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One of my current hyper fixations is J.R.R.Tolkien. I stumbled across this and knew I needed it. It has a bit of info about his life and his writing. However, it is mostly photos of his artwork. I only learned recently how much of an artist he was. This is a quick read, and I'm glad I found it.

I‘ve appreciated the world building of this book every time I‘ve read it, but after multiple rereads I can simply enjoy reading it as well. There are epic stories with amazing characters. Yet, it only shows a small part of the world Tolkien created, and now reading it makes me want to reread books with other versions as well. This time I switched throughout between print, ebook, & audio versions.

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Sharing a weird word of the week a day late. I‘ve read The Silmarillion several times but never stopped to figure out exactly what weregild meant until this week. In this case, Isildur kept the one ring as a weregild for his father & brother killed in battle.

weregild: monetary value set for a person and paid to their family or lord if slain; also man price or blood money (noun)

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#WeirdWords #WeirdWordWednesday

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Reading this today.
I've read this story many times, in multiple versions. It's always exceptionally beautiful and moving.

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Let's face it. If this story was written in today's fantasy language, it would be extremely dark and desperate.

Instead, Tolkien chose to write it focusing on desires and even goals, twisted as they may be. And because of this choice, a story that might have been very dark, with an underline of will-power, it's in fact a story of strong wills and desires with an underline of darkness.

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I love the story of the founding of Gondolin. I mean: Ulmo and his prophecy, the secret building, the way Turgon and his people disappear. It's so fairytale-like and yet it makes perfect sense in the narration.
I also love how the Vow starts to work its power. Yet Tolkien was always concerned with showing the Elves as fundamentally fair even when deeply troubled. Thingol's episode shows this perfectly.

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Tolkien has a way to turn the environment into characters. The rivers and the forests, and the hills, the mountains, the plains and the lakes - all have the quality of characters in this narration.

I think this is why, even if at first glance this may seem like a descriptive chapter, there is still a sense of narration here.

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I'm really quite behind 😟
But I'm trying to catch up and am not as far behind as my posts might suggest.

I'm enjoying this a lot. Truly, The Silmarillion Is Better evrybtime you read it, because names and stories become me familiar and nouances come to the fore.

“Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin” is one of the stories in The Silmarillion that is only a tiny portion of what Tolkien actually wrote about this event. I had to go look up some other passages and revisit the illustrations by Alan Lee after reading the chapter.

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I‘m playing catch up again this weekend. This is another epic story, but unlike most of Tolkien‘s stories that end on a hopeful note, the story of Turin is truly a tragedy. It includes the dragon Glaurung and the sword Gurthang, which are both important and fascinating characters as well.

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