Friday, January 3, 2014

Tolkien Day

Happy Tolkien's Birthday, all.

I celebrated by ordering myself a copy of a new book about Tolkien I just learned about yesterday (this one's about his being influenced by Abyssinia) and began to plan when I might see the new HOBBIT movie a fourth time.

For a quicker gratification, here's a little piece from today's Huffington Post only half-seriously comparing JRRT with R.R.Martin:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/noble-smith/the-lord-of-the-rings-game-of-thrones_b_4532480.html

My own take on Tolkien vs. Martin? Tolkien is a great author. Martin isn't.

   --John R.

current reading: CADMEAN LETTERS by Martin Bernal [1990]

1 comment:

David Bratman said...

And he refers to "The New Shadow", so points for knowledge there. And the final item, which gets the aspect of Tolkien's greatness that Martin, for better or worse, isn't interested in.

But tsk on describing the female characters in LOTR as marginalized without mentioning that Tolkien created entirely central and powerful female characters elsewhere, like Lúthien and Erendis.