he came up with endings, and word orders, and all that sort of thing. you can decline and conjugate elvish words. that’s why they’re able to teach it as a class in a few select places.
…okay, i need to finish my physics before i can continue on my with Tolkien tirade.
[thanks, sheila : )]
My dad read me the Hobbit as a bedtime story (as I recall, he read it twice). I too couldn’t get into the Rings trilogy – I variously was annoyed that Bilbo wasn’t the main character, got characters confused, got lost in the songs, and got bored. (I kept trying to read them…). It, oddly enough, took the 1st movie. Once I had the story started, I ran with it.
The Hobbit is still my favorite though.
I seem to be the only one who loved the LOTR Trilogy, but never felt the same about The Hobbit. It always seemed more of a child’s story, which, of course, it was. My mother gave me The Fellowship of the Ring when I was about 11. It was an edition that wasn’t “Approved” by Tolkien, and had a completely different cover. Reading the back cover, I was put off by the talk of trolls, dwarves, elves, etc., and I didn’t try to read it for a year or so. Once I started, I read the entire trilogy, hardly stopping to sleep. I remember wishing I could call in sick from school, but, unable to do so, I took one of the books to school with me. Needless to say, I spent a couple days ignoring my teacher and lessons, and passed the time furtively reading LOTR. I remember my Dad coming into my room about 3am, and telling me to turn off the light, and go to sleep. Anyway, never felt the same driving compulsion with The Hobbit.
Peter Jackson totally hosed Faramir.
I picture him sitting in the Steward’s chair on the bottom step of the throne room of Minas Tirith, talking to his agent – “What? He said I kept Frodo in Osgiliath? I never even went there until after I sent him on his way! What is… BLONDE? He made me a blonde? Who’s next, James Bond?”
Good grief, it is, isn’t it?
Happy birthday and your continued good health, Mr. Baggins! The stout is a bit warm to drink just now, so I’ll have to toast your health with Shiner Bock, but we must make do in a pinch. :-)