[HN Gopher] JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952)
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JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952)
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 307 points
Date : 2026-01-07 14:43 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.openculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.openculture.com)
| krupan wrote:
| This is so good. You can tell that Andy Serkis based his gollum
| voice off of this.
| ParentiSoundSys wrote:
| I wonder what Tolkien would say of so much of the symbolism from
| his novels being used to bootstrap a horrible dystopian control
| grid? Would he approve or disapprove? The way that orcs are
| dehumanized you have to wonder.
| usrnm wrote:
| > The way that orcs are dehumanized
|
| Orcs aren't human, though. If anything, they were deelfized
| gambiting wrote:
| >>The way that orcs are dehumanized you have to wonder.
|
| If anything, it's their portrayal in the Rings of Power that is
| idiotic(trying to humanize them) - they aren't human, they
| don't have families or friends or internal lives and
| psychological doubts going through their heads - they are meant
| to be a force("force" like in "force of nature") of evil, not a
| misunderstood and exploited race of intelligent beings.
|
| For an actually interesting take on "hey what if the orcs are
| actually intelligent people" there is The Last Ringbearer by a
| Russian author, presenting LOTR from the perspective of
| Mordor(it's not a good book, but was an amusing read)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
|
| I will however agree with you that it's truly insane how we
| have a global survailence company that is used to spy on
| citizens and destroy democracies worldwide that is literally
| called Palantir. Like, no one working there is seeing it?
| avadodin wrote:
| are we the baddies?
| ParentiSoundSys wrote:
| wink wink
| klondike_klive wrote:
| There must be some pretty industrial strength
| compartmentalising going on.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Palantir, Anduril, Istari, and there's even a home security
| one called Sauron, you can't make this shit up.
|
| Back in my day, LotR names were used for cool metal bands
| like Gorgoroth, Amon Amarth, Cirith Ungol, Carach Angren,
| Burzum, etc.
| ekianjo wrote:
| There is band called Silmarils as well
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| the tolkien metal world continues: One of Nine put out a
| killer record on Profound Lore last year.
| https://oneofnine.bandcamp.com/album/dawn-of-the-iron-
| shadow (skip the first track if you don't care for "dungeon
| synth"). i'm not a big fan of keyboards in metal but the
| rest of the instrumentation is so good i can forgive it :)
| Ntrails wrote:
| > we have a global survailence company that is used to spy on
| citizens and destroy democracies worldwide that is literally
| called Palantir. Like, no one working there is seeing it?
|
| The Palantir are not evil creations in the book iirc. They
| were used by the great kings to see whatever they wished.
|
| Heck, even in the book Aragorn uses the Palantir to make a
| critical decision turning the tide of battle.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| In the book the Palantir are technically neutral devices
| for Seeing things, that, it turns out, are inherently prone
| to misuse and once used for Evil, are incredibly difficult
| to use in any other way.
|
| A better metaphor (accidental or not) for surveillance
| technology I've never seen.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > A better metaphor (accidental or not) for surveillance
| technology I've never seen.
|
| "We are easily corrupted"
|
| [1] https://www.westword.com/opinion/opinion-palantir-
| technologi...
|
| [2] https://www.pogo.org/investigates/stephen-miller-
| conflicts-o...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Edit: it just occurred to me that the book describes a
| kind of filter bubble, too. The Palantir stones are
| inherently incapable of showing false data. But they
| became tuned over time to show _highly_ editorialized
| video clips which supported a specific ( _Evil_ )
| narrative. That (IIRC) included future projections of
| possible outcomes.
|
| Denethor (?) tried to use a Palantir for good, but went
| mad after viewing its selections for years.
| Ntrails wrote:
| Denethor was allowed to see what Sauron wanted him to see
| and nothing more, because he lacked the ability to
| control the stone away from Sauron. The parallel falls
| apart somewhat since here his access was essentially
| controlled by a third party.
|
| (you might argue it reflects certain social media
| outcomes ofc)
| db48x wrote:
| > once used for Evil, are incredibly difficult to use in
| any other way.
|
| That's not true. They were only dangerous to use as long
| as an insanely powerful immortal demon god had one. If
| you used a Palantir he would notice and draw your eye
| toward him. He could then make you see what he wanted you
| to see, unless you were strong enough to resist. He
| corrupted Saruman and Denethor merely by talking to them,
| showing them misleading things, and convincing them that
| he could not be defeated by any means. Kill Sauron and
| the Palantiri are safe to use again.
|
| The tools are neutral. It is the users who are good or
| evil.
|
| It's the same with the Throne of Amon Hen, fwiw. It's
| only dangerous to use because Sauron will notice that
| you're using it.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| TIL. So it's an even better analogy. Tech is not a
| problem unless Sauron can read our positional data and
| control our attention machines in our pockets.
| davidrupp wrote:
| > Kill Sauron and the Palantiri are safe to use again.
|
| Alt: Be Aragorn and wrest control of the Orthanc stone
| from Sauron.
| Finbel wrote:
| It sounds like Tolkien didn't quite agree with the simplified
| take that Orcs are "just" a force of evil
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
| gambiting wrote:
| To me it sounds more like he really wanted to give them
| some agency and the ability to speak, but then was unable
| to resolve the moral dilemma that came out of it - with
| different works suggesting different "solutions" to it. As
| the Wiki article points out, Tolkien was a devout Christian
| and part of his world view included beings which were wholy
| and irredimably evil while still able to speak and reason
| on some level. When you look at Christian iconography, you
| don't really have theologians saying "well when you have
| angels slaying demons, are the demons really evil or are
| they just misunderstood". That's your orcs. Since Tolkien
| really cared about world building he wanted to make it fit
| neatly in the myth of creation but as far as I can tell -
| he was never able to do it neatly.
| mwcz wrote:
| I've not seen Rings of Power and I don't plan to, but I'd
| just point out that the Silmarillion describes the origin of
| orcs as being an exploited race of intelligent beings, elves
| who were captured and tortured until their forms became what
| we know as orcs.
|
| "... all those of the Quendi [elves] who came into the hands
| of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison,
| and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and
| thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy
| and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the
| bitterest foes."
| gambiting wrote:
| And as this wiki article posted in other comments very
| nicely explains, Tolkien never came to a good and final
| conclusion on how this all really worked, with different
| explanations in different works of his. The "they were just
| evil force that could be killed without remorse" theme is
| the dominant one, because it works in the context of the
| story and the worldbuilding that he did for it.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
| the_af wrote:
| Like the sibling comment remarks, Tolkien never fully
| embarked on this path.
|
| He had a problem: as a Catholic [1], he thought every
| creature deserved pity and second chances (you can see this
| when Gandalf rebukes Frodo when he says "it's a pity Bilbo
| didn't kill Gollum"). If the Orcs are really "fallen
| Elves", they deserve pity and maybe mercy; they are worthy
| of redemption. Yet Orcs in LotR are to be killed on sight;
| there's only _one_ passage in all of LotR where the Hobbits
| reflect on the corpse of an Orc with any kind of attempt at
| insight.
|
| For Orcs to be a thing to be destroyed without mercy,
| unworthy of redemption, they must have not be corrupted
| souls. Yet here Tolkien found another stumbling block:
| according to his Catholic-influenced vision, Evil cannot
| create, only corrupt and destroy. So Morgoth couldn't have
| created Orcs, he must have used existing souls as raw
| material.
|
| Tolkien never resolved this conundrum.
|
| ----
|
| [1] someone in another comment argued quite convincingly
| that Catholics at times had no trouble murdering other
| Christians over doctrinal affairs, so let's add a
| qualification here: "Tolkien's Catholic-influenced
| morality, which was his own nonetheless".
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > I've not seen Rings of Power and I don't plan to
|
| i say this as a die hard Tolkien fan, having read (most of)
| HOME: i enjoyed Rings of Power quite a lot and i'd
| recommend it to anyone who enjoys the extended world of
| middle earth. the casting is great, i actually did enjoy
| the picking at the question of orcish morality, and because
| amazon was willing to throw millions at it, it _looks_
| fantastic for a tv show.
|
| it doesn't follow canon (some weird squashing of timelines
| re: ringmaking, the akallabeth etc) which seems to upset a
| lot of geeks. however, one thing to keep in mind when
| interacting with extended works based on Middle Earth is
| that Tolkien didn't necessarily set out to codify
| everything perfectly (and what was there was definitely the
| result of his obsession and great care for the world he
| built). one of his stated desires in writing LOTR was to
| establish a modern mythology that other people could
| write/create within, so the fiction could take a life of
| its own. maybe he wouldn't always like the ways people
| built on his work, but that's the risk he took when he
| explicitly set out to invent a mythology for others to
| interact with.
|
| we're still going to ignore the hobbit movie trilogy,
| though.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Like, no one working there is seeing it?
|
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
| his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton
| Sinclair (1878 - 1968)
|
| "Because Pharaoh is paying daddy, and we need the money." -
| Unknown laborer at the Pyramid of Djoser, c. 2660 BC,
| explaining to his son why he's making a giant pile of rocks
| in the desert.
| folkrav wrote:
| I mean, I did leave a role because the things we were doing
| clashed heavily with my principles (ad-tech adjacent). I
| had the luxury of doing so - an opportunity arose somewhere
| else, I could afford to make the move, etc.
|
| But it's also hard for me to imagine someone that today,
| chooses to interview and take a job at Palantir, and not
| know what they're up to, who Thiel is and what he stands
| for.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i think anyone on HN employed by arms manufactures or
| surveillance tech has a resume good enough to get hired
| pretty much anywhere that doesn't do those things.
| the_af wrote:
| > _For an actually interesting take on "hey what if the orcs
| are actually intelligent people" there is The Last Ringbearer
| by a Russian author, presenting LOTR from the perspective of
| Mordor(it's not a good book, but was an amusing read)_
|
| I found The Last Ringbearer a book good! Of course it's not
| in the same league as LotR, it's not engaging in vast myth-
| and world-building, but it's a well-written, fun book that
| manages to be engaging. Even knowing it was an alternative
| take to LotR, I wanted to know what happened!
|
| For everyone who has not read it, it's not simply a "let's
| retell LotR, only from the perspective of the Orcs". It's a
| brand new "adventure" so to speak, which shifts the point of
| view but also describes new events. It starts _at the end_ of
| the War of the Ring, with Mordor defeated.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, I really did actually enjoy reading it. But like
| with a lot of Russian literature - it does have a habit of
| spending several pages just monologuing here and there -
| but it is a "fun" read.
| bananaflag wrote:
| I'll just leave this here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolkien%27s_moral_dilemma
| ParentiSoundSys wrote:
| Fascinating thank you. I was only aware of the surface level
| concern around the orcs.
| mwcz wrote:
| That's both a very good description of Tolkien's struggles
| with orcs, and a writing style that feels out of place in an
| encyclopedia. The Halls of Mandos are described as a halfway
| house.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > J. R. R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, created what he
| came to feel was a moral dilemma for himself with his
| supposedly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs [...] so
| killing them would be wrong without very good reason. Orcs
| serve as the principal forces of the enemy in The Lord of the
| Rings, where they are slaughtered in large numbers in the
| battles of [...]
|
| Admitting that there's a _very_ wide diversity of beliefs
| under the "Roman Catholic" banner - historic Roman Catholic
| armies have been eager participants in well-documented
| battles for the past 1,500 or so years. I'd assume that
| Tolkien would have had a wide variety of perfectly historic
| Roman Catholic arguments to chose from, to justify his
| fictional slaughter.
|
| (If I recall, the orcs slaughtered in LoTR are pretty much
| all soldier or near-soldiers. Do orc women, children, or
| other non-combatants ever appear in the story?)
|
| In many ways, that Wikipedia article feels like a Hays Code-
| era whitewashing of Roman Catholicism.
| the_af wrote:
| Your criticism of Catholicism is valid, but regardless:
| this dilemma of Tolkien is real, and well-documented (e.g.
| in his letters, etc).
|
| He really did struggle with this, re: the origin of the
| Orcs, whether they had souls, whether it was ok to default
| to massacring them without second thought, etc. He never
| really resolved it.
|
| Most Tolkien fan communities are aware of this dilemma,
| it's one of those well-known things, along with "did
| Balrogs have wings?", "couldn't they just fly to Mount Doom
| and drop the ring?" and "why did Sauron need to put his
| power within a ring, anyway?".
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yes - I am not saying that JRRT _himself_ was anything
| less than saintly, or did not struggle with the issue.
|
| My issue is with the Wikipedia article's heavy
| identification of JRRT's personal dilemma with the Roman
| Church and its doctrines. _Historically_ , for that
| Church - one could just assume that the orcs were
| Protestants, so slaughtering them was perfectly okay.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Wars_of_Religion
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > "couldn't they just fly to Mount Doom and drop the
| ring?"
|
| If the allies were counterfactually sensible enough to
| fly the ring to Mordor, Sauron could have been
| counterfactually sensible enough to station an Orc/Troll
| Battlegroup at the Sammath Naur, with a Nazgul combat air
| patrol.
| bell-cot wrote:
| If trying to rationalize things - I'd say Sauron knows
| that giant eagles are a thing, and able to serve as
| mounts. So to prevent Western aerial reconnaissance and
| insertion/extraction of observers/spies/special forces in
| Mordor, he's got to have some sort of aerial observer /
| aerial denial systems going. Which systems would make a
| "fly the Ring to the fire" gambit too risky.
|
| (Vs. voice-of-canon Gandalf makes it clear that anyone
| seeking to _destroy_ his Preciousss is simply beyond
| Sauron 's Vile McEvil worldview.)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| In fact, when Gandalf catches up with
| Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli in 'The White Rider' chapter, he
| explicitly tells them that Sauron has committed a major
| strategic blunder: attacking too early, as soon as he
| thought the Ring was in play. If he'd kept some forces
| back to guard Mt Doom, he'd have been alright. Especially
| because, as later becomes clear, Mt Doom isn't a normal
| volcano where you could just lob the Ring in from your
| low-flying eagle. The Cracks of Doom are in a chamber
| deep inside the mountain.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Speaking of things needing rationalization: Smelting
| iron, which the dwarves are supposedly past masters of,
| requires furnaces which routinely exceed 1,500 degC. Vs.
| even exceptionally hot lavas are considerably _colder_.
| So why bother forming a Fellowship of the Ring, or
| embarking on a long & dangerous journey to Mt. Doom,
| when it'd be vastly quicker & easier to smelt local?
| the_af wrote:
| Mount Doom is magical/mythic in nature, the birthplace of
| the One Ring, while the Dwarven forges aren't.
|
| Quoting Elrond during the Council at Rivendell:
|
| > _"It has been said that Dragon-fire might melt and
| consume the Rings of Power, but there is not now any
| dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough;
| nor was there ever any fire, save the fire of Orodruin,
| that could melt the One Ring."_
|
| Also, the Dwarves that took the One Ring for melting
| would have likely fallen under its influence, postponing
| the destruction and ultimately keeping the ring as a
| keepsake, tool or weapon, like most living creatures
| would... except for _some_ brave Hobbits, which took a
| longer time to be corrupted.
|
| More fundamentally, this is not the kind of mindset with
| which Tolkien wanted us to read LotR. It can be done for
| fun, but if done seriously, it'd be missing the point.
| the_af wrote:
| Note I wasn't really trying to go into the argument, just
| pointing out these are well-known and very debated topics
| in Tolkien fandom.
|
| My own opinion is that debating this is missing the
| point. Tolkien was about the hero's journey, which
| necessitates the hard path to victory. It's not at all
| about flying a modern superweapon into Mount Doom; that's
| too literal a reading.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Tolkien's orc dialogue in TLOTR is actually very humanised in
| some ways - the orcs moan about their bosses, complain about
| rival teams, are concerned about completing their tasks, being
| punished for failure, etc, etc. When they aren't fighting, they
| come across as petty functionaries in a totalitarian state.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| It's a fantasy novel written primarily for entertainment. It's
| hard enough to write dwarves and elves, orcs are a necessary
| plot device. If you want you can imagine them as pitiable
| creatures who have been deprived of free will and have no
| choice but to act the way they do and loath themselves for it.
| the_af wrote:
| > _It 's a fantasy novel written primarily for entertainment_
|
| On one hand, you're right.
|
| On the other, it's unfair to Tolkien and to the scholars who
| study his work. He spent a lot of his life and effort towards
| developing this world, he deeply pondered the moral
| implications and theology of his world, and for all his
| denial of there being any analogies to the real world, you
| can see he considered them (he did describe modern men in the
| modern world as "Orc-ish", etc).
|
| All of this to say we cannot just dismiss it as "it's a
| fantasy novel".
| gregw2 wrote:
| Do you mean the palantir or the rings?
| gregw2 wrote:
| I find Tolkein's depictions on his original jacket covers of
| the Rings of Power and the one ring and the "all seeing eye"
| that accompanies them quite evocative:
|
| https://imgur.com/CZSNpiS
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8e/The_Fellowshi.
| ..
| gregw2 wrote:
| As many of you no doubt know, some people (did you know
| even 3 days after Hiroshima?![1]) likened Tolkein's One
| Ring to the power of the atomic bomb developed in the same
| era: a technology molded by hidden genius, capable of
| unspeakable power so deadly it must actually /not/ be used,
| but instead, must be carefully guarded by a small band
| until it can be destroyed. So that true peace is possible
| again.
|
| Tolkein of course denied this[2] .... and the timing wasn't
| right[3] and ... he wasn't a big fan of allegory[4], right?
|
| However, perhaps he foresaw, however unconsciously or
| through shadow knowledge shared by others or Bentham's
| Panopticon[5] or seen too by Orwell' 1985[6], the coming
| surveillance state.
|
| After all, in the trenches of WW1 he took his place
| managing signals communications in a battalion[7] and when
| WW2 arrived was approached to be a cryptographer, (even
| taking four days of preparatory courses on the subject![8]
| Before getting turned down[9].).
|
| Foresaw what and shared how you ask?
|
| That other, subtler, great Tool of Power to come out of WW2
| -- the use of, and covert exposure of, signals encryption.
|
| Encryption exerts its power in a manner not unlike one of
| the key functions of the rings... Anyone bearing the One
| Ring or the nine, who then puts on the ring -- like using
| encryption -- instantly makes themselves "hidden" to the
| mortal fellows around you.
|
| But tragically, the prolonged use and reliance upon such
| power deepens and ensures ever increasing temptations and
| corruptions.
|
| And such ring (encryption) use -- most unintuitively and
| dangerously -- makes you more, not less visible to the
| maker of the rings.
|
| (Just as cyphertext stands out in a sea of plaintext.[10]
| (See Tor today[11], or in WW2 the then-novel phenomena
| known as radar traceback.[13] Or the then-novel-but-even-
| more-covert encryption traffic analysis[14].)
|
| Perhaps he saw. And knew.
|
| ...
|
| And why too the numeric gap between 1 ring, 3 for elves, 7,
| and the 9? Nobody knows for sure[15].
|
| Perhaps too some linguistic colleague had whispered to the
| maker-of-languages (languages as obscure at that time as
| those of the Apache Code Talkers[16] and similarly perhaps
| unappreciatedly utilitarian) that... we already had "5
| Eyes"[17]??
|
| Perhaps then Tolkein knew? And passed on the word, for
| those willing to hear...
|
| Poor Tolkein, he became beloved by the very Morlocks[18],
| err, 'easily corruptible men of middle earth" he warned
| about.
|
| ...
|
| [1...18] Out of time! References available upon request. Or
| web search... Don't get me started on how this all connects
| to the Eye of Providence[19] or the Eye of Horus[20]! ;)
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Tolkein of course denied this .... and the timing
| wasn't right
|
| Just to expand on this, substantial portions of LOTR were
| written well before the atomic bomb became public
| knowledge, e.g. Tolkien had written first drafts of Book
| 4 (Frodo's journey to Mordor with Sam and Gollum) by
| 1944. In other words, it was already a fundamental plot
| point that the ring should not be used even as an
| ultimate weapon.
|
| The depiction of war in LOTR is perhaps more closely
| associated with Tolkien's personal experiences in the war
| of 1914-18. The dead marshes in particular have
| similarities to the trenches of WW1
| rdtsc wrote:
| > I wonder what Tolkien would say of so much of the symbolism
| from his novels being used to bootstrap a horrible dystopian
| control grid?
|
| What is that referring to? Some new LotR adaptation or some new
| game?
|
| > The way that orcs are dehumanized you have to wonder.
|
| Why would they be humanized, they are not human?
| Angostura wrote:
| Is there a version minus the music?
| grumbelbart2 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c6mcEPhhRg&list=PLMMxav_zz6...
| Angostura wrote:
| Thank you _so_ much
| mihaic wrote:
| I can't believe Angostura prefers grumbelbart2's link to
| OPs...
| wewewedxfgdf wrote:
| This is the most magnificent audio version ever recorded of The
| Hobbit - by Nicol Williamson in the early 1970's.
|
| Zip file with mp3 in it:
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1b2aPKgVVguOKMOOqWskaliOviYr...
|
| Best enjoyed on a rainy afternoon in an armchair with a cup of
| tea.
| wigster wrote:
| nice - gandalf meets merlin. do love Nicol Williamson
| nihakue wrote:
| Excellent, but my favourite has to be the Rob Inglis recordings
| (of both The Hobbit and LOTR). The songs are top notch, and his
| voice is perfect, esp. for the tone of the Hobbit.
| https://archive.org/details/TheHobbitAudiobook/The+Hobbit/Ch...
| mwcz wrote:
| Martin Shaw's recording of the Silmarillion is similarly
| wonderful.
| iammiles wrote:
| While we're at it, Christopher Lee's narration of Children
| of Hurin deserves a mention.
| grumbelbart2 wrote:
| > but my favourite has to be the Rob Inglis recordings
|
| Impressive, very nice. Let's see Paul Allen's recording.
| subpixel wrote:
| These really blew me away. I have a theory that he recorded
| the narration and dialogue of each character individually and
| then it was all edited together - it seems impossible to
| switch back and forth between such incredible character
| deliveries on the fly. Or perhaps this is just how that kind
| of work is done. Regardless, an amazing job.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Goodness gracious; I remember having a copy of that in my
| teens. Wonderful.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| If you're sitting on an armchair not really doing anything
| else, why not just read the book?
|
| Reserve audio versions for when you genuinely can't look at the
| book because you're doing something else.
| fsiefken wrote:
| hi loloquwowndueo, i was thinking the same thing, but then I
| thought why you would prefer reading a book while sitting
| instead of listening - is it about efficiency and that if you
| CAN read one should (you use the imperative) read? I also
| have this view, but when I was young and an avid reader I
| also enjoyed radio stories immensely as my imagination was
| also activated. As in the past we were an species with a
| predominantly oral cultural transmission, arguably more
| 'embodied', there could be something to say for attending a
| theatre version in preference of a book. On the other hand,
| reading often is faster, but it's indirect, you translate the
| symbols into your imagination yourself, on the upside you
| perhaps train your mind more. So both have their advantages,
| one is not necessarily better. I notice I am often looking
| through a lense of efficiency and then make choices where I
| loose a certain experience - sitting in the dark listening to
| someone telling a story instead of reading can be equally
| wonderful.
| bombcar wrote:
| Reading is faster - a reason not to do it! There's a reason
| that rituals across time and space have had readings from
| time immemorial- and not just because of the cost of
| printing.
|
| Especially with a work like LotR it can be very tempting to
| skim parts; the audiobook will just continue on, which can
| help you encounter passages you'd normally have skipped
| over.
| thombat wrote:
| Absolutely! I'd read LotR many times before I first read
| it aloud as a bedtime story season and was abashed to
| find how much I'd been skipping over, mostly
| parenthetical details of geography and world-building,
| while hastening in pursuit of the plot, like the holder
| of a big box of bonbons gorging target than savouring.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly - it's somewhat akin to listening to an album in
| one sitting vs the songs on shuffle mixed with others;
| but even moreso.
|
| It wasn't until I had an audiobook version that I "sat
| through" all the poetry and tree-descriptions, and it
| _was_ worth it.
| daeken wrote:
| Some people just prefer to listen. I read well and I read
| quite quickly -- I don't know how many books I've physically
| read, but it's gotta be in the high hundreds at least -- but
| over the past ~10 years I've switched primarily to
| audiobooks. Rather than being something that I enjoy while
| I'm doing something else, I typically do something mindless
| with my hands (weave chainmail, cross stitch, sew) in order
| to give my full attention to the book.
| michaelmior wrote:
| > I typically do something mindless with my hands (weave
| chainmail, cross stitch, sew)
|
| For me, that's exactly the sort of "something else" I
| interpreted the previous comment to refer to.
| fifticon wrote:
| same, I do it whenever I oil the trebuchets.
| copperx wrote:
| What kind of virtue signaling is this?
|
| My memory works much better when I hear something than if I
| read it, when it comes to non technical stuff.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I generally prefer reading, but I don't judge people who
| prefer listening. My wife sometimes plays audiobooks for our
| kids, I read them.
| mlyle wrote:
| I really wish I could make myself listen.
|
| The times I have just sat and listened to a well-told,
| well-paced story have been magical.
|
| But the dopamine hit of reading -too quickly- competes; the
| pressure to "be busy" wins and makes me impatient for the
| spoken word by default.
|
| The defaults are too high. I'd be better off reading less
| but reading more slowly, and listening sometimes.
|
| But this is not the highest priority problem to fix,
| either, and I can't fix everything.
| noahjk wrote:
| The Hobbit was specifically written to be read out loud, if I
| remember correctly.
|
| Would you also suggest to the families in the 30s & 40s that
| listening to the popular radio shows while sitting in the
| living room could have been a better experience if they had
| just read the transcript, instead? Or that they should have
| been multitasking during the shows, else it was a waste of
| their time?
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Or for most of human history for that matter, stories have
| been listened to rather than read. It might be fun to
| participate in this tradition.
| rhyperior wrote:
| Haven't you ever experienced having a story read to you, and
| falling into deep immersion and visualization?
| cush wrote:
| Honestly, you probably don't even take reading seriously if
| you're reading the book. If you're sitting on an armchair not
| really doing anything else, you should be reading from clay
| tablets, as Tolkien would have wanted.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Wow hyperbole and personal attack, all in a single post.
| cush wrote:
| Read the room
|
| (see what I did there?)
| bombcar wrote:
| To be fair, Tolkien probably have more in common with
| audiobooks and reading of works than reading them from
| printed pages - given his scholarly pursuits were of oral
| traditions.
| senderista wrote:
| Andy Serkis's audiobook of The Hobbit is pretty amazing.
| eunoia wrote:
| His full Lord of the Rings audiobook is likewise incredible.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| In case people dont want to download a 250MB zip just to check
| it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy91aWaC9ag
| alex1138 wrote:
| Of course he didn't live to see the Peter Jackson movies but I
| think I've heard his son didn't like them
| ekianjo wrote:
| The Hobbit movies had nothing to do with the books.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Sorry, I meant LOTR
| ekianjo wrote:
| Even the LOTR adaptation is questionable. Gandalf kicking
| Pippin (the exact opposite of what happens in the book),
| the lack of the scouring of the Shire, and super-Legolas
| right out of a Marvel movie...
| christophilus wrote:
| Legolas was kind of super in the books, though. I think
| Faramir was the worst character assassination in the
| movies.
| teddyh wrote:
| Also Gimli.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| Also Pippin and Merry, who are basically annoying
| teenagers in the films, even if they do some useful
| things.
| deeg wrote:
| I have a lot of criticism for some of the plot changes
| that jackson made but I'll credit him for this: his films
| are the first dramatic sword & sorcery type movies that
| got the tone right and aren't cringe worthy. The previous
| attempts at LOTR are awful.
| cubefox wrote:
| The LotR movies were a high water mark, even if they
| aren't perfect. I wish Peter Jackson made a movie for
| _Children of Hurin_ , though that's probably not
| happening for many reasons.
| jltsiren wrote:
| There was Conan the Barbarian before them. But pretty
| much everything else in the genre was mediocre or cringe-
| worthy.
|
| On the other hand, I remember fondly the movie nights a
| local sci-fi club used to run until the mid-2000s. There
| were so many terrible Conan clones that were enormously
| entertaining. And there were some brilliant moments in
| the early LOTR movies. Such as "Where There's a Whip".
| sonofhans wrote:
| I agree with you about Conan the Barbarian being a high
| note. That movie doesn't get enough credit. There are
| very few better in the whole genre.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| I think what Tolkien would have hated the most was
| Aragorn murdering the Mouth of Sauron. Stylistic choices
| are one thing, but turning morality on its head is on
| another scale.
| alex1138 wrote:
| This is wildly unrelated and I apologize but it reminds
| me of Apollo 13 vs From The Earth To The Moon (which Tom
| Hanks directed so one suspects he had more creative
| freedom)
|
| FTETTM has artistic license. There's no record of Collins
| (Apollo 11) saying "If you had any balls, you'd say 'oh
| my god! what is that thing?', scream and cut your mic"
| but it's very in line with his general character, you can
| imagine it happening
|
| Apollo 13 put in a bogus argument with Swigert after the
| oxygen tank exploded
|
| I will never not despise "artistic license" which is just
| simply _wrong_
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| That's scene is extended edition only tho
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The LOTR movies are great _movies_ , but are pretty poor
| _adaptations_. I don 't mind changes which were necessary
| due to the medium (e.g. cutting Tom Bombadil, which just
| would bloat the movie without adding anything crucial to
| the story). But Jackson went beyond that and made changes
| (for example, having Faramir give in to the temptation of
| the Ring for a time) because he disagreed with Tolkien's
| story (that specific change was explained in terms of
| Faramir's character in the book "doesn't work with the
| way we are trying to portray the Ring"). That's crossing
| a line, imo.
|
| The Hobbit movies, on the other hand, are both bad
| adaptations and bad movies. Truly awful stuff.
| mwcz wrote:
| The M4 fan edit was quite good.
| bombcar wrote:
| We know what Tolkien felt about other earlier adaptations and
| even have some suggested comments.
|
| I think he'd have serious issues with things but not
| necessarily what everyone picks up on.
| haunter wrote:
| My favorite recent LotR media:
|
| There is a Lord of the Rings MMO (like World of Warcraft) and a
| guy made a video recording a walk from the Shire to Mordor. Like
| you can just walk from the Shire to Mordor in the game. And it's
| almost 10 hours long in real world time to do that! But on top of
| that the whole journey is narrated by the Lord of the Rings audio
| book, with the relevant parts of the journey.
|
| https://youtu.be/LYipECdYpXc
|
| Incredibly relaxing
| dtgriscom wrote:
| A nice, relaxing trip to Mordor.
| vhtr wrote:
| Oh man, something to watch and listen to in the evenings to
| come, thank you!
|
| I don't have experience with the LotR Online outside of small
| clips here and there, but for the past 5 years or so I have
| been enjoying a bit more retro LotR "mmorpg", a free-to-play
| MUD that has been in development since 1991 or something:
| https://mume.org/
|
| In MUME (Multi-Users in Middle Earth) getting from Bree to
| Mordor by walking won't take you 10 hours, but maybe 10 minutes
| at most. However, the trip and the destination will be full of
| dangers, whether it's from pve or pvp side of things.
|
| As a side note, MUME is being developed by volunteers, and I
| believe the game itself is still ran on some Swiss University
| servers, where it all began, heh.
| vitorfblima wrote:
| Back in the day I used to log in to a MUSH called Elendor
| (telnet).
|
| It was simply magical and I have many good memories venturing
| through middle-earth and meeting fellow chars.
| vhtr wrote:
| It is crazy to me how captivating and immersive text-based
| games can be. I've been exploring them for fun in recent
| years, the roots of modern mmorpgs. Fun to come across
| stuff you still have in modern games. :)
| SockThief wrote:
| That is so good! Thank you!
|
| Do you happen to know where does the narration by Andy Serkis
| come from? Is it a game? An audiobook?
| cpburns2009 wrote:
| Andy Serkis did a narration of the Lord of the Rings books a
| few years ago. My guess is it comes from that.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Andy Serkis has versions of _The Hobbit_ , _The Lord of the
| Rings_ , and _The Silmarillion_ all on Audible.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's my book and they'll walk if I tell them to!
| Aromasin wrote:
| I recommend trying to visit the ArdaCraft minecraft server.
| They're trying to faithfully recreate the LotR world at 1:58
| scale, and I've spent some time attempting to do the whole walk
| over some evenings the past few months. It's absolutely
| incredible the amount of love and detail has gone into crafting
| the world.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| He simply walked into Mordor?!
| russellbeattie wrote:
| Ha! I watched it for a little while on 2x and it was very cool.
| Then Frodo hit the river and dives in, swimming across with
| perfect freestyle form like Michael Phelps!
|
| I literally guffawed and thought, "Well, that's one good way of
| avoiding the dark riders." Makes that dramatic jump to the
| barge a little less intense. ;-)
| chiph wrote:
| It's about a 12 minute walk in Austin, from Hobbiton Trail to
| Mordor Cove.
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/EgUb7EXTaHguiPKJ7
| mexicocitinluez wrote:
| People who don't like "On The Road" should listen to Jack read it
| in his own voice.
| weslleyskah wrote:
| It is amazing how Lord of the Rings persists in the world.
|
| Christopher Lee reading the Children of Hurin is also fantastic.
| nelblu wrote:
| tangential comment, but if anyone is interested in one of the
| best (imo "legendary") audio books on LOTR look no further than
| Phil Dragash : https://archive.org/details/tlotrunabridged.
| elcritch wrote:
| Okay who's going to clone this using AI and have it read the
| entire book? Anyone?!
| willdotphipps wrote:
| I drink in his old local. A bit weird in there I would imagine if
| you're an American. Although I am a bit American and it is a bit
| weird in there.
| harywilke wrote:
| Ranged Touch's Shelved By Genre podcast is doing an entire year
| on The Hobbit + Lord of the Rings.
| https://rangedtouch.com/2026/01/02/the-hobbit-part-1/
| russellbeattie wrote:
| I listen to a lot of Audiobooks and some authors are really,
| really not suited to read their own works of fiction.
|
| Some are definitive, however. If you haven't heard Douglas Adams
| read all his books [1], you're definitely missing out. They're
| harder to track down, and not the best quality as most are copied
| from old tape cassettes, but I love listening to the genius at
| work.
|
| Yahtzee Croshaw reading his books is fantastic [2]. As is Patrick
| Rothfuss reading _The Slow Regard of Silent Things_ [3].
|
| A more recent author I listened to was Adrian Tchaikovsky reading
| _Service Model_ [4]. He was so good, I checked to see if he had
| theater training! Really great.
|
| 1. https://youtu.be/F_tcznHREXE
|
| 2. https://www.youtube.com/live/NNpQROC7dWA
|
| 3. https://youtu.be/wm6T7uUr_C8
|
| 4. https://youtu.be/Myl1ChiFGTw
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(page generated 2026-01-12 23:01 UTC)