Anyone else partaking in the #TolkienBirthdayToast? At 9 pm, I'll have the tagged book in one hand and a whisky in the other! #TheProfessor #BooksAndBooze
Both #TomKitten and #ColeCat are doing their best to thwart my year-end reading. Really trying to knock out a few more titles over here, but cats are gonna be cats, eh? #CatsOfLitsy #BlackCats
This is a perfect #Jolabokaflod gift! I‘ve had this book of essays about women in the works of Tolkien on my wish list for quite a while and am looking forward to at least choosing one of them to read later this evening while also enjoying some delicious Dove truffles. Thank you to @Light_of_Aether for a great gift and to @MaleficentBookDragon for organizing this wonderfully festive swap!
#JolabokaflodSwap
Any other Android users having issues with the Litsy app?? It's been acting odd for the past couple of weeks. When I try to find it on the Google Play store, it doesn't come up, so I can try to update the app. The add text function is working but not like it normally does.
#help
"Coming home dead without a head (as Beorhtnoth did) is not very delightful." Foreword
"The Homecoming defies easy categorization." Introduction
"In August of the year 991, in the reign of Æthelred II, a battle was fought near Maldon in Essex." Beorhtnoth's Death
"The sound is heard of a man moving uncertainly and breathing noisily in the darkness." The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son
It was hard to decide which first line to quote, so..
pick"The Homecoming" is a wonderfully atmospheric & poignant verse drama, as 2 common men search amongst the aristocratic dead for the body of their slain lord, Beorhtnoth, who foolishly wasted the lives of his loyal warriors in an act of heroic bravado, forgetting his higher duty to protect his people.
I loved Grybauskas' too-short essay (I would have enjoyed 2 or 3x as many pages) on the relevance of these works to Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium
“Heart shall be bolder, harder be purpose,
more proud the spirit as our power lessens!
Mind shall not falter nor mood waver,
though doom shall come and dark conquer.”
An unlikely pairing of Anglo-Saxon poet and French emperor, but they seem to resonate with each other ?
[Image: painting of Napoleon Bonaparte, with the quote attributed to him: "Courage isn't having the strength to go on, it's going on when you don't have strength"]
"Thus ages pass,
and men after men. Mourning voices
of women weeping. So the world passes;
day follows day, and the dust gathers,
his tomb crumbles, as time gnaws it,
and his kith and kindred out of ken dwindle.
So men flicker and in the mirk go out.
The world withers and wind rises;
the candles are quenched. Cold falls the night.
It's dark! It's dark, and doom is coming!
Is no light left us?”
It's not cheery ?️??
The full title of the latest from the Tolkien archive is the snappy, "The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, & 'The Tradition of Versification in Old English'".
Not surprisingly, HarperCollins hasn't shelled out on getting Alan Lee to illustrate this one, presumably as they're not expecting this example of Tolkien's Professorial Old English studies to shift as many units as his sideline hobby-works about Hobbits & shit.?
Love this quote my darling sister @Ireadkidlit has in her house :)
