Allison's Middle Earth Travelogue
Why is there so much singing? | Vol. 3 Iss. 1
Welcome to my travel blog. This winter I’m catching flights (boats? extremely long hikes?), not feelings and visiting a place where their culture is definitely a little different but we actually have soooo much in common and I’ve already learned so much.
Destination: Middle Earth
Duration: Who knows, these books are so long.
Explanation: It’s cold outside and also terrible. Also, this feels like a giant hole in my pop culture knowledge.
Prior Knowledge: I think I could have told you there were three books + The Hobbit + The Silmarillion. I tried to read one of the latter two as a middle or high schooler and couldn’t get into it. I have fallen asleep during all three Hobbit films, which is interesting since why on earth did it take them three movies to adapt a book that spans a whole 150 (?) pages? (Profit.)
I knew, from complaining about this, that one thing those films add is a lot of orcs. I think I thought there were no orcs in The Hobbit book but definitely orcs elsewhere in the story. So far, honestly more orcs than I thought in what I’ve read. And it seems like there might be orcs in The Hobbit too, so some of this was wrong.
I also think there are maybe giant eagles in the Hobbit films? That rescue them? Or fight them? I was mostly asleep.
People love to have Lord of the Rings themed weddings. This includes, I think, having music from the movies and maybe dressing like the characters? My official guess, having seen some stills from these movies, is that they’re dressing like elves. But more on that later.
I also had a vague sense of Gandalf the Grey vs Gandalf the White, and that maybe this was a question of reincarnation? Also, absolutely no context, but You Shall Not Pass!
Which I know about, in part, from this fantastic piece of comedy.
Spoiler warning: Does this have spoilers for The Fellowship of the Ring? Yes. Are you allowed to tell me spoilers for later than that in the series? Absolutely not.
Journey Part 1 - The Fellowship of the Ring (Book Version)
I only thought of doing this blog after I finished the book, so I did not take notes. Instead, I gave a running commentary to Will through however many hundreds of pages. Here is my recollection of that commentary.
Back to weddings - I assume people are not dressing up as furry footed creatures who live in holes. I don’t know if I’ve seen pictures of a LoTR themed wedding, but if I have it was more elegant, so again I assume that’s about the elves.
But the hobbit world is so cozy! All the regulars chatting in pubs and these big parties with lots of food, and little grassy houses. Like I said before, everything is cold and terrible, so a visit to Hobbiton was delightful. It doesn’t seem to snow much there. Also, less good, there seems to be like one woman and she’s a relative that everyone hates. This will become kind of a theme.
I do think it’s possible I should have read The Hobbit first. This book gives some explanation at the beginning of what happened with Bilbo, but at the same time it’s like “Well, here’s Gandalf, he’s a guy, he’s mysterious and does magic.” Later, it seems like there are other people (?) like Gandalf, and that colors matter, but I have not so far figured out the whole system here. Unclear if this was explained in The Hobbit or will become clear later.
There is a lot of singing. If you haven’t read the book, or if not all of this singing is transferred to the films, imagine about three times as much singing as you thought originally would be a lot. Do these songs forward the plot? Not that I can tell. Do they lend a certain something to the worldbuilding of a place that depends (?) on oral traditions and on music for their entertainment. Yes, but I don’t know that it needs to happen every five pages.
Also, not to keep going back to weddings, but back to weddings. People aren’t having these oral history of Middle Earth songs at their weddings, right? They’re having instrumentals from the movie scores?
Someone please invite me to their LoTR themed wedding. I have so many questions and also a lifelong dream to attend a themed wedding. (I went to one where the reception was punk-rock themed, which I’m going to half count.)
There are like three women in this whole book. Off the top of my head, not bothering to look up the names:
A Sackville-Baggins who Frodo finally sells the house to, and who everyone hates
The elf lady (daughter?) in the first elf place they visit, who is very beautiful
The elf lady (queen?) in the second elf place they visit, who is beautiful and also has one of the rings (powerful!)
Tolkien was of his time, I guess. I assume this is less of a problem in the new Rings of Power show, but I have not watched that and probably won’t at least until I get through this original set of books and movies.
Speaking of time period: my understanding is that this is one of the first big fantasy stories in the way that we think of fantasy now. And maybe that’s why it feels like Tolkien is still sort of figuring out some of the structure stuff that makes a book this long build and flow. Mostly, the plot of this book feels like “we are walking, sometimes towards a specific place.”
It is not totally clear to me what Frodo/Gandalf/the Fellowship’s plan is here. I believe it’s to throw the One Ring into Mount Doom? But I’m pretty sure that’s a thing I know from prior knowledge and not from the text of this book. Mostly, it seems like the plan is hiking.
The second half of the book suffers from this slightly less, because there is a driving question - should we go to Minas Tirth or to Mordor - and rising suspicions about Boromir. Both of these are resolved at the end of the book, but they only come up as real questions in that second half, which means they didn’t drive the first half before we’d even met Boromir. (I hope that’s the name. I did not look it up!)
There is also the looming threat of Gollum, which is not resolved at all.
Because this book just ends! I think this is because Tolkien thought of it as all one book? But it was honestly shocking to get to the end and realize they weren’t going to make it all the way to Mordor in Fellowship. Which means the second book is also going to be hiking.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I do not yet feel the fervent fandom I’ve seen from so many people about it, but perhaps that will come with time. I like the coziness of the hobbit culture and the second woodsy elf place they visit, as well as some of the character work. I love Bilbo, which probably means I’d enjoy The Hobbit as a slim little book instead of three long movies. I think I’m doing this out of order.
I’ve already checked out Two Towers from the library, and I think perhaps I’ll watch the Fellowship movie this weekend. This is me promising to find time for this blog, which I do really enjoy, and am sorry for abandoning for months at a time.
What Else?
Roxie!
We got a dog! Her name is Roxie. She has two different colored eyes. She loves staring at squirrels so hard she shakes, making a snarl face when she’s happy to see us, and laying on the couch. She has never done anything wrong, ever, at all, not even taking naps on the bed when she knows she’s not allowed or eating bread she found in the park.
She’s a rescue through a group called Operation Paws for Homes, which got her from a shelter in rural South Carolina. So Roxie is a country girl, but she’s getting used to buses and the UPS truck. We think she’s about two and a half. She seems to be part pitbull, but at the vet she’s written down as “Unknown - White and Brown.”
She is such a ball of light. Here are roughly one thousand pictures of her, taken since we adopted her in October, so that some of the light will rub off onto your house even though she’s not there.
Making Things Slightly Less Terrible
Lutheran Social Services in D.C. has been helping provide housing and social services (helping get into English classes, helping enroll kids at school, etc.) to refugees, often from Afghanistan. The Trump administration froze the funding that allowed LSS to do this. LSS had to lay off 42 people, and is now scrambling to pull together money to keep these folks housed and fed.
If you’d like to help, you can donate a few dollars here.
Baseball
I have decided, partly due to the cold and terrible and partly due to reading a Roger Angell essay collection last summer (did Roxie take this book off the shelf and tear it up page for page? Yes, but she has never ever done anything wrong!), to become a Nationals baseball fan. I have begun listening to a podcast called Nats Chat every week and will go to our first game of the season in March.
Baseball is, I think, the promise that spring will come. Only one month until opening day, now. Maybe this is their year.
Wow, actual baseball on this blog with a baseball pun as the title. What a day.
Work
A lot of my work nowadays is a) very technical and boring and b) behind an enterprise paywall, but today I had two stories run on the Roll Call public site. This one is about Education Secretary nominee Linda McMahon and this one is about Labor Secretary nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
Cooking
I’m going on two years of pescetarianism. I’m trying to come around on mushrooms, though that is not a linear journey.
This recipe for eggplant bolognese rules. I made it like two months ago and haven’t stopped thinking about it.
It has mushrooms in it but you can’t even tell, they just cook down into this incredible savory, spicy sauce.