Associate Professor of English, LeiLani Hinds, has been teaching Tolkien for a while now but for the first time there will be a chance for those outside of Honolulu to participate, having a chance to earn 3 credits of transfer-level college credit, writing intensive, for taking “English 257L J. R. R. Tolkien. Just as when Hinds first started her course, she is asking TheOneRing.net to spread the word. Read the full text of her letter after the link. Read the rest of this entry »
Board member Beren had the good fortune to interview Tolkien illustrator Alan Lee recently at the Paris Book Fair where Lee was invited by the French Tolkien publishing company, Christian Bourgois Editeurs, to sign the French translation of “The Children of Hurin.” In the in-depth interview, Lee describes the joys and challenges of illustrating Tolkien’s world, and comments that it would be nice to be involved with The Hobbit. [Read More]
TheOneRing.net reported here at the end of January that Guillermo del Toro was 99 percent sure to direct “The Hobbit”. Since then the Tolkien Estate filed a lawsuit against New Line Cinema (a copy of which can be found here) and the movie studio has been folded up and put in the pocket of its owner Warner Bros. and its bigger parent Time Warner Inc.
After all the speculation and angst, the director of two “Hellboy” films (the second set for a July 11 release) still seems to be the top choice for director and despite the legal uncertainty, the quiet movements by the key players seem to suggest the film will still be made and sooner rather than later. So in this season of waiting, TORn was finally able to contact the fan-friendly director. Read the rest of this entry »
If there are any horse-racing fans out there, check out this tidbit sent to use from Ringer Susanita: Silmaril has a chance to reach $1 million in earnings when she faces seven other fillies and mares in Saturday’s $80,000 What A Summer Stakes at Laurel Park. The 7-year-old is just $15,027 shy of becoming the 17th Maryland-bred and fifth mare in history to reach the milestone. A first or second place finish would allow the daughter of Diamond to join elite company.[Read More]
Ataahua writes: I just checked out the latest issue of Locus magazine, and ‘The Children of Hurin’ has now been in the top-ten list of hardback sales for the fifth month in a row, take a look at the list here.
Starting November 2, the Field Museum in Chicago is hosting an exhibit that will include some of J.R.R. Tolkien’s maps and writing. Specifically, included will be Thror’s Map from The Hobbit, Topographical View of Minas Tirith from The Return of the King, and Notes on Times and Distances by J.R.R. Tolkien (all of the John P. Raynor, S.J. Library, Marquette University).
From clay tablets to sea charts, from satellite navigation systems to sketches of worlds real and imagined—maps are much more than wayfinding. Travel through landscapes of time and space, science and imagination, in a rare exhibition of more than 100 of the world’s greatest maps. Explore high-tech interactive displays, and see original works by Ptolemy, Leonardo da Vinci, J.R.R. Tolkien, and many others. You’ll learn how early maps were made, see how the technology changed over centuries, and discover the latest advances in digital map-making. [More]
Author Dirk Vander Ploeg has recently published ‘Quest for Middle-earth,’ a non-fiction look at earth before the time of Man, before the time of the flood, approximately 4000 BCE. The book ponders the question that Middle-earth may have really existed. Learn more about the book at Dirk’s website. [Click Here]
Dawn writes: The Silmarillion Writers’ Guild is hosting a writing contest in honor of the thirty-year anniversary of the publication of The Silmarillion. We will be awarding banners to the Silmarillion-based stories, drabbles, poems, and essays that earn the highest word count in reviews, as well as to the reviewer who writes the most words of reviews for contest entries.
Have you finished reading The Children of Hurin and are dying to discuss it with other Tolkien fans? Or, do you need some motivation to crack open the book and start reading? Either way, the chapter-by-chapter discussion of The Children of Hurin, starting today in our Reading Room forum, is for you! We’ll be covering a chapter a week. Each week’s discussion will be led by a member of the Message Boards, and we still have openings for discussion leaders. Follow these links to read the start of the discussion, or check out the Children of Hurin discussion schedule.
Not a member of the Message Boards yet? Sign up now and join the fun! Tolkien veterans and novices welcome!
Don’t believe the mockers. The latest posthumous work of Tolkien is a masterpiece around the Wagnerian or Sophoclean theme of unconscious incest. Dragon slayers are of perennial fascination, whether they be Saint Michael the Archangel, Bel, Saint George or Perseus killing the sea monster that holds Andromeda prisoner. Modern literature has Ged, the Wizard of Earthsea, banishing the Dragon of Pendor from Ursula le Guin’s Archipelago; or even Harry Potter thrusting his sword through the mouth of the Basilisk. Yet there is no dragon of whom I have read, or whom I have seen on stage - not Fafner himself in Siegfried - who is quite so frightening as Glaurung, the dragon in JRR Tolkien’s The Children of Hurim. [More]
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Ataahua writes: I just checked out the latest issue of Locus magazine, and ‘The Children of Hurin’ has now been in the top-ten list of hardback sales for the fifth month in a row, 
Dawn writes: The Silmarillion Writers’ Guild is hosting a writing contest in honor of the thirty-year anniversary of the publication of The Silmarillion. We will be awarding banners to the Silmarillion-based stories, drabbles, poems, and essays that earn the highest word count in reviews, as well as to the reviewer who writes the most words of reviews for contest entries.