The OF Blog: Going to be doing a Tolkien (re-)reading/reviewing project this month

Saturday, September 06, 2014

Going to be doing a Tolkien (re-)reading/reviewing project this month

Some things just occur spontaneously, I suppose.  After finding Serbian editions of The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin in a used bookstore last week, I found myself musing that I had never reviewed those books or The Hobbit.  Then I also realized that even though I owned Spanish translations of each of those books and The Lord of the Rings and the recent Latin translation of The Hobbit, I had never read them cover-to-cover.  Then I discovered Italian e-book editions of LotR and The Hobbit on iBooks.

This led me to reading the Spanish, Italian, and Latin translations of The Hobbit last night.  Now reading the English, Spanish, and Serbian editions of The Silmarillion, taking mental notes on the choices the translators made for names and descriptions.  Contemplating buying the Portuguese edition of LotR and reading that with the Italian and Spanish editions sometime next week.  Out of these readings will likely emerge the following:

  • A commentary on the Latin edition of The Hobbit, but written in English (it's been 20 years since my last Latin course, alas)
  • A review of The Hobbit
  • A review of The Silmarillion, with discussion of the editions read
  • A review of The Children of Húrin, with discussions of the translations consulted
Should be a nice break from all of the current releases I'm reviewing during the same time.  It's fun having to "think" in a different language as I read.  Certain things become clearer, others more opaque and the reasons for both makes me more eager to read more in order to discover why this is so. 

Now there are other languages available on iBooks, but these are the languages in which I can understand at least a little bit without resulting to a dictionary or parallel text.  Wish the French edition was available in e-book form...

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