Jo-Anna writes: Tolkien-based journal “Silver Leaves” Issue Two, has released as of Saturday, Jan. 10. The theme is The Inklings and we are very excited about getting it into folks’ hands. It’s a superb issue, with contributors including Douglas Gresham, Colin Duriez, Brian Sibley, and Jef Murray, along with many others. Ordering information is at www.whitetreefund.org.

Ronald (left) and Hilary Tolkien in 1905From fantasybookreview.co.uk Former book shop owner and huge JRR Tolkien fan Angie Gardner will see her own work hit the shelves at the end of January. She has compiled the memoirs of JRR’s brother Hilary Tolkien and told MK Today why she got involved with the book. “Hilary is not as well known. The lost tales refer to stories he left in an old notebook and some of these go back to the stories he and his brother – who went on to write The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit made up when they were very young.”

Angie is confident Black and White Country: The Lost Tales of Hilary Tolkien, will be popular. When he was three years old, Ronald (as he was known to his family) and his younger brother, Hilary, were brought back to England by their mother, Mabel Tolkien. Before they could return to South Africa, their father died there of rheumatic fever, so Mrs Tolkien and the boys remained in England. In 1900, Mabel Tolkien experienced a conversion to the Catholic faith; this event had a lasting effect on Ronald and Catholicism became a motivating force in his life and writings.

Sign up to learn when ‘Black & White Ogre Country: The Lost Tales of Hilary Tolkien (Hardcover)’ becomes available for Pre-Order!

Joseph Szadkowski writes: Thanks to the proliferation of film, comic-book and cartoon characters, companies are bombarding consumers with an incredible selection of action figures. With tongue in cheek, let’s take a peek at some of the specimens worthy of a place in Zad’s Toy Vault. Sideshow Collectibles brings another of J.R.R. Tolkien’s famed characters to three-dimensional life with its 1:6 scale tribute to one of Middle-earth’s most powerful wizards. Washington Times Profiles Sideshow’s Gandalf the Grey

From thebookseller.com: HarperCollins is to publish a new book by the late Lord of the Rings author J R R Tolkien. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, edited and introduced by Tolkien’s son Christopher, will be published in hardback in May 2009. The previously unpublished work was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the 1920s and ’30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The publication will make available for the first time Tolkien’s extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Völsung and the Fall of the Niflungs. Christopher Tolkien edited Tolkien’s most recent title The Children of Húrin in 2007. Further details about the contents of the book will be revealed closer to publication.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Film composers aren’t exactly the most social creatures in Hollywood. But when five of this year’s Oscar front-runners — A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”), Howard Shore (“Doubt”), Danny Elfman (“Milk”), Alexandre Desplat (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) and Jan Kaczmarek (“The Visitor”) — sat down recently with The Hollywood Reporter, they seized the opportunity for a frank, passionate discussion of the past, present and future of film music. Hollywood composers tune in for rare gathering

Kristin Thompson, author of the very successful Frodo Franchise was a guest on last Sunday’s broadcast of ‘Fictional Frontiers with Sohaib,’ on WNJC 1360 AM, Philadelphia at 11AM ET. As always, it was broadcast live via the internet via the WNJC website. A full transcript of the radio segment can be found below (thanks to Deleece Cook!). TheOneRing.net is featured every other week on Fictional Frontiers. Continue reading “Fictional Frontiers Radio Transcript”