The Fireside

One of the things about great classic works from centuries past (or hundreds of centuries) is that, because they've been around for so long; and the original tales are so good, is that we have numerous translations from the original languages into English. Everyone has different tastes, and some may be in 'verse' or 'prose.' First up, would Robert Fagles. Fagles has given us amazing translations of 'the three great epics in Western literature.' These would be The Iliad, The Odyssey and The Aeneid . The first of those two are by Homer, and The Aeneid is by Virgil. Due to the immense success of these stories - separate or together - once the Fagles translations came out; it was quite the publishing event. Many people (from general or casual readers to full-fledged scholars) quite enjoyed these. Now, I'm not saying that the Fagles versions are the only good ones because that simply isn't true. However, it appears that Penguin has adopted the Fagles...

We all know the tales J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings many times, over many years. There is even more detailed accounts of his creation in The Silmarillion , Unfinished Tales, and Children of Hurin . He created his own world - language, culture, history, myth...everything. Unknown to the common reader who may be more (or only) familiar with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , he was also a Professor at Oxford, and gave many lectures on subjects of Old English, Anglo Saxon, and others. He also translated and gave his own accounts on various poems over during his academic career. Some of these were abandoned in favor of writing The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings , and is entirely possible that he may not have created those works in favour of more poems. For instance, The Fall of Arthur could have been fully completed if he had not been so busy at the time preparing The Hobbit for publication. Suppose Tolkien never wrote The Hobbit : instead, ...

Tolkien's version of Beowulf  will soon be released. There has been some scholary controversy over this release from those who study Anglo-Saxon literature, as well as Beowulf  scholars. The Tolkien scholars have been waiting awhile for this one for a while.  Tolkien's expertise on Beowulf and his own literary powers have made this translation a work every Tolkien fan will want to treasure. This edition includes the translation in prose and an illuminating commentary, based on a series of lectures given by J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford in the 1930s. Through Tolkien’s clarity of vision, it is as if you entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel’s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. This edition also inclu...

There is a fantasy series which caught my attention. Unfortunately, there's a slight problem....