Thoughts from the office by Ed Ball
Friday, October 31, 2003

Have you read The Lord of the Rings more than once? Have you at least tried to read The Silmarillion? If so, you might enjoy J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century, by Tom Shippey. I thought that the book would be mostly biographical, but it is primarily a discussion of Tolkien's works -- what he wrote, what influenced his writing, where he got his ideas, why he wrote what he did, what themes emerge from his works, how he compares to other authors, what attracts readers to his works, how to respond to his critics, and, ultimately, why he deserves the title "author of the century." The book was a nice reminder of how much I've enjoyed Tolkien, and helped me to better understand why I enjoy his books. In fact, I may be inspired to start reading my Tolkien collection yet again...

10/31/2003 10:30:48 PM (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00) | Comments [1] | Books#
11/6/2003 12:57:52 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Hey Ed, if you liked that, you should read his earlier book "The Road To Middle Earth". I used to get asked a _lot_ of questions about Tolkien (I have the dubious honour of being the first person to publish a Tolkien fan page on the internet, though it is now gone) and Shippey's book is the one I steered people towards the most. Shippey, being a professional linguist like Tolkien, really knows his stuff.
Name
E-mail
Home page

Comment (HTML not allowed)  

Enter the code shown (prevents robots):

Search
Archive
Links
Categories
Administration
Blogroll