2013-01-02

A Tolkien Virgin

Back in 1999-2002, starting before the Peter Jackson films had appeared, a blogger named Mark-Edmond Howell undertook to read the whole of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings in that order and to write chapter-by-chapter commentary in Tolkien Online as he went.  As he himself says, he had started The Hobbit some years before but not gotten very far into it, and was vaguely aware of some of the pre-Jackson films.  While theonering.net has undertaken to lovingly preserve A Tolkien Virgin, their index is in reverse order of posting (which sometimes differs slightly from book order), and is chopped up arbitrarily, making it hard to navigate.  As a public service, therefore, I am providing this organized and properly ordered table of contents to A Tolkien Virgin, using chapter titles rather than numbers in all cases (Book IV, Chapter 4, what's that?  "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit", ahhhh!)  Share and enjoy.  And as Mark-Edmond says, keep thinking!

Introductory
The Silmarillion
The Hobbit

Note that some commentaries cover two or even three chapters.
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Return of the King
    There is room for vast amounts of meta-commentary here.  Let me just point to Mark-Edmond's fascination with Círdan the Shipwright, and how satisfying he finds it that Círdan reappears at the end.