Taken this day, 2018, acclaimed illustrator (especially of Tolkien), Alan Lee signing at @edbookfest

https://www.flickr.com/photos/woolamaloo_gazette/30463654048/in/photostream/lightbox/

Yes, you can bet I was pretty delighted when the festival asked me to chair that one!!

#books #livres #art #photography #photographie #AlanLee #Artist #Illustrator #Tolkien #EIBF #EdinburghInternationalBookFestival

There was a post out there somewhere that defined the scale of danger in how many hobbits it took.

Trolls: one-hobbit problem
Dragon: one-hobbit problem
Saruman: two-hobbit problem
Simply walking into Mordor: three hobbit problem (don't forget Gollum!)
The War of the Ring: five hobbit problem

Maybe we should rate adventure modules in hobbits?

#ttrpg #tolkien

It needs but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden, and those who have not swords can still die on them.

-Eowyn

#BoardGames #WotR #SPI #Tolkien

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A card with an image of Eowyn dressed in chainmail, with a sword and shield.

Strongly agree 😁

@fantasy @bookstodon @books

#Author #Quote #Quotes #Tolkien

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“The most improper job of any man...is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity” -J.R.R. Tolkien

https://substack.com/@hart28/note/c-317519926?r=85u73u&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web

#tolkien #protest #peterthiel #palantir

Us Tolkien fans do not claim him.

It’s pretty clear all the elves in Peter Jackson's interpretation of Middle Earth are just tired of all this shit.

#LotR #MiddleEarth #Tolkien

Good news to paranormal authors - since Tolkien is seen as the Grandfather of Western High Fantasy, your blood suckers and big pups can claim a bit of High Fantasy glory!*

*Silmarillion has werewolves and vampires as servants of Sauron and Morgoth - AND the exist in the same era, in the same area.

#writing #fantasy #Tolkien #Silmarillion #werewolves #vampires #Bookstodon #Books

"...For two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer."

All shot practically using real figures, lighting, smoke, tree bark and miniature sets.

#lotr #lordoftherings #theonering #gollum #smeagol #photogtaphy #miniatures #thehuntforgollum #tolkien #thelordoftherings #fantasyart #toyphotography #actionfigurephotography #miniaturephotography #creativephotography #photographicart #visualart #movies

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Gollum walks his cave and comes across a shining golden ring shimmering in a single beam of sunlight coming from above, he reaches his hand out slowly to grab it

I’ve been slowly starting to read Ian Nathan’s book about Peter Jackson and the making of the Lord of the Rings films. It’s vastly over written and too waffly so I’m skimming big chunks (in my library’s Libby ebook version). But still enough gems to keep reading if I can find them. #Books #Tolkien #LOTR #Films

I really love reading. I used to read mostly #scifi and #fantasy, so you could often find me with my nose buried in #Discworld, #Tolkien, The #Witcher, or #HarryPotter back in school. These days, I also enjoy classic literature by "great authors".

And yes, I'm now an expert in children's books because I read to my son every night before bed #kidsbooks. Sadly, I don't have much time for other reading these days.

3/5

The pub that inspired Tolkien for The Prancing Pony in Lord of the Rings

I don't recall mention of a beer garden in the back

#lotr #lordoftherings #Tolkien #JrrTolkein #literaryhistory #literature #SFF #fantasy #Cotswolds #Bree

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Old pub front: The Bell Inn Large brass bell above the door

This week's #NewBooks at the library:
- The final part of the #HPLovecraft Collected Fiction, A Variorum Edition, Volume 4: Revisions and Collaborations, by S. T. Joshi, published by Chiroptera Press.
- Christopher Tolkien's The Bovadium Fragments, published by HarperCollins.
- A second-hand copy of Evolution and the Machinery of Chance: Philosophy, Probability, and Scientific Practice in Biology, published by the University of Chicago Press.
#Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm #Tolkien #Evolution @bookstodon

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A photo of three books standing on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books and part of the beech-coloured laminate floor. On the left, standing up, H. P. Lovecraft Collected Fiction, A Variorum Edition, Volume 4: Revisions and Collaborations, showing a colourful hardback with colour illustrations of tentacled beings On the right, lying down, Evolution and the Machinery of Chance, showing a plain black hardback with the title on its spine. On the right, standing on top of that book, The Bovadium Fragments, showing a white hardback with a colour painting of a landscape that is broken into many shards.

The Lord of the Rings - The Ascent of Mount Doom, by Darrell K. Sweet.

https://imgur.com/gallery/lord-of-rings-ascent-of-mount-doom-by-darrell-k-sweet-cTVWwUH

#illustration #drawing #draw #painting #paint #illustrator #graphicart #author #writer #book #novel #movie #videogame #rpg #vintage #art #history #literature #fantasy #thelordsoftherings #lordoftherings #sciencefiction #darellksweet #jrrtolkien #tolkien

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The Lord of the Rings - The Ascent of Mount Doom, by Darrell K. Sweet.

That's all it takes! 😂

@fantasy @bookstodon @books @reading
@worldbuilding @humor@fedigroups.social @humor@lemmy.world @aiop

#SpeculativeFiction #Tolkien #Lotr #FantasyBooks
#FantasyMemes #Fantasy #Meme #Memes #Humor #Humour #Funny
#Low #High #Epic #Science
#Novel #Books #Bookstodon

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Post by Netchimen's Reverie Tolkien describing places that are evil: no trees grow there

In place of a Dark Lord you would have
~a soft little man~
Not dark, but beautiful and terribly loud at dawn
Treacherous to mice and bees
Sus as a bus named Gus
Stronger than the vibrations of a purr
All shall love me and despair!

Happy Dootsday!

#AllCatsAreBeautiful #Dootsday #DootsToots #LOTR #CatsOfMastodon #CatsOfFediverse #CatsOfPixelfed #Catstodon #Cats #Cat #Tolkien #LOTRMemes #LordOfTheMemes

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Doots, a snuggly little one-eyed Lynx Point Siamese cat, sitting in the loaf position with his paws folded up under his chest on a blue and white quilted pillow on a grey occasional chair. He looks very smoochable.

This week's #NewBooks at the library:
- The last of the books from the NHBS January sale: Michael Ruse's The #Philosophy of Human #Evolution, published by Cambridge University Press
- A lovely version of Humphrey Carpenter's highly praised J. R. R. #Tolkien: A Biography, published by HarperCollins
- A second-hand copy of Ant Ecology, published by Oxford University Press

#HumanEvolution #Anthropology #Fantasy #LOTR #LordOfTheRings #Myrmecology #Ecology #Insects #Entomology #Books #Bookstodon #Scicomm @bookstodon

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A photo of three books standing upright on a small, brown, wooden table. The out-of-focus background shows black shelves full of books. On the left, The Philosophy of Human Evolution, showing a blue hardback with a colour photo of a human diver shot from below encircled by a funnel-shaped school of fish. In the middle, J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography, showing a white hardback bound quarterbound in brown faux-leather standing on top of a brown slipcase. The book's spine is facing the view and both the front and back covers are visible, showing Tolkien's logo in gilded print. On the right, Ant Ecology, showing a white hardback with a close-up photo of a train of ants passing over each other and feeling each other up with their antennae. This is the army ant, Eciton burchelli.

So, I'm probably kicking a hornet's nest by invoking #Tolkien, and yet, here I go. Stay with me.

in #LOTR, both book and movies, in my head, Sam was always the real hero. He refuses to let light and goodness fail, even if it means dragging the "hero" to his destiny.

"... how could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer." he says. "...there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for."

I tell you that story to remind you that we are all Sam. Be Sam.

The darkness is not forever. The darkness is not insurmountable.

Dawn is coming, I feel it's traces on the horizon. There will be much cleanup, but dawn is coming. Hold tight to thoughts of the light.

I believe in us. I believe in you. I believe in dawn.

#peptalk #optimism #LoveYall #BeSam

There's a feeling which I used to regard in my childhood and adolescence as especially haunting and vaguely important, a feeling that I found myself looking for in the speculative literature and entertainment to which I was drawn: it's the sense of stumbling across a relic of a distant past that is now forgotten except perhaps as a dim legend or tradition. I point out that #Undertale evokes this feeling with its depiction of the Ruins, the first large region of the game which the player (through Frisk) is able to walk around in. Whose Ruins are they? My own impression is that they were already there when the Monsters were exiled, which would make the Ruins a human relic, an ironical first home for the exiled Monsters.

As I said, I used to be quite taken with literature that evoked this feeling. One of the writers who most strongly conveyed such a feeling was J. R. R. #Tolkien. The Lord of the Rings (the real one, not the PJ one) is pervaded with this sense of haunting by a forgotten past. But it comes through even more clearly in Tolkien's apocrypha.

(cont'd)

I am currently addicted to nicotine, have been for 15+ years. I started smoking right out of high school around "the wrong crowd" and I've been vaping ever since and recently transitioned to smokeless tobacco/snus and velo. My habit is currently controlled, isn't as unbearable as it used to be, even if I should quit.

and I should quit... anyone should. No one should "start", which, btw, disclaimer
: If you aren't currently biologically addicted to nicotine, stop right here, take inventory of yourself. This is a small blog, an opinion from one man, one misguided, weak human being. Do not take anything here as a suggestion. Good? Good. Do not consider me influential. I am not. Do not take my words as suggestions. They are not.

Ok, continue with this "examination" into the mismanaged life of a drug-addict, which you (obviously) are not, and will continue to not be by the time this is over.

Won't you?

wipes forehead I'm watching you! Don't you dare open ebay.

Alright...

It's mellow, enjoyable, calming, surprisingly cheap and you'd never want to do it constantly anyway. There's an entire process to it that makes it a full-on, attentive experience and it isn't something you'd want to do whilst preoccupied with other things.

How it differs
If pipe smoking is "smoking", it's about... 70% incense, and 30%... actually "smoking".

I'd say that yes, technically a pipe was "smoked", but only in the sense that a fire was lit and I enjoyed it tangentially, not in the same sense that I lit a joint and attempted to injest every bit of it lest I waste the $120 worth of bud wrapped up into it. Pipe smoking is less interested in the ingestion of (insert drug) and more interested in the...

_...ingestion of_

_V I B E S._ ~ Cello plays ~

Am I advocating that anyone young or old out there goes and buys a tobacco pipe and reads some Lord of the Rings by a tree outside?

Y-yes, actually. That sounds lovely. Can we bring a dog and some picnic supplies? Some watermelon. It is summer, after-all.

-Wait a minute, NO. That's not how this goes! You aren't supposed to want to do this! Stop smiling! Do NOT go and get addicted to nicotine because some lonely millenial is adventuring into fantasy novels and has decided that full-bore immersion would be neat. This is a sad tale of woe!

If you are my age, and you've made your mistakes, and you want to chill, yeah, come with me, fellow graybeard. To the mountain! Grab your churchwarden and staff. We leave at dawn.

Tolkien (2019), starring Nicholas Hoult & Lily Collins (notable supporting cast including Colm Meaney, Derek Jacobi, Anthony Boyle, Genevieve O'Reilly, & Owen Teale), score by Thomas Newman (always a sign of a thoughtful director/producers), is a joy to watch that touches tastefully on the childhood and impact of the Great War on Tolkien's work. Deftly avoids directly connecting too many dots. On Disney+. #tolkien #films

--Del Rayo de toda la vida
--y Bukaneros
--claro
--me voy...
.
#Tolkien
#lodehoy
.
.
libreriapraga.com/lodehoy/
.
#Granada
#librería
#libros
#lodehoy
#segundamano
#bookstagram
#libreríadeviejo
#bibliofilia
#librosdeviejo
#books
#bookshop
#booksofmastodon
#librosdeMastodon
#quéhacerenGranada
#libreriaindependiente
#indibookstore

--Del Rayo de toda la vida --y Bukaneros --claro --me voy... . #Tolkien #lodehoy . . libreriapraga.com/lodehoy/ . #Granada #librería #libros #lodehoy #segundamano #bookstagram #libreríadeviejo #bibliofilia #librosdeviejo #books #bookshop

@MissConstrue

This is from "The Return of the King" (Book 5, Chapter 9, "The Last Debate")

#Tolkien #LotR

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‘Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Re Tolkien in the encyclical: (Quoting Gandalf)

213. The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”

#encyclical #Pope #Vatican #AI #OpenSource #Tolkien #MagnificaHumanitas

Da Pope has dropped an #encyclical. An encyclical is a pastoral letter issued by the #Pope.

Historically encyclicals serve as a key instrument of the Pope’s ordinary magisterium to guide the faithful on matters of faith, morals, devotion, or social discipline, they are generally not infallible pronouncements ex cathedra.

I’m still reading and digesting, but a quick skim suggests that this is the biggest thing to drop from the #Vatican in my lifetime.

There’s, #AI, there’s transhumanism, there’s social contract, he apologizes for the Church’s blind eye to #slavery, he declared that “just war” is no longer a thing…in a change of policy held since the Crusades. He calls for #OpenSource, he quotes #Tolkien. (I like Da Pope.)

There’s a lot. You can read it here. It’s gonna take me a while to map it all out.

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html