The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other Verses from The Red Book

This is about the 2014 edition.

A fat little Hobbit of a book – if Hobbits have university professors of literature and philology.

The original of this book was a slim volume of slim poems, illustrated by charming drawings. This edition is rather more, such that it's now three or four times the size. The first volume is a preface, introducing the context for the collection and the poems themselves. A worthy read. Then the poems, which are still light and charming, with their original illustrations. Now the real meat of this edition: the third volume is a series of literary critiques of each, usually including the full text of an earlier version, often very different.

For a light read, read the second volume. Preferably aloud, and ideally show more to an audience of cheese and ale-stuffed Hobbits.

The Tolkien scholar though will want to plough through all of it, including that third critique. I say "plough" deliberately, as it's not the easiest of going. But if your interest is in Tolkien himself, or just deeply that of the Legendarium's development, rather than only scampering along to Sam's present, then this will be a heavy but rewarding read for you. show less

Hobbit poems. It's Middle Earth like you've never seen it before. And once you've read it, you'll know why. Yikes.

I enjoyed this book very much. Tolkien is probably better at prose than poems, but in this small book, he's expanded a great deal on Middle Earth mythology. He has poems by Bilbo and by Sam. He has goofy Hobbit folk poems. He's got Hobbits being silly and serious, sometimes trying to imitate Men and Elves with varying degrees of success. It's got Elvish gibberish, words that Hobbits have made up to sound Elvish but which don't mean anything. If this sounds funny, it is. I know that real languages and their histories inspired Tolkien to invent his own languages, and I also know that his own languages were the inspiration for show more Middle Earth. Reading these poems, I kind of felt like I was getting closer to some of the joy of invention; I could really understand why so many people have loved Middle Earth. Tolkien even makes some fun of his own poetry skills. Most of his poems keep a rigid rhyme scheme, but Tolkien also complains about all the rhyming, saying, "in their simplicity Hobbits evidently regarded such things as virtues." He also describes an annoying-on-purpose kind of poem by saying that it "may be recited until the hearers revolt." It really is cute.

However, this book is not perfect. It has a very uneven tone, and I'm not sure that I like either extreme.

This is a children's book, yet parts of it don't seem all that children-y to me. For one thing, it assumes that the reader has read The Lord of the Rings, and for another, it gets pretty dark (really, really creepy-dark) in some places. One of the poems, for example, tells of Frodo: "Like a dark mole groping I went, to the ground falling . . . beetles were tapping in the rotten trees, spiders were weaving . . . I saw my hair hanging grey . . . I have lost myself". This poem touches on old age and insanity and solitude; while I'm certainly not denying that children's literature can be dark, this just doesn't seem to be trying to appeal to children. Frodo isn't even described in the book--you'd have to read The Lord of the Rings for that.

On the other hand, this book has some lighthearted moments, to put it mildly, and those are certainly geared for children. If I could just quote one stanza:

"He battled with the Dumbledors,
the Hummerhorns, and Honeybees,
and won the Golden Honeycomb;
and running home on sunny seas
in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy,
he sat and sang, and furbished up
and burnished up his panoply"

That about says it all. What a mouthful. show less

This is the first collection of poems I've ever read straight through and I really enjoyed it. Two of the poems are about Tom Bombadil. The rest of the poems are about characters and places one might encounter in his world. Some poems were written by the Hobbits we all know & love, including Sam Gamgee's Stone Troll song! "I'll try my teeth on thee now. Hee now! See now!"

As this isn't the first time I've read these poems, I already knew I was going to like them. The added elements in this edition are the commentaries on every poem by the editors, which usually include earlier variants of the core poems, together with a very brief outline by Tolkien of a never realised, stand-alone Tom Bombadil story. Well worth the relatively modest cover price, but I'd have happily paid more for better paper, a larger format and colour illustrations.

Not Tolkien's most amazing work (meaning I enjoyed his poems in LotR and the Hobbit more), but it was fun to read all the same. It is a mix of (seemingly) happy poems and other poems with darker undertones. Only two poems are actually about Tom, the rest are from the folklore of the Hobbits or similar to Lord of the Rings in style. Of the few poems in this 75 page book, "Shadow Bride" was one of my favorites. Part of the middle of the poem:
"...He woke, as he had sprung of stone,
and broke the spell that bound him;
he clasped her fast, both flesh and bone,
and wrapped her shadow round him."

I’m gonna have to do a reread of this because I think the verse really made it hard to take it in. Something about rhyme means I have to listen to something a bunch of times to understand what’s going on. Or maybe that’s just Tolkien’s style of writing verse. It was interesting, and I really liked Perry-The-Winkle, but overall it’s hard to take in with all the whimsical words that Tolkien uses.

Look, I’ve read the Hobbit and LOTR over a dozen times. Tolkien shaped my life. I love the man. But, his poetry basically sucks. With every reading, I started out with every intention of finding the brilliant gems in the poems and songs, but... With two notable exceptions, the poems here are more of the same.

I loved finding this book in a little shop on Charing Cross in London, though.