What Surprises You Most About Reading THoME?

[Duguay]

I'm curious about peoples experiences when reading The History of Middle Earth, what surprises you as you go through.

I have to confess I'm very much a newbie to the histories, and can't rightly say I've read any of the volumes. The most I can say for myself is that I've been reading passages from them, as an intended augmentation of my reading of The Silmarillion.

The most basic thing surprising me, as I've been dipping into passages of Morgoth's Ring, is that I've actually been finding it approachable.

Another thing I'm discovering/re-learning is that I'm a reader at home with flipping around and following tangents (and tangents of tangents). I'm starting to feel comfortable with going back and forth between the main passages and the note-commentaries...it's a whole other level to follow through on cross-references in the notes and only return back to the main passage where I left off after an extensive "scenic" detour. Is the above paragraph boring, or does it make sense?

The major unexpected surprise is building what I'm going to call an "Academic Glossary". By that I just mean assembling a list of words and abbreviations that are used extensively which I don't often come across. Cf., passim, extant; these words keep coming up and I keep forgetting them if I've taken a break from Morgoth's Ring and then come back a week or two later. It works better to write them down and not have to keep looking them up over and over again after forgetting them.

Obviously there are story-concepts which are new surprises for many people, I'm sure. I never expected that Tolkien actually came up with alternative words for spirit and body and included them in drafts and manuscripts that didn't get used. I have mixed feelings about the alternative Elvish words; spirit and body are to-the-point. On the other hand, the Elvish words help me to understand and appreciate better the significance of Fëanor's name and character.

 

[Ent]

My own greatest surprise was having the time to come to them at last, and at all, in April 2022. (Coming to TTF shortly thereafter, in June.)

I can say my second surprise is simply how much Tolkien left to interpretation, followed (though remotely) by how often the Fans come back to the same subjects repeatedly, covering the same passages, using the same arguments, unwilling to allow other opinions to exist all too often.

This was followed closely by my third: very much the same as I had found with Sherlockians and Holmesians...even where one expects thinkers to be involved, with a resultant reduction of the impact of The Religion of Opinion with its aberrant impacts, one finds disappointment. (In my case, great disappointment.)

Yet one must remember 'Disappointment' is always the result of an unfulfilled 'Hope', just as 'frustration' is always the result of an unfulfilled 'expectation'.

Thus we learn to hold our hopes and expectatiosn loosely.

Then again, I came aboard initially in the throes of the first season Rings of Power craze, which brought with it a tremendous amount of rancor and vitriol throwing. (Which I did expect.) And it took some time for TTF to calm down a bit again, and get back to more normal levels of the atrocities humans visit upon one another.

Then there is my fourth: Knowing Tolkien was genius before arriving, I didn't really find anything surprising within or about his works particularly... other than that I'd hoped some few of the 'loose ends' might have answers... (a loosely held hope not resulting in disappointment). I did find surprising, for some reason, most of Christopher's work served more to add to the loose ends than to rectify them.

I'm very thankful I came, and thankful to all of you who have sped me on my way to 'getting deeper' and out of the shallows.
And now that I must soon leave the confines and get on with other work, I will miss it and you all very much.

You will know the day, as I will take the final step from Huron to Tree...at which time my roots will firmly be planted elsewhere doing other work.

 

[ZehnWaters]

I think what I found most surprising was how much he'd changed over the years. Both the earliest versions and the latest version I found...unsettling and far removed from how I conceived of Middle-Earth.

The major unexpected surprise is building what I'm going to call an "Academic Glossary". By that I just mean assembling a list of words and abbreviations that are used extensively which I don't often come across. Cf., passim, extant; these words keep coming up and I keep forgetting them if I've taken a break from Morgoth's Ring and then come back a week or two later. It works better to write them down and not have to keep looking them up over and over again after forgetting them.

They nearly killed me with the abbreviations.

Then again, I came aboard initially in the throes of the first season Rings of Power craze, which brought with it a tremendous amount of rancor and vitriol throwing. (Which I did expect.)

I remember that.

Then there is my fourth: Knowing Tolkien was genius before arriving, I didn't really find anything surprising within or about his works particularly... other than that I'd hoped some few of the 'loose ends' might have answers... (a loosely held hope not resulting in disappointment). I did find surprising, for some reason, most of Christopher's work served more to add to the loose ends than to rectify them.\

Same. But this provides opportunities for my own "sub-creation" which I quite delight in.

I'm very thankful I came, and thankful to all of you who have sped me on my way to 'getting deeper' and out of the shallows.
And now that I must soon leave the confines and get on with other work, I will miss it and you all very much.

You will know the day, as I will take the final step from Huron to Tree...at which time my roots will firmly be planted elsewhere doing other work.

😢

 

[Tyelkormo the Fair]

All of it? I haven't read it yet.