Monday, March 25, 2013
Happy International Tolkien Reading Day!
Today is the official day dedicated to the reading
aloud of Tolkien’s works. I really enjoyed all of the performances that I
heard, and I had a lot of fun reading some of my favorite scenes from Tolkien’s
stories (I find the blindfold scene from The
Fellowship of the Ring highly amusing). For those of you who dropped by the
duck pond earlier today, what did you think? What was your reaction to hearing people
zealously read aloud passages from, say, The
Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings?
2 comments:
Ooh, ooh, I was there. I had to leave for meetings partway through, so I missed seeing anyone else from class, but I hung out with Dusty and Schuyler earlier in the day. I read the bit from the Silmarillion from the Oath of Feanor to the arrival of Fingolfin to Middle-earth, with many a joke about alternate titles of the Silmarillion as "Elves Behaving Badly" or "That Escalated Quickly."
One thing we noticed was, going from reading The Hobbit (which we started with) to The Lord of the Rings, to the Silmarillion, are the differences in register and the orality of the pieces. So the Hobbit is easy to read out loud because it is in such a folk-storytelling style. LOTR is harder to read but still beautiful, while by the time you get to the Silmarillion you need about five lungs to keep up with his sentences. So that was interesting.
I know that wasn't the question, though, sorry: I do know that when I read at TRD, I try to read for me, or for the other hobbits sitting around; it's sort of just incidental that it's out loud and in public. I always enjoy Tolkien Reading Day. Thanks to all those who came out!
I absolutely loved getting to read the riddles passage from The Hobbit with interactive character voices! It really made the story come to life. Perhaps next year we can set up something like that and read The Council of Elrond...
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