I was one of those kids who took a deep dive into Middle Earth at an impressionable age and never quite resurfaced.
My introduction to that world came in early 1980 when some network decided to air the Rankin Bass version of The Lord of the Rings. I remember watching it and thinking that this was a great story but there had to be a better version of it out there than this.
Turns out there was, and I spent a good chunk of the next month reading the book, which the library was happy to lend me, and then much of the summer working as an assistant to my mother in the Montgomery County Courthouse fetching real estate records. She paid me $1/hour out of her own pocket and when I’d amassed enough funds I rode my bike up to the little bookstore in Suburban Square in Ardmore, just outside of Philadelphia, and bought the red-boxed single-volume edition and rode home with it bouncing around in the front basket. I read that annually for more than a decade after that. I can still write your name in Elvish script, which is not the most useful skill in the world but it’s mine and I enjoy it.
From there I read The Hobbit – the prequal to the main story, though Tolkien had to retcon the story to make it fit into the larger universe so there are a lot of differences between the first edition and the one that’s available now. Not all of the gaps got filled by the revisions, though, and one of my favorite facts about that process is that the canonical explanation for this is that Bilbo Baggins was just an unreliable narrator.
I also read The Silmarillion and enjoyed that immensely – it’s much more dense, but if you’re looking for the backstory of it all you will not be disappointed. There’s a reason I became a historian, after all.
I have reached the point in my life now where I am starting to deaccession things. I like stuff as much as the next person – ascetic I am not – but having been part of the process of clearing out my parents’ house I’m seeing the virtue of not leaving that task to my children whenever they need to think about such things.
One of the nicer consequences of this is that more and more of the gifts I receive for birthday or Christmas presents come in the form of experiences, of time spent with family, and that’s a lovely development.
For Christmas last year Lauren said she would get tickets for us to see a play up in Madison, and we went on Friday. I drove up after work and we made a grocery run (because as a parent that is one of the things I enjoy doing for my children) and had a lovely dinner together at a Thai place, and then we headed off to the theater.
The Hobbit: A Musical.
My introduction to that world came in early 1980 when some network decided to air the Rankin Bass version of The Lord of the Rings. I remember watching it and thinking that this was a great story but there had to be a better version of it out there than this.
Turns out there was, and I spent a good chunk of the next month reading the book, which the library was happy to lend me, and then much of the summer working as an assistant to my mother in the Montgomery County Courthouse fetching real estate records. She paid me $1/hour out of her own pocket and when I’d amassed enough funds I rode my bike up to the little bookstore in Suburban Square in Ardmore, just outside of Philadelphia, and bought the red-boxed single-volume edition and rode home with it bouncing around in the front basket. I read that annually for more than a decade after that. I can still write your name in Elvish script, which is not the most useful skill in the world but it’s mine and I enjoy it.
From there I read The Hobbit – the prequal to the main story, though Tolkien had to retcon the story to make it fit into the larger universe so there are a lot of differences between the first edition and the one that’s available now. Not all of the gaps got filled by the revisions, though, and one of my favorite facts about that process is that the canonical explanation for this is that Bilbo Baggins was just an unreliable narrator.
I also read The Silmarillion and enjoyed that immensely – it’s much more dense, but if you’re looking for the backstory of it all you will not be disappointed. There’s a reason I became a historian, after all.
I have reached the point in my life now where I am starting to deaccession things. I like stuff as much as the next person – ascetic I am not – but having been part of the process of clearing out my parents’ house I’m seeing the virtue of not leaving that task to my children whenever they need to think about such things.
One of the nicer consequences of this is that more and more of the gifts I receive for birthday or Christmas presents come in the form of experiences, of time spent with family, and that’s a lovely development.
For Christmas last year Lauren said she would get tickets for us to see a play up in Madison, and we went on Friday. I drove up after work and we made a grocery run (because as a parent that is one of the things I enjoy doing for my children) and had a lovely dinner together at a Thai place, and then we headed off to the theater.
The Hobbit: A Musical.
It has to be said that the musical part was pretty limited – most of it was a stage show, though there were some songs interspersed throughout. It was a fairly small but very talented ensemble cast who did a nice job of switching in and out of various roles, highlighted by some really clever costume changes. And they covered pretty much all of the main events of the book in a way that was fun for those of us who know the story and also worked pretty well for people new to it.
Honestly they did a better job with the story than Peter Jackson did.
We didn’t realize until a week or two before the show that it was a production aimed at children – the actors were adults, but a good chunk of the audience was too young to drive. They were captivated. And so were we.
Lauren and I had a lovely evening together.
Merry Christmas to me.
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