Although J.R.R. Tolkien famously disliked allegory, he admitted there is always applicability to be found. Anyone who reads his work with any bit of care or critical thinking can find a thousand applications to the troubles of our real world—what he called the primary world. Here is just one I recently across again.
(more…)Tag: books
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Continuing the theme of talking about the good things in life . . .
This is just a short post mostly to redirect folks to this awesome and insightful new article in the “Overlooked No Mere” series in The New York Times—which I’d never heard about before. It doesn’t appear behind a paywall, either. I guess that makes sense, since it’s an obituary series. Anyway, it’s this one:
Overlooked No More: Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien’s Middle-earth
And here’s my quick followup opinion.
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Go not to me for true film criticism, for I will say both “It was great!” and “It wasn’t that great” about almost anything. Almost.
But! It’s 2024, and I got to take my family to see a Lord of the Rings film in December just as it premiered. That felt . . . good, and a tiny bit nostalgic. I still have more enthusiasm in me than disappointment, and as always, more Tolkien is better than less Tolkien. Even poorly made Tolkien adaptations (which this wasn’t) is an excuse to talk about Tolkien . . .
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I aim to talk more about the good things in life here.
Today I’m going to talk just a little bit about artists Tim and Greg Hildebrandt, though I don’t honestly know much about them—that is, beyond this wonderful interview the hosts of The Prancing Pony Podcast had with Greg Hildebrandt a few years ago. Mostly I’d just like to share some of MY favorite paintings from their vast body of work. Tim passed away in 2006 and his brother, Greg, sadly passed away one month ago.
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I don’t usually talk online about my actual day job. But today I’d like to. Just a tiny bit.
So I’m a senior production editor for Macmillan and I work almost exclusively on books for Tor (i.e. the Tor Publishing Group) and its genre imprints:
(more…)- Tor (sci-fi/fantasy)
- Forge (mystery/thriller/Western)
- Nightfire (horror)
- Tor Teen | Starscape (younger readers)
- Tordotcom (experimental speculative fiction)
- Bramble (romance)
Foreshadowed and Foresung 