The Book of the Lost Tales 1 & 2

[Laurelin]

I was wondering if anyone else had read these and what you thought of them? If anyone would care to comment, I'd love to hear from ya! ;)

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

I recently read them...I wanted to read the entire HoME, but...haven't found all the books yet! ;)

The Books of Lost Tales reminded me a little of the Silmarillion...but...also of a fairytale being told! They somehow felt less...heavy than the Silmarillion, don't you think? More easy to read!

[Laurelin]

Yes, I have to agree. They are easier to read than the Sil and are a bit fairytale telling like. ;)

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

But there are also so many pieces of info we didn't have at the Silmarillion...made me wonder what would have happened if our beloved professor had been able to finish the Silmarillion as HE had it in his mind!!Might have been a totally different book! ;) After all, Christopher can't have possibly known what his father was planning!! :grin:

[Laurelin]

Very true, but then I was thinking that Tolkien probably didn't intend for all of his works to be published. It would have been facinating. I would have really liked to have met Prof. Tolkien!

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

I'd love that,too! so much I'd like to ask him! :grin:

[LuthienT]

I have read bits and pieces. They are an interesting read. The Lay of Luthien is different in Book of Lost Tale compared to the Sil!

[IronHills Dwarf]

I glanced at them a few times, but decided not to read as I figure the good Prof would doubtless have changed allot for publication. The feel is utterly different than LotR or the Sil, so I never wanted to cloud my images of the more "finished" works. ;) Some goes for the rest of HoME, Christopher sometimes gets on my nerves. :rolleyes:

[Gwaihir]

The Lost Tales are great books to read, especially if you liked the Sil. The stories like Turin Turambar's are much longer, with more details. I found those stories altogether not too different from the ones in the Sil. Well, maybe Beren and Luthien's was quite different. Either way, I still enjoy reading the stories which Tolkien originally had in his mind.

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

Christopher also sometimes gets on my nerves, IronHills Dwarf!! :rolleyes: He's always trying to capitalise on his father's work...or so I feel sometimes! ;)

But HoME-all of it- IS based on Tolkien's original notes, right?I read that somewhere... :blush:

[IronHills Dwarf]

Oh it's based on the notes alright, but my problem is that if you look at say Unfinished Tales, and take a look at the different versions Tolkien had for stories, he'd been making some pretty significant changes between drafts. So while it may be based on his notes there's no indication its anything like what he intended as a finished product. He was constantly revising (didn't he start LotR from scratch something like eleven times?), often to get more consistency.

Lost Tales always had to much of a Faërie, a mark in my opinion of Tolkien's earlier work, than the truely unique bent of much of the Sil and LotR. Turin's tale can be found in its entirety in Unfinished Tales, the only Middle-earth set one besides LotR and the Sil I read regularly.

[Laurelin]

Yeah, I kinda noticed the stylistic variance besides the obvious differences to be somewhat annoying. It would have been interesting to hear what Prof. Tolkien would have said on these issues after the fact. I do enjoy reading all of HoME and what not, even if they are Christopherized.

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

Well, I noticed that, too...stylistic changes! The Silmarillion was started sort of fairy-tale -like, then revised I don't even remember how many times, before the professor passed away, and it was actually left unfinished!!

I've read volumes 1,2 and 5 of the HoME...they're quite hard to come by in Greece... :( I really want to tread the rest of them, though!!i've found them on the net...in Word format, so I guess I will eventually! ;)

[Laurelin]

Heh, they're not that easy to get here either. They're all special order. :rolleyes: I have yet to read some of the last one. (must look in my notes as to which ones lol )

[IronHills Dwarf]

Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with the HoME series per-say. My dislike really comes from my own doubts as to my ability to keep HoME and the Sil separate in my head. ;) So my own problem rather than one with the books. :rolleyes:

Just finished a rather excellent little thing called "Tolkien and the Silmarillion" by Klyde Kilby. Highly recommended, the author helped Tolkien with sorting and putting the Sil together as well as proofing.

[Laurelin]

roflmao I'm laughing because I too have trouble keeping them straight if I get too in depth with the books outside of the Sil. :blush: One of these days I'll get it straight. lol

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

Same here, IronHills Dwarf! lol I completely understand your problem...I had trouble with the books of Lost Tales, too! Keeping all the details in my head separate from the Silm.!!

Laur...this is the place I found all of HoME in!I couldn't find it anywhere, so this link came in handy! ;) You can download it for free!!! :cool: The password is tolkien!!

http://www.tolkien.ru/texts/eng/

[Laurelin]

Thanks Ithil! :thumbs: This is excellent. veryhappy

[Ithildiel Noldoran]

I'm glad you like it, Laur! :smooch: I hope you find it useful!!veryhappy

[Laurelin]

They're bandwidth must be suffering currently because I couldn't get any of the zip files to download. :( Ah well, I'll try again later. ;)