A friendly spy let us know some exciting news! As seen on a book supplier’s ordering site – listings for a pair of Hobbit movie themed books by Weta Workshop!
The first, titled “The Hobbit Chronicles: An Unexpected Journey”, is a hardcover expected to retail at $39.99(USD). It’s listed as coming out on November 6th, 2012. Presumably this will be some kind of “making of/behind the scenes” book for the first film.
The second book has a publication date of October 15th, 2013 – a long time to wait for this one! Titled “The Hobbit Location Guide: Where the Journey Begins”, it is a trade paperback with an anticipated price of 14.99(USD). It seems likely that Ian Brodie, author of the “Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook”, would be involved with this one. This will come in handy if you’re planning a pilgrimage to Middle-earth, aka New Zealand!
Neither appears to be available for the public to pre-order just yet; but as we make our way through this year of ‘Hobbit Eve’, the good stuff just keeps coming and the anticipation just keeps building!
Join TheOneRing and the Tolkien Society, who started the event, by celebrating Tolkien Reading Day! Held annually since 2003, it is meant to encourage reading and is a great day to dust off a copy of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s many works and dig in. (It also marks the downfall of Barad-dûr and the passing of Sauron, but that happened long before 2003.) Many schools mark the day with an in-class read, but since this year it falls on a Sunday, parents will be in charge of helping children celebrate but reading to pets, the infirm or yourself is also more than acceptable. Enjoy!
Not quite in time for St Patrick’s Day, but shortly thereafter, fans will at last be able to read an Irish language version of The Hobbit. The book has been translated into Gaelic by Nicholas Williams, and will be published by Evertype on March 25th. More details here. Thanks to ringerspy Riccardo for the news. Middle Earth go Bragh!
Back in 2001, I wrote Glossopoeia for Fun and Profit (also reprinted in The People’s Guide to J.R.R. Tolkien), for our Green Books department, in which I discussed three examples of invented languages: Esperanto, Elvish, and Klingon. For those who found that necessarily brief article of interest, University of Indiana linguistics professor Michael Adams has now edited a new book, From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages (Oxford University Press, 2011), comprising eight essays (including his a general introductory essay by Adams) about linguistic invention, though not precisely the “invented languages” suggested by the book’s title, as we will see. Each essay is accompanied by an appendix by Adams that extends or clarifies some aspect of the essay.
Adams’s introductory chapter deals with the spectrum of linguistic invention, and considers the motivations for such inventions. He considers whether invented languages are an attempt to re-create “the language of Adam”, i.e., a perfected language as spoken by Adam before the fall (it appears that Adams takes the Biblical texts quite literally here), and considers slang and poetry as examples of human linguistic creativity; Adams is the author of Slang: The People’s Poetry(Oxford Press, 2009).
TORn has discovered a Tolkien-inspired children’s picture book called “Nimpentoad“ by Henry Herz and his young sons Josh and Harrison. Five years ago, Henry began drafting a story which he shared with his sons, and they would give their dad ideas on how to improve it. The boys began creating and naming the characters, including the main creature and title’s namesake… Nimpentoad. Being avid fans of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films and J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, their imagination was fueled by those works as their fantasy world took shape. Working together, they created a mysterious forest called Grunwald filled with mean Goblins, hungry Neebels, thundering Rhinotaurs, huge Orcs, a frustrated Giant, and the smallest of the inhabitants… Niblings. The most resourceful and brave of the Niblings is Nimpentoad.
This month, the Bookshelf comes to you from the site of the Super Bowl, where J.W. (part owner of the Green Bay Packers) tells you all about The Genesis of Oblivion Saga, a series of fantasy books by Maxwell Alexander Drake. (By the way, J.W. apologizes to the good people of Nevada for mispronouncing the state’s name. Hopefully J.W. won’t ever have to talk about a literary executor from Nevada, because then he’ll be in a lot of trouble.)
TORn has discovered a Tolkien-inspired children’s picture book called “