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Hey all, Perlandra spoilers below! You've been warned! I've been listening back to episodes of our Faces discussion when Orual goes up the mountain to find Psyche - first the trip where Psyche tries to show her the god's house, and then a second trip where Orual coerces Psyche into shining...

Hi all, I missed a couple of classes in December and now I'm listening back to session 283 - the end of the road, and I have a couple of thoughts. This is all from A Journey in the Dark, when the fellowship is traveling towards the entrance to Moria. Trough We looked at the clause: "but...

Hey all, Quick question. Is The Fall of Numenor, published last year edited by Brian Sibley, new Tolkien content? Or is it a gathering under one cover material found elsewhere (Sil, appendices, Unfinished Tales, HOME, etc) framed by Sibley's commentary? Bruce

Hi all, As we've been reading through Faces together, I've seen a lot of echoes of other works, either earlier works that may or may not have influenced Lewis, later works that may or may not have been influenced by Lewis, or other Lewis works that (unsurprisingly) use similar phrases, images...

Hi all, I've been getting caught up on the last couple of Exploring classes, in what Corey is calling the "Council near the Knees of Caradhras", and the discussion in class centered on Gandalf's hope of making it through Moria. Gandalf says: "But I would not lead you into Moria if there were...

Hi all, I was just listening to session 266 from a couple of weeks ago. Even though we're still somewhere around the ankles of Caradhras, we looked ahead briefly to The Choices of Master Samwise, and Gorbag's statement about the Nazgul: "But He likes 'em; they're His favourites nowadays, so...

Hi all, I just heard about this today: Going Through Hell: The Divine Dante - an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC that will be there through July 16 (2023, in case you're reading this in the future). Its a collection of 20 works inspired by the Divine Comedy. I live...

Hi all, I've discussed this before, both during the live Exploring sessions and here in the forum in this post and this post, but I have a head canon about Findegil. As stated in one of those posts, we know that Findegil made edits to the main text long after the direct participants had died...

Hi all, I'm listening back through the past few classes and was struck by the word "hiss" as the Company are taking shelter from the storm on Caradhrass: "though all round [the fire] the snow hissed, and pools of slush crept under their feet". Yes, there is a purely physical phenomenon as...

Hi all, I just ran across this story, but it's a couple of weeks old, so maybe others have noted it. Jules Bass, one half of the Rankin/Bass directing/producing team, passed away on October 25 at the age of 87. Rankin/Bass were notable for many hand-drawn and stop-motion animated tv specials...

Hi all, I missed Exploring for the past few weeks but was just listening to session 239 from two weeks ago and Corey was discussing the point of view. Back when I was in high school I wrote a paper on LotR for my AP English class*, and I was really proud of my insight that the POV was almost...

Hey all, I was looking on YouTube for musical adaptations of Jabberwocky (my favorite was this by Donovan), but also found a bunch of dramatic readings, including Benedict Cumberbach, Christopher Lee, John Hurt, and John Gielgud, but by far my favorite is this one: Okay, the John Hurt one is...

Hey all, In last weeks Exploring (May 17, 2022, at the setting out of the company from Rivendell) Corey asked if Tolkien describes stars as "burning". There was an instance just a little earlier in The Ring Goes South: "But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned...

Hi all, I was reading a little about the opening poem (well, okay, I read the Wikipedia page) and I thought this was interesting. I know Corey's method is to focus on the words on the page and not outside information, but I thought this added some to my enjoyment of the poem. I vaguely knew...

Hey all, Excited to start Alice this evening and wondering if there's any chance we'll get past the preface poem. Anyway, I was thinking about the class and wondering if we'd discuss a movie adaptation, like we've done for some books in the past, like the Disney animated one (hopefully not the...

Hi all, Relistening to the last two classes (NoME 18 and 19) on the problems associated with re-building bodies for dead elves. The problem came up that even if the Valar made new bodies as best they could, there would still be differences at the molecular (er, nassi) level: "But the...

Hey all, In "The Ring Goes South" we were discussing the swords carried by the company leaving Rivendell. Boromir's sword is of "less lineage" than Narsil/Anduril, so that got me thinking about their swords. BTW, all of my books are packed up, so this is mostly based on the Tolkien Gateway...

Hey all, This is really a tangent, but in last week's class while talking about the "I sit beside the fire and think" poem, there was a brief digression on poetry in children's books. Corey mentioned really liking the book Boom Chicka Boom (I don't know that one, will have to look for it) and...

Hey Corey or other people who know poetry terms, Is there a term for missing syllables in poems? In our discussion of "I sit beside the fire and think" we talked about this poem being alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. But in music, this really wouldn't be alternating...

Hi all, The poem "I sit beside the fire and think" is particularly apt to the precise situation where Bilbo recites it. Yes, he's getting old and so sitting and thinking of all he has seen is natural, but it's that last stanza, where he is listening "for returning feet and voices at the door"...