The Fireside

  First of all, I wish to state that this blog post (well, all, really) are my own personal opinion. I am not 'attacking' anybody's personal collections, just stating my disinterest in some of these following items. There are some Tolkien items that I wish could be wiped from existence, or rather; never see or hear about again. They are as follows, as well was my reasoning. It's not unjustified dislike.  Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings (Part 1 ONLY, that is) film This film has many fans. Most of them, saw it close to its initial release, and was their first taste of Tolkien. That's all well and good, as we see things differently as children than we do as adults. (That's why I cannot watch the original Ninja Turtles cartoon NOW, and why I laughed the whole way through this movie; as I saw it when I was 17.) That being said: this is not a good movie. Take off the nostalgia goggles, it sucks. Here are a few reasons why, taken from this article: http://flyin...

One item that sometimes, in my experience, that gets overlooked in the field of Tolkien scholarship, as well as overall importance, is The Annotated Hobbit  by Douglas A. Anderson. The book was published to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Hobbit . That is, of course, nothing ill against Anderson, The Hobbit  or what he has done. In a field so varied and vast as Tolkien scholarship, it oft gets overlooked, I mean to say. In a sense, I consider it to be "an underrated piece of genius." Of course, in terms of thinking it could be overlooked, I could be completely off the mark. I remember when the revised edition of the book was brand new. I was getting into Tolkien, and checking out various titles by and about him. I saw the book and thought it was a bit unnecessary for my needs at the time. Plus, it didn't match any of the other books in terms of size dimensions etc. More on that later. I thought it was a neat concept, but at the time, I was casual normal reader, ge...