JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years
bbc.com
bbc.com
Also, I tried to read the Silmarillion once. THAT was a struggle.
Christopher Tolkien calls himself an “editor” but I’m not sure he understands what the word means.
Especially if you've read the multiple variations of the stories in Christopher Tolkien's History of Middle-Earth series, you'll be really, really familiar with the repetition.
I'd hope for a completed poetic version, but as a life-long Tolkien fan, I'll be buying it regardless.
Uh, who is recommending these books to these people and why aren't they at least reading the descriptions?
(Or perhaps that was the intent. Sigh...)
It is so much more epic. Did you find the Balrog in LotR impressive? Imagine a hundred balrogs riding on dragons storming the the elven city Gondolin. You find Sauron an impressive evildoer? He was only the Lieutenant to Morgoth. You can argue that this is just inconsistent unedited early material, but I don't care. ;)
The first time through, it's as has been said, the stories aren't very detailed, they're more like old testament books. You definitely have to use your imagination. Also, more and more of the lore is revealed here as well. And then there are the names. Oh, the names! So many to keep track of!
I think I really started to get the Silmarillion on maybe the third read. After that it gets easier and easier the more you retain of the stories. It is certainly my favorite Tolkien book after probably five reads or so and I find the stories to be really rich and interesting now.
You're right, though, Sauron? But a servant of Morgoth! The stories regarding the Silmarils are my favorite of all of Tolkien's stories, which, of course, span many stories. And don't forget Ungoliant for pure unbridled evil!
10 years later I came back and read it again. This time I had read more mythology and understood the Silmarillion as a book of mythology. I very much enjoyed it the second time. I think age, experience, and expectations had a lot to do with how I viewed it that second time. It's a totally different book than the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Anyone who isn't expecting that will end up disappointed.
CT did a good job with Children of Hurin. The more developed stories (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Grondlin) were going to be stand alone novels with several drafts finished before JRR's death.
Having read the Silmarillion you should recognize these stores spanned several chapters and had a clear narrative focus unlike the rest of the slog.
The Bible reference makes sense but I've always thought of it as similar to reading a history book. That's essentially what it is, a history of the beginning and the first 2 ages. Whereas The Hobbit & the trilogy are narrative accounts of a very small portion of the third age.
I was a huge Tolkien fan as a child and tried to read the Silmarillion when I was about 10, having already read LOTR and The Hobbit multiple times by that age. I think I did finish the Silmarillion, but I found it tedious enough that I didn't look at Tolkien again for quite some years.
The first half of the book is collected published works of his (columns, articles, etc.) including an introduction to P.G. Wodehouse's posthumously published and unfinished Sunset at Blandings. In that introduction he makes it clear how fascinating he thinks it is to see a master at work. I think, based on that, he wouldn't be too upset to see that he got the same treatment.
That said, The Salmon of Doubt is very much unfinished and for me isn't the best part of the collection by far. Still worth a try, even if you just don't read that last section.
I read Patrick O'Brian's posthumous and unfinished book, The Final Unfinished Voyage of Jack Aubrey, and it contained O'Brian's final hand-written notes. Truly from a "master at work".
On the other hand, though it is of course quite different from a posthumously released book by the author himself, it is quite relevant given that part of the reason Adams wanted to turn Salmon of Doubt into a Hitchhikers book was that Mostly Harmless was quite bleak (I seem to remember claims he intentionally ended it the way he did to prevent being badgered about another sequel):
I quite enjoyed "And Another Thing..." by Eoin Colfer, written as a sixth book in the HHGTG series. I read it with some trepidation, but enjoyed it. It wasn't quite the same of course, but he managed to match the style surprisingly well, and it did give the series a much more upbeat ending.
I think both are examples that it is possible to do post-humous releases both of the authors own work and sequels without it going badly.
I think that very much boils down to marketing and readers, though. If you read either with the expectation that they represent Adams at his prime, then you're set for a disappointment. If you see them as more material for the specially interested, then to me at least they were worthwhile.
As noted elsewhere, the vast majority of the work in the posthumously published Tolkien material was written by JRR himself.
Christopher Tolkien knows what the word means. He studied English at Oxford and later became a lecturer and tutor in English Language there. He published Saga of King Heidrek the Wise, which he translated from Icelandic. He was given the Bodley Medal by the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. According to Wikipedia, the medal is awarded to individuals who have made “outstanding contributions...to the worlds of communications and literature” and who have helped the library achieve “the vision of its founder, Sir Thomas Bodley, to be a library not just to Oxford University but also to the world”.
That is to say, he’s extremely literate. If he didn’t understand what the word “editor” means he would have looked it up in a dictionary. I’m almost positive he has one.
"I never called Edith Luthien – but she was the source of the story that in time became the chief part of the Silmarillion. It was first conceived in a small woodland glade filled with hemlocks at Roos in Yorkshire (where I was for a brief time in command of an outpost of the Humber Garrison in 1917, and she was able to live with me for a while). In those days her hair was raven, her skin clear, her eyes brighter than you have seen them, and she could sing – and dance. But the story has gone crooked, & I am left, and I cannot plead before the inexorable Mandos."
It's sad that although she was his Muse (at least in the younger days) they did not seem to share any of the lore he created in real life. She was not an intellectual and was not interested, he was a man's man (and also religious).
"I never called Edith Luthien". What a missed opportunity!
Seems odd he was enamoured of her. They were of different religions, she didn't like C.S. Lewis, and didn't fit in with his work buddies wives. Maybe she was hot.
Perhaps not something that you would read directly after Lord of The Rings but exciting for those that are interested in learning more about his work and how it developed.
I'm guessing most of the content in this book (except for the Alan Lee illustrations) can be found in the History of Middle-Earth series.
As someone who struggled against a bad environment, I related to Túrin Turambar misadventures a lot and connected to the character much more than any other of the whole Tolkien's ouvre.
Its said he created The Lord of The Rings world to his language be alive. I guess he loved tales. Could he be intend to his work evolve in such way as the tales he studied and taught?
Beren and Lúthien by J. R. R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien https://itun.es/us/knBOfb.l
It is a fantasy story about love but still being deeply inspired by Tolkien feelings from his wife. I did not knew about it when was reading and how they (Beren and Lúthien) started loving one another can be a bit fantastic but all their adventure and how they 'are' with themselves feels real and veritable.
The previously available books by Tolkien (many edited by his son Christopher) took different forms: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are traditional narrative stories; The Silmarillion blurs together the styles of the Bible, a history textbook, and historical fiction; Unfinished Tales is a collection of isolated or incomplete stories and essays along with framing commentary for each; and the twelve History of Middle-earth books are a thoroughly scholarly analysis of the complete textual history of Tolkien's invented world (which happen to include quite a lot of fascinating and enjoyable stories and fragments along the way). Christopher Tolkien has done a really admirable job of sharing his father's broader vision (at his father's request!) with as wide an audience as possible.
When The Children of Húrin appeared (around 10 years ago), it was the first self-contained narrative story about Middle-earth published since Tolkien's death. Most or all of the actual text had been published before (it's a very close match to the first story in Unfinished Tales), but it was framed in a way to be much more accessible: it's quite readable by someone who hasn't read anything beyond The Lord of the Rings, with no Silmarillion necessary. (I wrote a short "bridge" of backstory to help with that, for people intimidated by the book's 15 pages of introductory information: http://tolkien.slimy.com/essays/HurinBridge.html) My sense is that this book did a great job of opening some of Tolkien's broader vision to a wider audience. (And people who enjoy it might go on to read Unfinished Tales or The Silmarillion with a bit more interest.)
From what I can tell so far, Beren and Lúthien is a very different beast. It's not a single, coherent narrative, but rather a focused "slice" of textual history from throughout the whole History of Middle-earth series. The style of Christopher Tolkien's commentary seems to be more conversational and less scholarly, but it starts with the earliest version of the story (which feels very foreign to readers of The Silmarillion) and talks through its stages of evolution, evidently including its lengthy rendition as an epic poem.
So I'm not really sure what audience this is for. My sense is that it's written to be accessible to people who have only read The Lord of the Rings, and it tells what is perhaps the most central story of the First Age of Middle-earth. That's very appealing! But the way in which it's presented here means that it will primarily be enjoyable to people who have a fair amount of interest in Tolkien's writing process and in keeping track of the many, many shifting names and plot lines in the story as it evolved over five decades or so. (And how many people with that interest haven't already read all of this material in its full context in the History of Middle-earth books anyway?) Maybe it can serve a useful role as a bridge between the Silmarillion/Unfinished Tales reading experience and the History of Middle-earth reading experience? Or maybe there really is a community of textual history fans who don't have the patience or interest to read a book like The Silmarillion? I'm very interested to hear what experiences different people have with the book, and I should probably read it myself to get a better sense of what it can be.