The Ninety-second Roving Ranger

For three months I have not been able to send you the next edition of the Roving Ranger, for a number of reasons. I will try and get back into the bi-weekly swing of things and do a special edition on the months I have missed.

Events & Shows

A play on Lewis & Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela) is on in Hollywood, CA.

The Exeter Tolkien Society is organising a fantasy Christmas ball (Abre numa nova janela) on Nov 24th.

The Tolkien Society is having an online seminar on Tolkien and Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Abre numa nova janela) on Nov 26 - an excellent outlook on it can be found with Anna Smol (Abre numa nova janela).

The Tolkien Collector’s Guide (Abre numa nova janela) did a live stream (Abre numa nova janela) on the revised Letters; a review of the release event (Abre numa nova janela) in Oxford; and do join their subreddit (Abre numa nova janela).

In Exeter College’s on-going seminar series Laura Varnam will talk about Tolkien & Beowulf (Abre numa nova janela) at the college’s ‘new’ Cohen Quad on Nov 15 and Simon Horobin on ‘J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Philologist’ on Nov 22.

Weta Workshop will be doing a special screening of LotR: Return of the King (Abre numa nova janela) in Auckland on Dec 5, including Richard Tayleor and Tania Rodger. The NZ Post (Abre numa nova janela) is issuing another set of celebratory stamps as well.

Wadham College (Abre numa nova janela)’s members of the MCR and SCR will be getting a Tolkien, Lewis and the Inklings tour.

The British Library has opened its massive Fantasy: Realms of Imagination (Abre numa nova janela) exhibition - two early (Abre numa nova janela) reviews (Abre numa nova janela).
[Please note: the BL’s website has come under attack (Abre numa nova janela) so you might not see the exhibition page; all exhibitions are running and you can book tickets here (Abre numa nova janela).]

Pembroke College has an event on the OED (Abre numa nova janela) at Nov 17.

The C.S. Lewis podcast Pints with Jack is trying to establish a CSL Reading Day (Abre numa nova janela) - on Nov 29 (CSL’s birthday).

Don’t forget - John Howe’s exhibition (Abre numa nova janela) in Brittany is still on until January.

Scholarship and Fandom

Reviews of Letters: Tolkien Guide (Abre numa nova janela) | Telegraph (Abre numa nova janela) [paywall]; The Times (Abre numa nova janela) [paywall].

A great write-up on recent Tolkien events & publications by Robin Reid (Abre numa nova janela). Anna Smol ist offering some of the books coming up (Abre numa nova janela).

For those of you who have not heard of Tom Hillman’s book Pity, Power, and Tolkien’s Ring you can listen to some of the chapters read by the author (Abre numa nova janela) on Youtube.

Verlyn Flieger has left Tolkien Studies (Abre numa nova janela) - thanks and kudos to Verlyn! - and Yvette Kisor (Abre numa nova janela) will pick up her baton. Read more about Its Origins and Evolutions (Abre numa nova janela) with Douglas A. Anderson.

List, list, O, list! is a column with the Times Literary Supplement, including the subtitle 100 Novels, Tove Jansson’s Hobbit, Reviews misrepresented (Abre numa nova janela) and being a little acidic about top 100 reading lists and the British Library exhibition.

For the sake of Jansson’s other work, we are glad that she never had to endure a return to Middleearth (sic!). But because she portrayed Gollum as a paunchy giant, we are told, Tolkien later clarified that this particular creature of the imagination was “small” and “slimy”. We know whose fantasy we prefer. [List, list, o, list!]

Peter Grybauskas - the editor of Tolkien’s Battle of Maldon (Abre numa nova janela) - will be offering a course called Advanced Composition: Tolkien in Oxford (Abre numa nova janela) at the University of Maryland.

A professional writing course exploring the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien, professor and author of The Lord of the Rings. 

To some people it may come as a surprise, it is nothing new to Tolkien scholars - the Italian right have been abusing his writings since the 1970s and today’s prime minister is only another name in a very long list: How did The Lord of the Rings become a secret weapon in Italy’s culture wars? (Abre numa nova janela) [Guardian]; Inside Giorgia Meloni’s Hobbit fantasy world (Abre numa nova janela) [Politico]; Why a Lord of the Rings exhibition matters to Italy's far-right PM Giorgia Meloni (Abre numa nova janela) [euronews.culture]; Is a Tolkein Exhibition in Rome Part of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Far-Right Agenda? (Abre numa nova janela) [artnet]; Meloni e Tolkien, la stampa inglese all’attacco (Abre numa nova janela) [Repubblica]; Rome to host Italy's first major Tolkien exhibition (Abre numa nova janela) [Wanted in Rome; only general tourist info]

It is unfortunate that the politics involved in this question offer a skewed picture of an exhibition that will be outstanding: TOLKIEN. UOMO, PROFESSORE, AUTORE (Abre numa nova janela) has been curated by none other but Tolkien scholar Oronzo Cilli (Tolkien’s Library (Abre numa nova janela)). There also was a special event during Italy’s reading week for schools, Libriamoci (Abre numa nova janela), at Milan, on Tolkien’s Hobbit. See this video for the opening (Abre numa nova janela), supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture and with the cultural minister Sangiuliano (Abre numa nova janela) present, as well as Tolkien scholar Giuseppe Pezzini (Corpus Christi College (Abre numa nova janela)) who recently organised the exceptional conference Tolkien's Words and Worlds (Abre numa nova janela) in Oxford.

The Apocalypse According to J.R.R. Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela) by Robert Lazu Kmita [European Conservative]

Diana Glyer’s C.S. Lewis Bibliography (Abre numa nova janela) contains a number of titles relevant to Tolkien scholarship. Do look out for her latest publication, The Major & The Missionary (Abre numa nova janela).

John Garth started a series of posts with Steady on Wetwang (Abre numa nova janela). [I am still incredibly pleased to say I convinced John of joining me at Steady.]

Franchise and Merchandise

Lord of the Rings: Online is back with another expansion: Corsairs of Umbar (Abre numa nova janela). [YT, launch trailer]

A list of reviews on LotR: Return to Moria: Metacritic (Abre numa nova janela) | IGN (Abre numa nova janela) | Checkpoint Gaming (Abre numa nova janela) | Polygon (Abre numa nova janela) | Game Tyrant (Abre numa nova janela) | TechRaptor (Abre numa nova janela) | Empire (Abre numa nova janela). Here is an outlook on (Abre numa nova janela) future patches and DLCs by the developers. Luckily enough, the game is not as overwhelmingly bad as LotR: Gollum (Abre numa nova janela).

In the age of celebrities Chanel’s In the Library series is a prime specimen: Margot Robbie likes - among many others - The Hobbit (Abre numa nova janela).

It really does not come as a surprise that Jeff Bezos (Abre numa nova janela) is a Tolkien fan, too, like Peter Thiel (Abre numa nova janela) and Elon Musk (Abre numa nova janela).

An Australian ‘traveller’ seems to have missed out on franchise tourism the world over: Oh Lord: I visited a bizarre, fake Hobbit-theme park in a cloud forest (Abre numa nova janela).

Inter alia & Back in the day

I am not sure whether Esquire should be asking the question but here we are: What’s the future of books? (Abre numa nova janela)

Greta Gerwig is doing Narnia (Abre numa nova janela) for Netflix.

Sir Anthony Hopkins stays true to form and returns to C.S. Lewis - but this time as Sigmund Freud, talking to Lewis, in the film Freud’s Last Session (Abre numa nova janela).

The Eagle & Child (Abre numa nova janela) has been sold to a tech institute expanding into Oxford University - we’ll see what will come of it (see also with the BBC (Abre numa nova janela)) [I have written extensively on Tolkien’s pubs with Steady (Abre numa nova janela) and am in the process of writing more about this development.]

Star Wars author Timothy Zahn weighs in on ‘his’ character, Thrawn, his books and what might be in store (Abre numa nova janela) for one of the best characters in that universe.

Strange but true: The original model of Star Trek’s spaceship Enterprise was considered lost but might have resurfaced now (Abre numa nova janela), many decades later.

One of the most hilarious pieces I saw this week: the Economist titled The business of mining literary estates is booming (Abre numa nova janela) [paywall] and the website Fior Reports simply copied it fully (as far as I can see), retitling it The business of exploiting literary estates is booming (Abre numa nova janela).

If you need fresh reading material the Hugo award winners (Abre numa nova janela) - and all the nominees - make for a great TRL. Or the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize (Abre numa nova janela). Or the World Fantasy Awards (Abre numa nova janela).

Ansible 436 (Abre numa nova janela) has been published.

According to German law I have to infom you all links to enterprises, artists, products etc. are [unpaid advertisements.] Some purchase links may earn me a small commission from Blackwell's, the bookshop of my personal trust.

If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
The Tolkienist Blog (Abre numa nova janela) : Facebook (Abre numa nova janela) : Twitter (Abre numa nova janela) : Instagram (Abre numa nova janela) : Tolkien-Discord (Abre numa nova janela) [de/en]