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How is the formatting, for those who have downloaded them already?

I wonder if the three-in-one edition will have a linked TOC to make it easier to navigate from one book to the other?

 

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LoTR is the only instance I can think of where the movies were MUCH better than the books. The movies are my all time favorites! My husband bought me a beautiful set of the books and it was absolutely painful to try to read them. It would take entire chapters for them to get from one side of the road to the other. I couldn't force myself to continue reading. I wish I could love them. I see that I am very much in the minority.

Not everyone likes the same kinds of books.

Your issue with LoTR may be the depth of description in the writing. As you mention, it is very slow reading, but that is because of the depth of imagery and description in the story. By the time you finished the chapter in which the characters moved from one side of the road to the other, you could easily visualize that road and everything around it. LOL

This was due to Tolkien's depth and love regarding his work. He actually started the work by inventing the languages when he was in his early twenties. He then developed the people to speak those languages and the places to put those people in. He worked on this aspect for many years.

Finally, C.S. Lewis had to tell Tolkien to just write the story, and that he had worked on the background to it long enough.

First, Tolkien wrote The Hobbit for children. Then, he began working on a sequel, which eventually became LoTR. It was a very fascinating process, to me.

You can read more about that from his perspective in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

 

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Is it just me, or did anyone else really miss not having Tom Bombadil(sp?) in the movies? I mean, I knew the character wouldn't be in the movies because it was a bit of a tangent, but he's one of my favorite characters.

The first time I read through that part of the book, I was glad he wasn't in the movie (which I saw before reading the book).

After further reading and thought, however, I kind of wish he was in.

The reason? As far as I know, Bombadil is the only person not affected at all by being near or holding the One Ring. Everyone else (humans, elves, hobbits, dwarves, etc.) is affected by its power. Why isn't Bombadil?

This question has led to some interesting theories.

 

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I'm reading The Hobbit first, and plan on tackling LOTR next!

Where would seasoned Tolkien fans recommend reading "The Children of Hurin?" (the other Kindleized Tolkien book available, so far)

I believe it is a book of the history leading up to LoTR, like The Silmarillion. If so, my personal recommendation is to read it after the others.

I say this because the LoTR is more of a story, and the books on the history and legends behind it can seem slower and a little more dry at first. I find them more interesting, however, if I have already read LoTR and I can fit it into the epic story, knowing what things are referring to.

 

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I even write tengwar

Can you pm me with any information regarding how you would even go about learning tengwar?

 

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Forster:

Silmarillion is an acquired taste and should be read like . . . The Bible . . .in bits and pieces. Tolkien is cursing me. It's a massive backstory for thousands of novels he never wrote, and the one he did. There are few things as beautiful in the Enlgish language than the opening creation of Silmarillion. Then it get . . . well, biblical, and since it's not religion, only the brave go forward. I mean, in order to understand Silmarillion, you need to read C. Tolkien's 13 volumes. What fun is that except for the Tolkien scholar.

Ed Patterson

I agree. I have started it for the second time (I gave up once), and I am enjoying it now that I stopped trying to think of it as a novel or story and more as a poetic and deep way of explaining the origins of Middle Earth and the people groups in it.

Indeed, Silmarillion is very beautiful in its crafted use of the English language, but it is not a light or quick read.

I have recently started really reading and studying both Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. I am currently reading small portions of the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, and I find it fascinating to hear his thoughts on the process of writing LoTR, though my wife thinks I'm insane. LOL

I would love to be a Lewis and Tolkien scholar, even if it is only in my own mind. LOL

 

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You'll have to pardon the pun, but those books Kindled my love affair with reading adult sized novels.

 

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I, too, am a huge fan of Tolkien and Lewis. When I was in college, I actually got to meet someone who was a student of both men in England when he was younger.

Now that would have been neat. I don't think I would have been able to stop asking that person questions about both men.

 

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An interesting tidbit about Lewis and Tolkien. Although the best of friends (until late in their lives, when they became estranged), Tolkien thought the Narnia books "twaddle" and publicly trashed them as unworthy of ink. On the other hand, Lewis wrote the forward in the original FOTR, praising it as manna from heaven. Go figure.

I personally don't quite agree with Tolkien's harsh condemnation of his friends efforts, but I have never liked the Narnia books. When I saw Prince Caspian (the movie) it was one of the few times that the film was far superior to the book, which is structurally flawed and overwrought with allegory. Perhaps it was this Bunyanesque allegory that Tolkien detested. He often stated his dislike for allegory. Then again, he also hated Lewis' space books.

Edward C. Patterson

Though Tolkien expressed his dislike of the Narnia books, I believe it was mainly the "allegorical" nature of the books, and the fact that they lack the depth of LoTR. Lewis, however, vehemently denied that the Narnia books were allegory, so that is interesting. I think, however, that Tolkien's dislike of the Narnia series has been somewhat exaggerated in many Tolkien studies, unfortunately. I can easily see Tolkien calling them twaddle, but he often seemed to sound harsher than he meant, based on his letters. LOL

As far as the space books, Tolkien did not hate them (at least, not one of them) according to one of his letters. There were linguistic aspects he did not care for (Tolkien as big into linguistics, words, names, etc.), but the overall story was something he liked. Again, at least according to one of his personal letters.

Still waiting to hear about how you learned to write tengwar.

 

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mwvickers:

I think some of Tolkien's frustration with his colleague was their various competitions (wagers, if you will) to complete stories, where Tolkien, the niggler never could, while Lewis accomplished in a flash.

Very true. At the same time, I kind of respect Tolkien for that because the works he did complete are so much richer and deeper than the others.

By the way, I hope you didn't take my post as being argumentative. I didn't intend for it to sound that way. I'm sure you've found this out already, but when studying the lives of Tolkien and Lewis, there are variations on many aspects of their lives, and some people interpret different things through different lenses, so to speak.

Makes it all the more fascinating. Kind of like a puzzle that you have to figure out. LOL

As for tengwar, there's a course on-line in the writing - even a character set and a typing aid. There is also a Quenya course and one in Sandarin (although Tolkien never fully finished Sandarin as a language). Tengwar can be applied however to any spoken language. For example, the tengwar on the LOTR book covers is English written in Tengwar, not Elvish tongue(s). There are people who have mastered quenya (sandarin is as difficult as Cherokee - which I do know), the high speech, but although printed out the course and the various dictionaries (how many trees died for that effort, forgive me Fangorn), its slightly less useful than Cherokee (which I only use in my own literature). Tengwar is fun, especially if you use a calligraphy pen. But, of course, I'm a sinologist by degree and have worked with original 12th century Chinese texts. In fact, there's a reverse similarity between the Chinese written character and tengwar. While you can use tengwar to write any language, Chinese characters serve many different languages. The simplified Chinese character now deployed by the People's Republic is fast destroying that basic inherent pan-literate nature of the Chinese languages. Did you ever ask why in a Chinese movie, there are subtitles in Chinese characters? China has 12 separate languages (they're not dialects - but languages), but while Mandarin (kuo-hua - lit. country speech) is spoken by the actors, the written language is shared by all the languages (wen being the written language), so a person in Shang-hai (Wu-hua - Wu speech) may not understand the actor, but they can follow the bouncing ball, so to speak.

Aren't you glad you asked? I will see if I have the links to the tengwar and elvish sites still, and will post them. I am at work, and those links are on my home computer.

Edward C. Patterson

Hey, I learned something new today.

Thanks!

 

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I knew where you were coming from on the discussion. There was no argument in the tone, and I didn;t take it that way.

Namarie
(Now you should know at least that much Quenya) lol

Edward C. Patterson

It means, "farewell," right?

 

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You got it. There's a famous poem (at least in the Tolkien world) called The Namarie. The original Farewell poem in Quenya can easily be found by googling, and it is truly beautiful (the poem, not googling), and written by Tolkien, who was a poet before he was a novelist. He translates his own work and includes it in LOTR in the scene that Peter Jackson calls "The giving of the gifts," but Tolkien calls The Namarie, and Galadrial has the poetic honors. (Even Jackson has her raise her hand to the travelers displaying Adamant and whispering "Namarie"). Tolkien's poetry horripilates. I love the three part eulogy that opens The Two Towers over Boromir's remains. "Where is the horse and rider," which Jackson transposes later in that film for Theoden's pre-battle speech. (I love this stuff, as you can see) I also love when in the Jackson film, the words of one character winds up in the other. Like Aragorn's soliloquy over Eowyn in the House of Healing ("The shadow clinging to the cold morning mist) turned into dialogue for Wormtongue. And Frodo's dream of the glass veil of death when at Tom Bombadil's transformed into Gandalf's explanation of the afterlife to Pippin. And that leads up back to Namarie, which of course is a poem about passing into the farlands and returning to Valinor. (Sigh). Any morning that I can discuss Tolkien and his wonderful work about life and hope is a good morning indeed.

Edward C. Patterson
Frodo Lives

I am stirred by your knowledge and respect of the works. I majored in English in college, and my I greatly look up to both Tolkien and Lewis. I never had time to read them much while in college, and I am starting to read more of their works (and more about them) now. Both of the men led deep lives and have deep works (both fiction and non-fiction). There is so much there to learn. LOL

 

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I believe that the more you now about Tolkien's life, his letters and the copious content of his son's 13 volume work on his father's evolution, the better the LOTR read will be. For instance, most Tolkien fans know that JRR was in the trenches of WWI at the Battle of the Soame. In the trenches he started writing The Last Cottage, about a mariner arriving at the last Cottage, a haven at the edge of the sea, where he is told an epic legend. Of course, that Cottage evolves over the years into Rivendell. BUT I don't think people realize that when Tolkien describes the Dead Marshes, he's describing the Battle of the Soame - the rain soaked pits with the dead floating face up and ghastly forever to be recalled by Gollum who tells us (or at least the Hobbitses) to "Don't follow the tricksy lights." It's also fun to map the names of rivers and such in LOTR to the local forrest streams and landmarks in and around Oxford. I enjoy discovering various cross references to things like Giants (Ents in old English) and Woses (Forest gremlins). My favorite tidbit is the name Tolkien, which is derived from an old German word Tulkuen, which mean "half-wit," which in Old Welsh is . . .Samwise.To me there's not accident that Samwise closes the work, and that Tolkien patterned the duality between Frodo and Sam as that between a WWI Officer and his enlisted aide-de-camp, and that the roles are merged at the end of the book. Samwise, that is Tulkuen, Gamgee.

I'm puling now.

Ed Patterson

Clearly I have to read more. LOL

 

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The Hobbit is selling for $7.99. Was it $9.99 before, or am I mistaken?

 

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No The Hobbit as near as I can tell started out at $7.99. IIRC it was just the separate titles in the LOTR trilogy that were $9.99. I bought The Hobbit the first day at $7.99.

Thanks. I was hoping it had dropped in price (always a good sign), but $7.99 still isn't bad.

 

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Sorry to bump an old thread, but has anyone bought and read the book for the Kindle? I'm wondering if it's all good formatting wise, as some of the comments suggest that it's not.

If you are referring to the trilogy, I have it. I have read a small portion of the first part of it (concerning hobbits, etc.). The formatting has been great to me, so far. I cannot speak for further in.

There is a working TOC, and it is linked not just to each book within the trilogy, but to every section within each book.

I think it's great.

 

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There are a few typos and some odd linespacing, but not too bad, I am half way through the triolgy

I've heard that there are some issues in the trilogy that may not be present in the individual volumes of the works.

Can anyone confirm this? Does anyone have the individual volumes? If so, have you noticed anything?

If there are issues, I may request a refund for the trilogy (though it's been a few weeks since I bought it) and purchase them individually instead.

I've also heard there are issues with The Hobbit. Has anyone noticed any there?