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Ray_Otus
About
- Username
- Ray_Otus
- Joined
- Visits
- 482
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member, Moderator
- Games I like
- Old School Essentials, Troika, Dungeon World
- Books I like
- The Hobbit, Dune, Roadside Picnic, All Creatures Great and Small, Nero Wolfe...
Comments
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(Quote) Every time I read this I kind of wonder if it's my last time, outside of perhaps reading it aloud to grand-children. These days I have to find ways to slow down and engage with the work, or it just flies by. My brain tries to tell the story …
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Chapter XII: Inside Information Talk about being jolted out of your mythic dream-state induced by the travelogue of the last few chapters. Holy moly. What a great chapter this is. Lots to unpack, so here we go. But first, the obligatory: This chap…
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(Quote) YES
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Chapter IX: Barrels Out of Bond This chapter is pretty much unchanged in the revised edition (a statement you should get used to me saying for a while). Wood Elves Wood elves (and for that matter dwarves) don't always fare that well in Tolkien. B…
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(Quote) Exactly!
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(Quote) LOL. Clear as mud. Seriously, it's very clear, but I had no idea the answer was so convoluted! Congrats on knowing all of that!
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Elves and D&D Oh, I forgot to try to draw some relation between the division of elves in The Hobbit (and LoTR) and the 1977 AD&D Monster Manual. There we find elves are aquatic ("also called sea-elves"), drow (also "Black Elv…
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Chapter VIII: Flies and Spiders Mirkwood is one of those instances where Tolkien absolutely shines as a describer of places. This forest stands as vivid in my mind as Moria, Lorien, and Mordor. This line, about the "patch of midnight that had …
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Chapter VII: Queer Lodgings For the next couple of chapters there isn't much to say about the differences between the 1937 and 1951 editions, because there aren't any of significance. However, I'm still going to make a few observations of my own ba…
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Thanks all. And that's a cool and fun bit of analysis @RichardAbbott.
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By the way, I still don't have The Annotated Hobbit. Someone pointed out to me that all of this work has already been done. I kind of figured it had, but I'm having fun doing it on my own. I will probably pick up the Annotated version and have a loo…
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Chapter VI: Out of the Frying-Pan Into the Fire Just a few things to say about this one, as there is only one major change between versions. He Still Lies (Sort of) When Bilbo tells his story to the dwarves it is accurate except that he doesn't t…
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Chapter V: Riddles in the Dark Here we go. This is THE chapter that is most talked about when comparing the 1937 edition to the 1951 revised edition. I'm going to reiterate some of the points made by others, with the general thesis that small chang…
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Chapter IV: Over Hill and Under Hill The Mines of Moria When I first read The Hobbit (I believe it was in the summer between 4th and 5th grade for me) I don't know if I ever noted the references to Moria, not knowing that the mines would figure so…
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Thank you for the Google calendar.
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I'll count myself in. Roll = 3.
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Good intro. Looking forward to this. I enjoyed Priest's Inverted World.
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Here's a nice nod to some of the things about The Hobbit that have gotten lost in modern mixes of the fantasy genre or simply forgotten by Tolkien-heads. https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-forgotten-hobbit.html
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I'm cool with Dream Arch. I'll try to make whatever work. Reading on Kindle isn't as important to me these days, it just makes c-and-p'ing quotes harder when commenting.
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Chapter 3: A Short Rest Arrival at Rivendell This chapter tracks pretty closely between the new and old editions; there are only a few differences of note. The first is the time of the party's arrival at Rivendell. In 1937 the dwarves arrive at th…
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Thanks for that @RichardAbbott. I do think my primary questions about this edition revolve around what Tolkien had decided (and more importantly what he hadn't) about his world in 1937. But this is also a key difference -- the audience for which The…
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Same.
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I like all of these for various reasons. I'll admit I was quietly pulling for Gormenghast but I think it might be best that we didn't choose that one. (I suspect there might have been a lot of drop outs?) I think I prefer not to vote and leave it to…
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On Dragons While I'm thinking about it, can we point to the attitude about the existence of dragons in The Hobbit? First of all, it seems to be dragons: plural not singular. Here are a few quotes from the first chapter. They seem to indicate a gene…
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(Quote) I found Dune Messiah to be quite good on re-reading it two years ago. It is more political and less action oriented, but very deep. Children turns back toward action a little more and, frankly, I feel it has suffered a little over the years.…
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PS, yes, I know he tries a lot of opening spells at the gates of Moria. I'll keep an eye on the references to his magic (and the magic of others) as I go along. Note that in the first chapter Tolkien points out that there isn't much magic possessed …
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Chapter 2: Roast Mutton The Lands (and Dates) Between The Shire and Rivendell In the unrevised version there are some key differences in the description of the lands between where the hobbits lived and Rivendell. Here are the comparative passages:…
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Chapter 1: An Unexpected Party On the Size of Hobbits In the description of hobbits, their size is given as "...small people, smaller than dwarves (and they have no beards) but very much larger than lilliputians. Their is little or no magic a…
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@Apocryphal -- where is the complete list of books we read? I assume you have it posted here somewhere. I see everything back to the G+ days, but from 71 backward I'd like to review the list. I want to see how many I have missed.
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It was interesting. I might actually re-read it. I feel like 2021 is going to be a year of "this is how the world ends" stories for me. I'm reading The Crystal World by J G Ballard and am being reminded of all the books I love about confro…