…real ones, not da film junkies 
Christopher Tolkien has completed for publication another unfinished novel by his father, J.R.R. Tolkien, due to be released in April of 2007.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_children_of_hurin
happy-happy-joy-joy… 
That’s good news indeed.
–James
I await its release with bated… um… palms.
Oooooooooooooh!
Thanks for the ‘heads up’!
Hmm, I thought the other stuff he finished (at least what I read) sucked. It’s been years ago now, but it was half as good as the stuff J.R.R. completed himself, imo. Did I miss something?
Loren
I guess you have to be a real die-hard to really get into his posthumous stuff. A good majority of it is first draft material, and J.R.R. Tolkien was one of those writers who revised the hell out of everything (he even began notes and outlines for a complete rewrite of The Hobbit shortly before he died).
I’m expecting the new book to be very much akin to The Silmarillion.
I would like to be a die-hard fan, but this early stuff was never created with the intent of publishing it, or expanding it to the nth degree, and it shows. As Loren says, its just too difficult to get interested in (for me, at least).
djm
Yeah I was hardcore, but the Silmarillion killed it for me. Oh well. You guys enjoy, I’ll wait for the reviews…
Loren
I’ll run down the condensed summary for ya when I read it, how’s that? 
Coles Notes? 
djm
Only if Coles gives me a contract to write it! 
(I’d totally forgotten about Coles Notes…Down here Cliff’s the fellow who takes the notes… )
Pefect, I just love finding ways to get others to do my work for me 
Loren
Ditto. The Silmarillion had all the swash-and-buckle of the genealogies in Deuteronomy, I thought. I don’t recall that I even finished it.
I tried to read the Silmarillion a few times, but I think the only way I could finish it would be if I were getting tested on it. I don’t think J.R.R. ever intended that it be published, but rather kept it as notes upon which to base his far more readable published works. It’s also good to keep in mind that he was a linguist by trade rather than a professional author.
I was pretty hardcore but it did take me a few attempts to make it through the Silmarillion and the same with Unfinished Tales. I’ve made a couple stabs at Lost Tales but that’s the extent of my posthumous Tolkien scholarship. I’m still a fan but have acquired other interests both literary and otherwise. All of the posthumous work is a little hard to read. J.R.R. deftly and methodically folded an immense back-story, as well as an epic story, into the narrative of LotR.
I can see Christopher’s editing and publishing his father’s work in two ways. One is that from all of the biographical information I’ve read his father would absolutely hate that so much of his writing is out there unpolished and unrefined. But two is that Christopher is in a way taking on his father’s mantle in terms of creating a lost English mythology and expanding the Elvish language.
Thank you. I was afraid to be the only one to say that, because then I get…“no! The Silmarillion was, like, total immersion man! You must not be a true believer!”
It was a trudge. Like reading geneologies in the Old Testament.
I’ll wait for the reviews as well.
Aaaak! It happened again! I hadn’t read through all the posts, I swear!
You’re spooky.
You both are sad, really sad.
It is a special and rarified frequency to which we tune, JES. Don’t go getting jealous just because your dial isn’t sensitive enough.