John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 194
August 26, 2011
Taum Santoski VII
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
[page 2]
7. Tolkien's mythology is the result of four processes, each having a dependency upon the other, the multiplicity in a unity. The Ainulindale is the mythological process; The bulk of The Silmarillion is the mythologizing of history; The Lord of the Rings is the historicized myth and Unfinished Tales is the scholastic/academic media.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
Taum's Aphorisms, parts I to VI
So, after a lapse of several days, I'm about to start posting daily entries from Taum's piece that I've dubbed 'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy', though perhaps ' . . . of Tolkienian Fantasy' might have been nearer the mark.
To recap, here's what I make of the first six entries (which, conveniently, take up the first of the four typescript pages). All comments are simply my interpretations and have no authorial authority (which is why I've been presenting the paragraphs without any commentary or apparatus, to allow Taum's work to stand on its own).
(1) whereas I've come to look at Tolkien's world as teleological (that is, the foredoomed disenchanting of Middle-earth to become our everyday world is the most key thing about it)*, Taum sees it as "aetiological". That is, Tolkien's stories are the kind of myth that answers questions about why the world is the way it is: not just 'why do we have day and night' but 'why do we fear the dark?'. Having two races, Elves & Men, gives Tolkien more variables to work with in presenting his themes.
(2) Middle-earth is neither our familiar "present physical world" nor a 'Mirror for Magistrates' recasting thereof but its own coherent, self-contained (literary) reality. This departs somewhat from Tolkien's own description of M-e as our world's mythical past but chimes with Tolkien's rejection of Looking-Glass worlds as truely fairy-stories.
(3) Like Niggle's walking into the distance without finding it becoming mere surroundings, Middle-earth is a 'Golden Age' that will never be reduced to History. As one of his most memorable phrases puts it, "time never brings the Golden Age any closer". However, his statement that "it percolates through 'history' from time to time" sounds like a whiff of Ch. Wms' Logres. Here his and my approach diverge almost completely, but he nicely anticipates a Tolkienian theme that wd be revealed w. the publication not long afterwards of THE LOST ROAD and, much more strongly a few years later, THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS.
(4) Tolkien's chosen medium was language and myth. Taum asserts: "to participate in [Middle-earth's] mythic powers . . . [through the mediation of words] . . . is to re-establish a harmony with the present world." I think this resonates with the "Recovery" and perhaps also "Consolation" from OFS; on the whole, it's Taum's re-statement of Tolkien's "Secondary World".
(5) waxing a bit poetic, he points out that instead of a mish-mash of borrowings Tolkien's world has its own life, "becoming a new thing, not merely a hyrdize [hybridized?] retelling". Taum's focus on the Near East as a major source for Tolkien's myths departs from the familiar array (OE, ON, Celtic, some Roman), all of which can be summed up under his other heading of "ancient Europe".
(6) He defines History as the observation of events, vs. Myth as the perception of events. History is wholly impartial; Myth wholly responsive. I think this is entirely specious; eloquence overwhelming the argument. But perhaps I'm simply not seeing a subtlety here.
--JDR
And now, back to the real deal:
*cf. my 2004 lecture at the Marquette Blackwelder Conference, "And All The Days Of Her Life Are Forgotten", since published in the Blackwelder memorial volume.
To recap, here's what I make of the first six entries (which, conveniently, take up the first of the four typescript pages). All comments are simply my interpretations and have no authorial authority (which is why I've been presenting the paragraphs without any commentary or apparatus, to allow Taum's work to stand on its own).
(1) whereas I've come to look at Tolkien's world as teleological (that is, the foredoomed disenchanting of Middle-earth to become our everyday world is the most key thing about it)*, Taum sees it as "aetiological". That is, Tolkien's stories are the kind of myth that answers questions about why the world is the way it is: not just 'why do we have day and night' but 'why do we fear the dark?'. Having two races, Elves & Men, gives Tolkien more variables to work with in presenting his themes.
(2) Middle-earth is neither our familiar "present physical world" nor a 'Mirror for Magistrates' recasting thereof but its own coherent, self-contained (literary) reality. This departs somewhat from Tolkien's own description of M-e as our world's mythical past but chimes with Tolkien's rejection of Looking-Glass worlds as truely fairy-stories.
(3) Like Niggle's walking into the distance without finding it becoming mere surroundings, Middle-earth is a 'Golden Age' that will never be reduced to History. As one of his most memorable phrases puts it, "time never brings the Golden Age any closer". However, his statement that "it percolates through 'history' from time to time" sounds like a whiff of Ch. Wms' Logres. Here his and my approach diverge almost completely, but he nicely anticipates a Tolkienian theme that wd be revealed w. the publication not long afterwards of THE LOST ROAD and, much more strongly a few years later, THE NOTION CLUB PAPERS.
(4) Tolkien's chosen medium was language and myth. Taum asserts: "to participate in [Middle-earth's] mythic powers . . . [through the mediation of words] . . . is to re-establish a harmony with the present world." I think this resonates with the "Recovery" and perhaps also "Consolation" from OFS; on the whole, it's Taum's re-statement of Tolkien's "Secondary World".
(5) waxing a bit poetic, he points out that instead of a mish-mash of borrowings Tolkien's world has its own life, "becoming a new thing, not merely a hyrdize [hybridized?] retelling". Taum's focus on the Near East as a major source for Tolkien's myths departs from the familiar array (OE, ON, Celtic, some Roman), all of which can be summed up under his other heading of "ancient Europe".
(6) He defines History as the observation of events, vs. Myth as the perception of events. History is wholly impartial; Myth wholly responsive. I think this is entirely specious; eloquence overwhelming the argument. But perhaps I'm simply not seeing a subtlety here.
--JDR
And now, back to the real deal:
*cf. my 2004 lecture at the Marquette Blackwelder Conference, "And All The Days Of Her Life Are Forgotten", since published in the Blackwelder memorial volume.
August 25, 2011
My Newest Publication: "Two Kinds of Absence"
So, yesterday my contributor copy for Jan & Phil's new book arrived, PICTURING TOLKIEN: ESSAYS ON PETER JACKSON'S The Lord of the Rings FILM TRILOGY, the latest in a growing line of Tolkien books from McFarland. This one has been in the works for about two or three years, and it's really good to have it in print. For one thing, it gives me a chance to read the other contributors' pieces.
So far I've only read four of the essays: my own (both to see how it holds up and to see if there are any horrific gaffs I overlooked until too late), Verlyn's (which focuses in on the filmmaker's dilemma of having to choose one specific way to depict things that Tolkien left open to each reader's visualization*), Kristin Thompson's (which is rightly the volume opener and sure to spark discussion, esp. since at one point she argues the filmmakers' presentation of one scene is superior to Tolkien's),** and Jan Bogstad's (about Tolkien's horses); next up is Dimitra Fimi's (on folklore in the films). On the whole, and unlike most of the essays in Croft's TOLKIEN ON FILM, the essays here are far less dismissive of Jackson's work; I suspect the two volumes will wind up making interesting complements to each other.
Since I've only read a quarter of the collection so far, for the rest I'll just give a T.o.C. of titles and authors:
Preface -- Bogstad & KavenyIntroduction -- ibidPart I: Techniques of Story and Structure"Gollum Talks to Himself" -- Kristin Thompson"Sometimes One Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures" -- Verlyn Flieger"Two Kinds of Absence: Elision and Exclusion in Peter Jackson's LotR" -- JDR"Tolkien's Resistance to Linearity" -- E. L. Risden"Filming Folklore" -- Dimitra Fimi"Making the Connection of Page and Screen in Tolkiens and Jackson's LotR" Yvette Kisor"It's Alive!: Tolkien's Monster on Screen" -- Sharin Schroeder"The Materiel of Middle-Earth" -- Rbt C. Woosnam-Savage
Part II: Techniques of Character and Culture"Into the West" -- Judy Ann Ford & Robin Anne Reid"Frodo Lives but Gollum Redeems the Blood of Kings" -- Phil Kaveny"The Grey Pilgrim: Gandalf and the Challenges of Characterization in Middle-earth" -- Brian D. Walter "Jackson's Aragorn and the American Superhero Monomyth" -- Janet Croft"Neither the Shadow Nor the Twilight: The Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film" -- Richard West"Concerning Horses" -- Jan Bogstad"The Rohirrim, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Problem of Appendix F" -- Michael Drout"Filming the Numinous" -- Joseph Ricke & Catherine Barnett
And now, back to reading.--JDR
*based on my skim through the book so far, this seems to be a recurrent theme, just as the earlier Croft collection included many discussions of Tolkien's letter re. the Zimmerman script.
**one piece of good news buried in her endnotes is that she's currently at work on a book about THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS
So far I've only read four of the essays: my own (both to see how it holds up and to see if there are any horrific gaffs I overlooked until too late), Verlyn's (which focuses in on the filmmaker's dilemma of having to choose one specific way to depict things that Tolkien left open to each reader's visualization*), Kristin Thompson's (which is rightly the volume opener and sure to spark discussion, esp. since at one point she argues the filmmakers' presentation of one scene is superior to Tolkien's),** and Jan Bogstad's (about Tolkien's horses); next up is Dimitra Fimi's (on folklore in the films). On the whole, and unlike most of the essays in Croft's TOLKIEN ON FILM, the essays here are far less dismissive of Jackson's work; I suspect the two volumes will wind up making interesting complements to each other.
Since I've only read a quarter of the collection so far, for the rest I'll just give a T.o.C. of titles and authors:
Preface -- Bogstad & KavenyIntroduction -- ibidPart I: Techniques of Story and Structure"Gollum Talks to Himself" -- Kristin Thompson"Sometimes One Word Is Worth a Thousand Pictures" -- Verlyn Flieger"Two Kinds of Absence: Elision and Exclusion in Peter Jackson's LotR" -- JDR"Tolkien's Resistance to Linearity" -- E. L. Risden"Filming Folklore" -- Dimitra Fimi"Making the Connection of Page and Screen in Tolkiens and Jackson's LotR" Yvette Kisor"It's Alive!: Tolkien's Monster on Screen" -- Sharin Schroeder"The Materiel of Middle-Earth" -- Rbt C. Woosnam-Savage
Part II: Techniques of Character and Culture"Into the West" -- Judy Ann Ford & Robin Anne Reid"Frodo Lives but Gollum Redeems the Blood of Kings" -- Phil Kaveny"The Grey Pilgrim: Gandalf and the Challenges of Characterization in Middle-earth" -- Brian D. Walter "Jackson's Aragorn and the American Superhero Monomyth" -- Janet Croft"Neither the Shadow Nor the Twilight: The Love Story of Aragorn and Arwen in Literature and Film" -- Richard West"Concerning Horses" -- Jan Bogstad"The Rohirrim, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Problem of Appendix F" -- Michael Drout"Filming the Numinous" -- Joseph Ricke & Catherine Barnett
And now, back to reading.--JDR
*based on my skim through the book so far, this seems to be a recurrent theme, just as the earlier Croft collection included many discussions of Tolkien's letter re. the Zimmerman script.
**one piece of good news buried in her endnotes is that she's currently at work on a book about THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS
August 24, 2011
Start Saving Your Pennies . . .
. . . Nickels, Dimes, Dollars, 'Folding Money', Plastic . . .
So, yesterday came an innocuous little postcard that cd end up costing me a lot of money, given that it announces this year's Antiquarian Book Fair, held once again at the Seattle Center (at the foot of the Space Needle). Visiting the Book Fair is rather like dropping by during Smaug's Open House: things you'd assume cd only be found in a rare books room of some major library are sitting out on shelves or occasionally in display cases. Pay the asking price and walk home with a Kelmscott Chaucer, or a Tolkien letter,* or a copy of Lovecraft's first book, or the original issue of a journal from the 1840s with the first appearance of some Poe story inside, or . . . -- the list goes on and on. Over the years I've picked up Dunsany's THE MAN WHO ATE THE PHOENIX (and I think also JORKENS BORROWS ANOTHER WHISKEY, though there my notes are less specific), Leiber's TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE (the second Fafhrd & Gray Mouser collection), Hodgson's CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER (the Mycroft & Moran edition, not the original), the faux-Poe collection THE EXPLOITS OF THE CHEVALIER DUPIN, and two Clark Ashton Smiths: THE ABOMINATIONS OF YONDO and OTHER DIMENSIONS.** In fact, so heavily do my visits to the Book Fair impact the budget that I only go every other year or so (sometimes every third, depending on how the schedule goes).
This year, it's October 8th & 9th. It looks like we'll be in town, and I don't have a deadline that weekend or the following week. So things look good right now; unless something unexpected comes up, I'm expecting to make it this year and see (a) what wonders they've got and (b) what, if any of it, can I afford. We'll see.
--John R.current reading: PICTURING TOLKIEN, ed. Bogstad & Kaveny.
*that's where we bought my Tolkien letter, an extravagance I've never regretted.
**in addition, at least once I've seen a book at the Book Fair, passed on it, regretted it, and bought it later directly from the dealer (a collection of OSSIANIC tales from 1801). And then again once I saw an interesting book on my initial pass through the hall that was gone by the time I decided I wanted it (a profusely illustrated book on Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest -- I later checked it out from the library and made many, many photocopies from it, but it wasn't the same . . .).
So, yesterday came an innocuous little postcard that cd end up costing me a lot of money, given that it announces this year's Antiquarian Book Fair, held once again at the Seattle Center (at the foot of the Space Needle). Visiting the Book Fair is rather like dropping by during Smaug's Open House: things you'd assume cd only be found in a rare books room of some major library are sitting out on shelves or occasionally in display cases. Pay the asking price and walk home with a Kelmscott Chaucer, or a Tolkien letter,* or a copy of Lovecraft's first book, or the original issue of a journal from the 1840s with the first appearance of some Poe story inside, or . . . -- the list goes on and on. Over the years I've picked up Dunsany's THE MAN WHO ATE THE PHOENIX (and I think also JORKENS BORROWS ANOTHER WHISKEY, though there my notes are less specific), Leiber's TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE (the second Fafhrd & Gray Mouser collection), Hodgson's CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER (the Mycroft & Moran edition, not the original), the faux-Poe collection THE EXPLOITS OF THE CHEVALIER DUPIN, and two Clark Ashton Smiths: THE ABOMINATIONS OF YONDO and OTHER DIMENSIONS.** In fact, so heavily do my visits to the Book Fair impact the budget that I only go every other year or so (sometimes every third, depending on how the schedule goes).
This year, it's October 8th & 9th. It looks like we'll be in town, and I don't have a deadline that weekend or the following week. So things look good right now; unless something unexpected comes up, I'm expecting to make it this year and see (a) what wonders they've got and (b) what, if any of it, can I afford. We'll see.
--John R.current reading: PICTURING TOLKIEN, ed. Bogstad & Kaveny.
*that's where we bought my Tolkien letter, an extravagance I've never regretted.
**in addition, at least once I've seen a book at the Book Fair, passed on it, regretted it, and bought it later directly from the dealer (a collection of OSSIANIC tales from 1801). And then again once I saw an interesting book on my initial pass through the hall that was gone by the time I decided I wanted it (a profusely illustrated book on Petroglyphs of the Pacific Northwest -- I later checked it out from the library and made many, many photocopies from it, but it wasn't the same . . .).
August 19, 2011
Taum Santoski
August 19th, 1991.Twenty years ago today.Rest in peace.--JDR
August 18, 2011
Taum Santoski VI
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
6. If myth and history can be broken down into two categories, then their definitions must be different processes. Myth is the perception of events, the feeling of the observer imposed upon the event so far that any "impartiality" is removed. History is then the observation of events, the removal of response to an event so that any opinion of the event cannot be derived.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
August 17, 2011
'Terrorist Olive Oil' (Poke-em-with-a-Stick-Wednesday)
So, last night I stumbled across a strange little story that startled me about how nakedly racist it was.
The whole tale's ins & outs were too complicated to rehearse here, but basically someone noted how Whole Foods is a good source for Halal (=Islamic Kosher) foods and recommended Muslims shop there for Ramadan. Somehow, as with the people opposed to a mosque's being built in New York City last year, this morphed into charges by some zealots that Israeli products were being pulled off the shelf and that Whole Foods was funneling money to jihadists.
It's weirdly comical to think that someone could use a phrase like "terrorist olive oil" (by which they meant some proceeds might go to a school in the Occupied Territories). But it's bizarre and disturbing to learn that they really need it, both for the naked racism it shows and for the vast degree of departure from reality involved to create pretexts to vent that hatred. George Wallace and Theodore Bilbo wd be proud.
What a World, What a World, What a World.
Here are some links. The first comes from a woman who was in the news not all that long back for expressing her pleasure that journalist Lara Logan had been raped.*
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/40514/anti-israel-whole-foods-wishes-you-a-happy-ramadan/
The second is to the quiet, deliberately quaint website for "Canaan Olive Oil", the product that seems to have set off the bugaboo. I'm impressed how many of today's buzzwords they got in: sustainable farming, organic, fair trade, &c., even the wholly appropriate "land of milk and honey".
http://www.canaanfairtrade.com/
I know which of these I think does a better job of presenting its best face to the world.
--John R.
*at one point taunting the rape victim with the memorable phrase "Hope you're enjoying the revolution!". Ugh.
The whole tale's ins & outs were too complicated to rehearse here, but basically someone noted how Whole Foods is a good source for Halal (=Islamic Kosher) foods and recommended Muslims shop there for Ramadan. Somehow, as with the people opposed to a mosque's being built in New York City last year, this morphed into charges by some zealots that Israeli products were being pulled off the shelf and that Whole Foods was funneling money to jihadists.
It's weirdly comical to think that someone could use a phrase like "terrorist olive oil" (by which they meant some proceeds might go to a school in the Occupied Territories). But it's bizarre and disturbing to learn that they really need it, both for the naked racism it shows and for the vast degree of departure from reality involved to create pretexts to vent that hatred. George Wallace and Theodore Bilbo wd be proud.
What a World, What a World, What a World.
Here are some links. The first comes from a woman who was in the news not all that long back for expressing her pleasure that journalist Lara Logan had been raped.*
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/40514/anti-israel-whole-foods-wishes-you-a-happy-ramadan/
The second is to the quiet, deliberately quaint website for "Canaan Olive Oil", the product that seems to have set off the bugaboo. I'm impressed how many of today's buzzwords they got in: sustainable farming, organic, fair trade, &c., even the wholly appropriate "land of milk and honey".
http://www.canaanfairtrade.com/
I know which of these I think does a better job of presenting its best face to the world.
--John R.
*at one point taunting the rape victim with the memorable phrase "Hope you're enjoying the revolution!". Ugh.
August 16, 2011
Taum Santoski V
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
5. Some of Tolkien's myths are derived from those of ancient Europe and the Near East but, being grafted onto a new stock, grow and fructify, becoming a new thing, nor merely a hybridized retelling.
--Taum Santoski, circa 1984
August 12, 2011
Taum Santoski IV
'Aphorisms Towards a Poetics of Fantasy'
4. Middle-earth is a world in miniature, set up in one man's best form of expression, language and myth; to participate in its mythical powers, through these mediations of words, is to re-establish a harmony with the present world.
—Taum Santoski, circa 1984
And The WInner Is . . . (NPR Fantasy List)
So, turns out the winner of the '100 Best' Sci-Fi and Fantasy books is none other than our old friend THE LORD OF THE RINGS -- the very book I'd have picked as the all-time best myself.And it won by a huge landslide, as had been the case with the millennium polls, the old LOCUS polls (1987, I think it was), &c. -- in this case receiving about half of all votes cast. And there's an odd symmetry to see Tolkien and Lewis as far apart as possible and still be on the same list, holding the top and bottom positions, respectively, with Tolkien's masterpiece coming in #1 (with 29,701 votes) and CSL at #100 (with 1452). Or, to put it another way, twenty people voted for Tolkien for every one who voted for Lewis (with THE SILMARILLION mid-way between them at #46*).
Partly these results may have been skewed by the exclusions the judges put on the contest: no young adult books (which left out THE HOBBIT, Pullman, &c) explicitly so as to exclude Rowling fans, and no horror to keep Steven King out. They've taken down the list of nominees, unfortunately, but here's more about the rules:**
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137249678/best-science-fiction-fantasy-books-you-tell-us
And for the actual votes and some observations about who won and perhaps why,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/08/11/139346998/nprs-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-novels-parsing-the-results
Overall I have to say that my top ten didn't fare too well. Here's the full list of all 100 winners:
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books
Of the books I voted for, LotR won at #1 (as is right and proper), but only five of my other top-ten even made the final 100.
#1 THE LORD OF THE RINGS (Tolkien)#2 HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE (D. Adams)#27 THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (Bradbury)#29 THE SANDMAN (Gaiman)#32 WATERSHIP DOWN (R.Adams)#91 THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (Bradbury)
This means that the brilliant BRIDGE OF BIRDS, which I'd unhesitatingly put in the top ten fantasy novels ever written, doesn't even make their top 100. LUD-IN-THE-MIST doesn't surprise me as much, and good as the FAFHRD & THE GRAY MOUSER stories are they've never had the audience of lesser writers like Howard (in a sense, Leiber is to Howard as Clark Ashton Smith is to Lovecraft). TIGANA's absence doesn't surprise me, but I'd have at least expected Kay's most famous work, THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY, to have ranked.
As for the books that won, it's enheartening to see that four of the top ten went to living writers; a good sign that the genre's still going strong. I've read fifty-six of the books listed (counting at least one book out of a series, not necessarily every sequel).*** Interestingly, while I'd read nine of the top ten, I've only read eleven of the bottom thirty. Does this mean there's more shared experience towards the top of the list and less towards the other end, or is my experience atypical?
--John R.
**If you click on one of the links at that page, you can get the results of an earlier (2009) poll in which interestingly enough THE HOBBIT beat out THE LORD OF THE RINGS, ranking at #14 and #18 respectively.
***Speaking of which, I'm sure Terry Pratchett wd have ranked much higher had they not picked two of his books at random and instead listed THE DISCWORLD SERIES as a single entry.
Partly these results may have been skewed by the exclusions the judges put on the contest: no young adult books (which left out THE HOBBIT, Pullman, &c) explicitly so as to exclude Rowling fans, and no horror to keep Steven King out. They've taken down the list of nominees, unfortunately, but here's more about the rules:**
http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137249678/best-science-fiction-fantasy-books-you-tell-us
And for the actual votes and some observations about who won and perhaps why,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/08/11/139346998/nprs-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-novels-parsing-the-results
Overall I have to say that my top ten didn't fare too well. Here's the full list of all 100 winners:
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books
Of the books I voted for, LotR won at #1 (as is right and proper), but only five of my other top-ten even made the final 100.
#1 THE LORD OF THE RINGS (Tolkien)#2 HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE (D. Adams)#27 THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES (Bradbury)#29 THE SANDMAN (Gaiman)#32 WATERSHIP DOWN (R.Adams)#91 THE ILLUSTRATED MAN (Bradbury)
This means that the brilliant BRIDGE OF BIRDS, which I'd unhesitatingly put in the top ten fantasy novels ever written, doesn't even make their top 100. LUD-IN-THE-MIST doesn't surprise me as much, and good as the FAFHRD & THE GRAY MOUSER stories are they've never had the audience of lesser writers like Howard (in a sense, Leiber is to Howard as Clark Ashton Smith is to Lovecraft). TIGANA's absence doesn't surprise me, but I'd have at least expected Kay's most famous work, THE FIONAVAR TAPESTRY, to have ranked.
As for the books that won, it's enheartening to see that four of the top ten went to living writers; a good sign that the genre's still going strong. I've read fifty-six of the books listed (counting at least one book out of a series, not necessarily every sequel).*** Interestingly, while I'd read nine of the top ten, I've only read eleven of the bottom thirty. Does this mean there's more shared experience towards the top of the list and less towards the other end, or is my experience atypical?
--John R.
*Itself a pretty good rejoinder to those who still claim that no-one ever reads it (e.g., folks like those who posted comments at npr's site about 'Tolkein', too ill-informed about his work to even know his name).
**If you click on one of the links at that page, you can get the results of an earlier (2009) poll in which interestingly enough THE HOBBIT beat out THE LORD OF THE RINGS, ranking at #14 and #18 respectively.
***Speaking of which, I'm sure Terry Pratchett wd have ranked much higher had they not picked two of his books at random and instead listed THE DISCWORLD SERIES as a single entry.
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