After a weeklong hiatus, I'm back with this little "let's listen to all the music that won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in the twenty-first century" project with Howard Shore's score for The Return of the King. How many times have I listened to this? A lot. I couldn't begin to tell you … Continue reading Listening to Things: The Return of the King, original score by Howard Shore
Lord of the Rings
Listening to Things: The Fellowship of the Ring original score by Howard Shore
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ringby Howard Shore I couldn't begin to guess at how many times I've listened to this music. The soundtrack came out a few weeks before the movie did, and you can bet that I bought the CD as soon as I could. There were four promotional … Continue reading Listening to Things: The Fellowship of the Ring original score by Howard Shore
The Rings of Power: What We Know From the Trailer
The teaser trailer for Amazon Prime's upcoming show The Rings of Power (due out September 2) premiered during the Super Bowl on Sunday night, and as of this writing, the not-quite-minute-long teaser has been viewed nearly 19 million times and been the subject of much speculation among Tolkien fans. But what do we really know … Continue reading The Rings of Power: What We Know From the Trailer
Vanity Fair: The Rings of Power, a First Look
Yesterday morning (Feb. 10), the magazine Vanity Fair published an article that provides a preview of the upcoming Amazon Prime show, The Rings of Power. It features an interview with showrunners Patrick McKay and JD Payne and gives a very vague synopsis of the overarching plot, as well as providing some character information-- primarily dealing … Continue reading Vanity Fair: The Rings of Power, a First Look
The Rings of Power: Thoughts on the Teaser Trailer
Though I've known that Amazon has had a streaming show based on The Silmarillion for quite some time, there has been so little information available about it that I had shoved it to the back of my mind to make room for other pop culture. I don't find it fun to speculate about a show … Continue reading The Rings of Power: Thoughts on the Teaser Trailer
Book Haul: The Lord of the Rings, illustrated edition
Last spring or so, I found out that a new edition of The Lord of the Rings was coming out and that it would include illustrations by Tolkien himself, who in addition to being a philologist, Oxford don, husband, and father, was also a wonderful illustrator. While some editions of The Lord of the Rings … Continue reading Book Haul: The Lord of the Rings, illustrated edition
StoryGraph Saturday: Perilous and Fair
StoryGraph Saturday is a weekly thing where I randomly choose a book from my To Read pile on StoryGraph and show it off to both remind myself that it’s there and to show it to you in case you might find it interesting, too. Perilous and Fair: Women in the Works and Life of J.R.R. … Continue reading StoryGraph Saturday: Perilous and Fair
The Grim, the Dark, and the Light of Middle-earth
Once upon a time, in a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, George R.R. Martin made a few comments about The Lord of the Rings and the flaws he saw therein. While he stated that he is a fan of Tolkien and of The Lord of the Rings, Martin declared that Tolkien had a "medieval philosophy" … Continue reading The Grim, the Dark, and the Light of Middle-earth
Sunday Sum-Up: September 19, 2021
The weather is continuing to slowly cool down. Over the past several evenings I've had the windows open with the breeze blowing in, and the cicadas have finally stopped buzzing. So now, instead of having their ear-piercing static song droning all through the night, we're getting crickets. Crickets are much quieter and more melodious than … Continue reading Sunday Sum-Up: September 19, 2021
New Lord of the Rings Audiobook Preview
In my last Sunday Sum-Up, I mentioned that Andy Serkis is narrating a new The Lord of the Rings audiobook. Because I'd only heard mentionings of it over the summer, I thought that it would be released sometime next year. Readers, I was wrong. Wonderfully wrong. The new The Lord of the Rings audiobook comes … Continue reading New Lord of the Rings Audiobook Preview
Traveling in Books 