Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Filed under: now reading

Now Reading: The Silmarillion

I finished Tales from the Perilous Realm a few days ago and have now moved on to The Silmarillion. The book is a collection Tolkien's writings on the Creation of the world and the first few ages of the Middle Earth that later appears in The Lord of the Rings. It reads very differently to The Hobbit  and LOTR, it's a narrative with very little personal dialogue. The writing is probably most similar to some Old Testament books such as 1 and 2 Chronicles.

This is my second attempt at reading The Silmarillion, but as I'm now nearing 200 pages in I look set to finish it this time. The maps in the back are keeping me interested!

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via amazon.co.uk

Now Reading: Tales from the Perilous Realm

Having recently finished re-reading The Lord of the Rings I have decided to make a foray deeper into the world of Tolkien than I have been before. My shelves are now stacked with several other Tolkien books, the first of which I started reading yesterday: Tales from the Perilous Realm.

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via amazon.co.uk

 

Tales from the Perilous Realm is a compilation of four books of which three are short stories and the other a collection of poetry, as written by Hobbits. I'm half way through, having read Farmer Giles of Ham and the poems, named after their first: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. I've particularly enjoyed the poems, many of which have clever rhyming schemes. An excerpt, to finish:

There was a merry passenger,
a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola
to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges
and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram
and cardamom and lavender.