TumblogWritings, musings and generally lighthearted bantee

If you are hoping to get a personalized and signed copy of Dr. Olsen’s Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, make sure you submit your order by sending an email with your name and personalized note request to [email protected] – no later than Tuesday, September 11th at 12:00 pm (UTC-5).

When preparing payment, be sure to include the the shipping cost, calculated based on your address for international orders or $6.95 for the first book + $1.00 for each additional copy domestically.

Dr. Olsen will be readying his signing hand for next week and you should expect your very own copy of his book in your mailbox soon after!

Faerie and Fantasy 33 is now available! Professor Olsen’s class discusses Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn”, Chapters 9-11. Listen here or on iTunes.

Just when you thought things were getting better, they take a Turin for the worse. We discuss all things Turin Turambar on Episode 25 of the Silmarillion Seminar, available here or on iTunes. Are we doomed to a third episode on Turin? Listen and find out!

It’s a Silmarillion Seminar Double Header! In Seminar 23 we delve into the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, Chapter 20 of the Quenta Silmarillion, for “Dragon 1.0”. Seminar 24 covers Chapter 21 “Of Turin Turambar”, and dives into even more gloomy territory. This session is aptly named “Don’t Blame it on Turin, Blame it on the Boogie” You can listen to them here or subscribe to The Tolkien Professor feed on iTunes.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has just released the full dust jacket design for Dr. Olsen’s Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.  Get a jump on the September release date and view the full treatment – including blurbs from Tolkien scholars like John D. Rateliff, Michael Drout and Mythgard’s own Veryln Flieger.

To learn even more about Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, visit Mythgard’s Exclusives section where there is a whole page dedicated to this exciting book.

Greetings!  A quick note here to let you know that The Tolkien Professor’s short course on The Fellowship of The Ring, “The Lord of The Rings I” has wrapped up at Mythgard Academy – and the recordings are available for purchase now as a Course Pack!  If you missed the class, you can now get all six lectures for just $45 at shop.signumuniversity.org.  And through July 31st, the Mythgard birthday discount will still take 5% off – just type in code “BIRTHDAY” during check out!

Ever wanted to know what it would be like to be loved by a tree? Listen to Faerie and Fantasy episode 32 to find out! The topic of discussion is mortality and immortality in Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn”. Find the entire set of Faerie and Fantasy lectures here, or subscribe via iTunes.

This Fall, The Tolkien Professor will be offering The Story of The Hobbit at Mythgard Institute!

This course will examine the life of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.  We will examine several important precursors of the book, works that helped establish the genre in which Tolkien was writing, or which influenced Tolkien’s own thinking.  We will then read not the final published version of The Hobbit, but the growth of the story in manuscript and typescript, examining carefully how the story developed and in what directions.  We will then turn to the publication and reception ofThe Hobbit, including its adaptation to film.  We’ll end the semester with a discussion of the Rankin-Bass animated Hobbit and, after a brief delay, a discussion of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

Professor Olsen will be joined in this class by two distinguished guest lecturers: John D. Rateliff, author of The History ofThe Hobbit, and Douglas A. Anderson, author of The Annotated Hobbit, two of the foremost scholars on The Hobbit in the world.

Learn more about The Story of The Hobbit at Mythgard Institute – and enroll today!

The Faerie and Fantasy course continues with Peter S. Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn”. You can listen to it on the Faerie and Fantasy main page (here) or subscribe to the Tolkien Professor’s iTunes feed for this and many other Tolkien podcasts.

Listen to the final episode on “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (or is it?). You can listen to it here, or subscribe to the Tolkien Professor feed through iTunes.