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Post 11 Jun 2015, 1:12 pm

This podcast might be of interest to you fellas. An interview with co-authors of a book about C.S. Lewis & Tolkien. I would have liked more depth but it's decent. At the end they move on to Game of Thrones season 5 but I had to turn it off as I haven't seen it yet.

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2015/06/10/lord-of-the-rings-narnia-game-of-thrones
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Post 11 Jun 2015, 5:28 pm

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of that. Yes, Gandalf did say something like that. Hence the "sniffing", etc. But he also said the Ring draws them. But he also told Frodo (after the fact, naturally) that he was stupid to have put the Ring on because then he (Frodo) was perfectly visible to them in "their world", or something.
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Post 20 Jun 2016, 2:26 pm

It's been just over a year since I responded to this thread. I was a little disappointed that it had lost interest because I like talking about literature and so forth.

Unfortunately, I haven't made too much more progress, as it is a recent development that I've been able to read for short periods at a time without distraction. So, I'm still on 5, II (book five, chapter two) "The Passing of the Grey Company".

Feel free to jump in with ANYTHING, no matter what. I really feel like discussing this one a bit more because the book does fascinate me, or else I would not have bothered to spend all this time reading it [or attempting to].

We can see modern DIPLOMACY in the Lord of the Rings, and international relations or geopolitics or yore and of today. I think the Shire is, in many ways, the United States of America in some respects. (Tolkien obviously didn't intend it as such, but there are similarities.) The inhabitants of the Shire seem to think "Oh, not our business what goes on beyond our borders." Yet, evil is lurking literally everywhere around the borders of the Shire.

Gondor or Rohan would be more like Britain's role in WWII, as opposed to the Shire (United States). Or perhaps the Rangers, who kept the Shire safe without the fat, happy inhabitants thereof knowing of it or thinking about it. The People's Democratic Republic of Gondor (which I have privately styled it, since Gondor has no king, and needs no king, according to Boromir in the movies at any rate) is the country that holds back the forces of evil in Middle Earth. Without it, Sauron would have been successful a long time ago.

Mordor can be Germany: after the great "defeat" of Sauron by the last alliance of Men and Elves, it was put down but not for good: a partial defeat is no defeat, and it will come back to haunt you, just as the unfinished business of WWI turned into WWII. He wrote the book while the latter was raging, so he'd have been thinking about such not-quite-victories. And after such events, the world NEVER quite goes back to being the same as it was before such a calamity.

OK: anyone want to jump in and revive this discussion? I'm sorry if anyone's bored of it by now but it's just something that fascinates me and, as you well know, I am terribly fond of intellectual discussion. (Right...)
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Post 19 Jul 2016, 3:38 pm

I happened to read these earlier this year for the first time. I had tried reading them back when the first movie came out, but had a hard time getting through the Shire. This time, I was more prepared for the writing style and had more time to actually read so I more easily got into it.

For me, what I find most interesting is how he wrote the book, spending many words and pages on character actions and interactions, but very few on the battles. The movies, by comparison, spend a good deal of time on the battle scenes (necessarily so), but in the book....usually no more than a paragraph of two. I found that fascinating, especially after reading many R.A. Salvatore books in which he spends many words and goes into great detail regarding battles. It's quite the stark contrast.
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Post 21 Jul 2016, 7:08 pm

Glad someone finally responded after all that time :)

Thanks Sendric! And better luck in Days of Thunder than I am having/have had!

I finished the chapter on The Passing of the Grey Company in Book Five. Yes, I agree with you, it seems that, for example, the battle for Isengard was described sort of ex post facto rather than a blade-by-blade battle account. And I like that, too. "Epic Battle Sequences" are great for movies, but they actually make boring reading.

So I'm on the Muster of Rohan I think now, still Book Five.

So you've finished the whole thing, right?