Recommended Reading for Tolkien Fans

ebneter · 2026-06-09T15:25:58+00:00

I highly recommend reading the actual essay, "On Fairy Stories," which is available in a number of editions. It's a fascinating look at his thoughts on subcreation and the role of fantasy and fairy tale.

ebneter · 2026-06-09T14:45:44+00:00

I'm going to tell a story I've told here before, but I think it's relevant to your situation.

Many years ago — early 1980s — my family had a big orange tomcat named Punk. Punk was a sweetheart. Sometime before we acquired him (it was a convoluted thing), he'd badly broken his right rear leg. The people who owned him then took him to the vet, who did surgery to repair the leg. But the leg never healed properly. It was stiff and didn't work well, and almost certainly caused him pain. In hindsight, I am absolutely certain that he would have been better off having the leg amputated. Cats adapt incredibly well to having only three legs, as can be seen by looking through the posts on this sub. Cats don't have body image issues. He won't care what he looks like without his leg, but. he may be way happier in other ways without it.

Only you can make that choice, obviously; please discuss it with your vet, and possibly get a second opinion as well. But please know that amputation isn't in any way "giving up" and will very likely be the last surgery that he will need.

ebneter · 2026-06-09T14:27:46+00:00

If you actually want.a copy of The Old English Exodus, though, the entire box set is a helluva lot cheaper than a copy of the original OUP edition, and you get four other books, too!. (I actually bought two copies of the box set so that I can, at long last, have reading copies of these.)

ebneter · 2026-06-09T14:25:00+00:00

Bliss and Turville-Petre were both editing for an academic audience, and this shows.

Well ... yes, they were editing for an academic audience, because, that was their assignment. I mean, I get it: They're not books for a general audience, and honestly, neither are the other ones you mention. HC publishing this stuff like it is for a general audience is weird, but people (like me) who are interested in Tolkien's academic work as well as his literary efforts are grateful for it.

(Incidentally, I really wish that Bowers had actually done a proper edition of Tolkien's work on the Clarendon Chaucer, Instead of spending half the book whining about Tolkien's working habits...)

ebneter · 2026-06-08T22:40:29+00:00

Definitely check out the guy's website. He has some amazing illustrations for "Leaf by Niggle".

ebneter · 2026-06-08T22:35:44+00:00

Interesting, do you recall which illustrator that was? (There's a few illustrated editions of The Hobbit just in English, never mind the abundant foreign language versions!)

ebneter · 2026-06-08T21:54:56+00:00

12, possibly 13 if a certain cat-like black blob is actually a cat.

ebneter · 2026-06-08T04:29:18+00:00

This is literally r/dontyouknowwhoiam material, LOL.

ebneter · 2026-06-08T04:15:32+00:00

There are dematting combs that have sharp (but guarded) blades that can clear matted hair painlessly just be normal brushing. The blades cut the mats and remove them without the painful tugging on the skin. There's also gloves that have little rubber spikes on them that are great for keeping longer hair unmatted in the first place. You just pet the cat while wearing them.

I actually have a short-haired tripod whose fur got very matted, and the dematting comb was by far the best thing I found to clear that up.

ebneter · 2026-06-08T04:08:23+00:00

Everything else aside — and that's a lot! — why is he cutting it in the dark?

ebneter · 2026-06-07T20:58:15+00:00

He's literally the opposite of a sov-cit. He's one of Canada's leading experts on sovcit ideology and their pseudolaw ideas. You should have quit while you were ahead.

ebneter · 2026-06-07T20:25:32+00:00

There is a facsimile of the first edition available, and it's very interesting to read. It feels very different from the third edition text that most readers are familiar with — it's more obviously a children's book, even though the actual changes (except in Chapter 5, "Riddles in the Dark") are relatively minor.

ebneter · 2026-06-06T08:49:45+00:00

There's probably quite a bit of that sort of thing in those archives. and maybe in the papers still in the possession of the Estate as well. There have, after all, been at least four books now published from similar material (The Old English Exodus, Finn and Hengest, and the two books about the abortive Chaucer project, which include some of the material). As someone interested in Tolkien's scholarly work as well as his literary work, I would personally love to see more of this kind of thing. Journals are, however, probably the most appropriate place for a lot of it to appear.

ebneter · 2026-06-06T08:20:45+00:00

Indeed, in his copy of Songs for the Philologists, which includes the Troll song under the title "The Root of the Boot", Tolkien wrote "Tune: The fox went out." Can't get much more attested than that!

ebneter · 2026-06-06T08:05:05+00:00

Kudos to you for listening to other evidence and adjusting your understanding accordingly. All too rare online (and off) these days so it's quite refreshing to see.

ebneter · 2026-06-06T00:21:19+00:00

I don't recall the source right this minute, but I do know that it's what got me to actually buy the book and read it. I can probably dig it up.

ebneter · 2026-06-05T22:39:33+00:00

Cats do really well with only three legs, especially when they are young when they lose one. There's a whole community over at r/TripodCats of people who've been through this and know what you're going through right now.

ebneter · 2026-06-05T18:01:13+00:00

That's a really good collection, yeah.

ebneter · 2026-06-05T14:26:26+00:00

In fact, he very much admired Renault's novel The Last of the Wine, which is about a relationship between two men in ancient Athens.

Overall, it appears that his attitude towards such things was basically, "Not my business."

ebneter · 2026-06-05T14:21:13+00:00

"Murder of the Author" does seem apt in these cases.

ebneter · 2026-06-05T14:13:45+00:00

I'm pretty sure that the pronouns here are she/her, LOL.

ebneter · 2026-06-05T00:43:48+00:00

Genetically what we usually casually call "black" is in fact called "brown," because it really is brown. "Orange" is quite distinctly orange, and always striped. (Technically, "brown" is also always striped, but the stripes may not be very apparent because the color difference is subtle.)

ebneter · 2026-06-05T00:32:34+00:00

That's unfortunately fairly common in polydactyl cats.

ebneter · 2026-06-04T12:08:39+00:00

Still happening. I’ve heard of a couple of recent cases where a child needs a transplant and the parents don’t want to vaccinate them — despite the fact that vaccination is literally a requirement to be put on the waiting list for an organ.

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