chancler682 Loc: Michigan

Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

Toy Biz - Return Of The King Morgul Lord Witch King

https://www.instagram.com/nerfherder_photography_/

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Thanks for the reminder, it has been a long time since I read Tolkien, and I have them all in paper or e-books or both.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

OK, I read three paragraphs, now back to the Star Trek series I am reading currently.

Cany143 Loc: SE Utah

You have (and have presumably read?) "them all"? Most excellent! Though the Hobbit and the LOTR primes and offshoots are popular and whatnot, few are aware that Tolkien was first a scholar, second a Philologist, third a translator, and fourth an author.

Star Trek? Okay. I guess. But if you want the good stuff, I suggest you ferret out a copy of Tolkien's translation of _Beowulf_, then progress to his translation of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' (along with 'The Pearl' and/or 'Sir Orfreo' while you're about it), whose actual 13th C. author remains unknown, but whose works in the Northwest Midlands alliterative verse form (along with 'St. Erkenwald') are the absolute best of Medieval Literature. To the point that those works make Chaucer look like a cartoonist. Granted, there aren't any Death Stars in either Tolkien's or the Gawain Poet's works, but great literature is great literature.

Oh, and the Instagram pic is kinda cute, but I wish that whatever it is that's in the immediate foreground (a sword? some sort of pointy/stabby object?) was in focus.

jack schade Loc: La Pine Oregon

jack

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

I have lost count of how many times I have read them since I discovered them in 1966

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Back in Jan 1967 my step-father died and they sent me home from Vietnam on emergency leave to spend 30 days with my mother. A friend gave me a beat up paperback of the first book of the trilogy. I read the whole thing in the noisy bouncing cargo bay of a C-141 with a dozen others on emergency leave, ranks of PVT to Lt Col. We were in canvas sling seats or on the pads covering Long Tom gun tubes going to be refurbished. AirForce TV dinners suck, at least they had a microwave to warm them. We had fuel stops in Manila and Hawaii and BURGER STANDS. I went out and bought a new paperback set to take back. Two years later that set had been read by only God knows how many in the HQ company and was falling apart. I bought another set when I got out of the Army, that old one may be in a box in the garage, or not.