"Noon?" said Sam, trying to calculate. "Noon of what day?"
"The fourteenth of the New Year," said Gandalf; "or if you like, the eighth day of April in the Shire reckoning. But in Gondor the New Year will always now begin upon the twenty-fifth of March when Sauron fell, and when you were brought out of the fire to the King."Happy Feast of the Annunciation and... day of the downfall of Sauron! Isn't there a proper name for it? I can't remember right off, and I'm too sleepy to look it up.
But the girls from Pages Unbound—one of my favorite book blogs—interviewed me on the subject of J.R.R. Tolkien and his work the other day, and the post went live on this day of all days for Middle-Earth. I was thoroughly flattered to be asked, and had a blast answering their questions. If you want to know what redeems the Professor's work for me despite the dearth of interesting female characters, or how and why I first read said work, or what I'd say to people who haven't read Tolkien yet, click on over.
They're also interviewing other bloggers all week, which is just part of a stellar Tolkien read-through (master list of posts), which I really wish right now I could find more time to participate in. All you Tolkien fans—which is at least two-thirds of you who ever comment—I recommend it!
Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?
ReplyDeletenoooooo help; something in my eyyyye ;_;
Congratulations on your interview, and yay for talking about Tolkien!
I was never bothered by the lack of female characters in LotR and The Hobbit growing up, probably for a mix of good and bad reasons. Partly I didn't think of gender as an important category, so I didn't feel excluded -- partly I grew up in the same pop-cultural landscape as everyone else and just got used to seeing majority-male adventure stories everywhere. And I'm not sure that I even registered Arwen and Galadriel as characters back in the day -- they were more like Pre-Raphaelite paintings with some exposition scribbled on the back. I like Galadriel a lot better now (mostly thanks to other fans telling me all about her). And I've always liked Lobelia Sackville-Baggins.
I won't defend Tolkien for hardly ever bothering with his female characters, but I will say that Luthien is legitimately awesome and there should be a movie.
Also, no, you didn't go about it the wrong way by seeing the movies first! You went about it exactly the right way, because here you are!