The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion

I recently reread (for the nth time, although for the first time in years) “The Lord of the Rings” along with this reader’s companion. If you are one of those people who became a LOTR fan in your youth, learned how to write in Elvish, love the Simarillion, and read the book many times, I highly recommend reading it again along with this commentary. It helped me appreciate even more how the depth of Tolkien’s academic scholarship permeates every word in LOTR. It also helped change my mind and I now consider Tolkien not only a great story teller and world builder, but an incredible writer. I even for the first time appreciate and enjoy his poetry.

I should add that 57 years after I first read LOTR, I appreciate even more his show more incredible world building, and his deep exploration of human psychology in a fantasy setting. He is truly the master of the genre and has never yet been surpassed. But he also deserves to be appreciated as a great writer, not just in his genre.

As a side note, perhaps it is related to my current age, but I now find LOTR incredibly sad and depressing. The commentary just helped deepen that feeling. I never before fully appreciated how Catholicism is such a pessimistic religion and how deeply it’s despairing view of human nature permeates Tolkien’s writing. show less

Should it interest you, click to read my 7000+ words analysis, about Free Will and Moral Choice in LOTR

It’s a treasure trove for hardcore fans for sure. I’d even say it is mandatory if you’re the type of fan that has read The Lord of the Rings multiple times, and plan to read it again. It’s 894 pages, with 15 pages of bibliography and a 64-page index.

There's a lengthy introduction on the history of the book’s origin and publication history, notes on the chronologies, calendars and moons, and some pages on the different maps. It also includes 30 pages of notes on the nomenclature, written by J.R.R. Tolkien himself. The main part follows the text, and offers thousands of notes – some trivial and short, others long, quoting show more from letters or earlier drafts, and from other scholars, including Christopher Tolkien’s extensive work.

It is meticulous about different ways of spelling dwarfs/dwarves/Dwarfs/Dwarves and lots of other words, should stuff like that float your boat. There’s also an index of all the changes that were made for the 2014 60th Anniversary edition by HarperCollins, but that would be interesting for scholars only.

Anyhow: you do not need it as a casual reader, not at all, but it is a tremendous achievement in itself. show less

The book's quality varies widely-from the little known but fascinating to the tedious and lengthy quotes taken from better known works. Do we need to see entire paragraphs lifted from Unfinished Tales or History of Middle Earth? This book suffers from inadequate editing.

The only reason this doesn't rate 5 stars is that I found one or two errors in the appendicies. Even so, this volume is a welcome addition, chronicling the various errors, omissions, and erronious edits in the published text of LotR.

An invaluable resource for the Tolkien enthusiast.

Tolkien, Criticism

Recensione su LT a questa edizione nel cofanetto.