Happy Hobbit Day!

My sister and I put together a playlist of festive hobbity music for our celebrations that I just had to share with you because honestly I think it’s just perfect. Well, we worked long and hard on it so it better be! This year we wanted to combine the pagan celebration of the autumn equinox

How We Got Here: the History of Rings Of Power — Lord of the Rings Rings of Power on Amazon Prime News, JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit and more | TheOneRing.net

The debut of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video is in many ways a new age of Middle-earth adaptation. Set firmly in the Second Age, thousands of years before the events of the The Hobbit. This TV series sets out to explore the the age of settlements in Middle-earth […]

The Rotting Horse on the Deadly Ground

As my fifty-first birthday approaches I’ve been waxing nostalgic and so, at the suggestion of my sister, have laboured long and hard putting together a retrospective metal playlist to serve as a soundtrack for the coming celebrations. I wanted it to sort of tell the story of how I became a headbanger thirty-six years ago

Happy Tolkien Reading Day!

This post contains spoilers for both the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings. March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day, because that’s the day J. R. R. Tolkien gave for the climactic event of his epic fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings, when the One Ring went into the fire and the

Another Tolkien-themed Birthday!

This post contains spoilers for both the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings. Some of you may recall that for my 50th birthday I decided to celebrate Hobbit-style, since Bilbo and Frodo were both fifty years old when they each set out on their respective adventures. Well, my sister’s birthday was on

The Breaking of the Fellowship

This post contains spoilers for both the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings. I’ve been continuing my re-read of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which as I mentioned early on I used to do every year, but if I’m honest haven’t really done since before the release

The Movies and Stories that Inspired Dave Arneson to Invent the Dungeon Crawl — DMDavid

Around 1971 Dave Arneson and his circle of Minneapolis gamers invented games where players controlled individual characters who grew with experience and who could try anything because dice and a referee determined the outcomes. The group tried this style of play in various settings, but Dave invented one that proved irresistible: the dungeon. Dave’s Blackmoor… The

A Brace of Tolkien Posts for his 130th Birthday (#TolkienBirthdayToast) — A Pilgrim in Narnia

As J.R.R. Tolkien was born about 68,374,080 hours ago, the Tolkien Society is once again raising a toast to the Professor on his birthday, 3 January 2022 (see here). After Bilbo left the Shire on his eleventy-first birthday in The Lord of the Rings, Frodo toasted his uncle’s birthday each year, which he shared. Tolkien […]

Retrospective: The Fellowship of the Ring 20th Anniversary — In Their Own League

By Joan Amenn “A wizard is never late… nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” -Gandalf the Grey The twentieth anniversary of “The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) arrives this weekend, precisely on time for its fans to start their annual viewing marathon of the trilogy as a whole. Evaluated on […]

Lothlórien

This post contains spoilers for both the book and film versions of The Lord of the Rings. At this point in my re-read of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship has made it to “the heart of Elvendom on earth,” Lothlórien, the literal meaning of which is “Dreamflower.” Also called