Last month Dan Brown's Lost Symbol arrived and productivity at the office ground to a halt. Fortunately for us, the audio book was only 17 hours long. Most of us have finished with the Lost Symbol and things were starting to get back to normal...right up to moment we got this shipment of CDs from Recorded Books.
Recorded Books' Tolkien collection (LOTR, Hobbit) is a FIFTY-SIX compact disk set of a word-for-word reading by Rob Inglis. This is the only unabridged audio version of the Tolkien trilogy: The Fellowship of the Ring (16 CDs/20 hrs); The Two Towers (14 CDs/17 hrs); The Return of The King (16 CDs/15 hrs); and The Hobbit (10 CDs/11 hrs).
Mr. Inglis has appeared with the Royal Shakespeare and Royal Court Theatre companies playing roles in Hamlet and Oliver. He regularly tours Europe and the U.S. with his repetoire of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Tolkien dramatizations.
We are obviously huge LOTR fans and have seen the movie trilogy on DVDs more times than we can count. Even with seven hours of movie magic, Peter Jackson cannot capture all of the details of the original books. It has been many years since we read the books, even if for some of us the entire year of 10th grade Advanced English consisted of nothing but the LOTR trilogy, so some of those details have been forgotten...facts have faded into legend, legend into myths...well, you know how the sequence goes :-) It will be great to refresh our memories.
While looking around in our RainyDayLibrary, one of our interns came upon this copy of the 50th Anniversary edition of the Hobbit. No one seem to remember how it came to be in our possession, but leafing through it reminded us why some still prefer books to other forms of media. The one great thing with books, of course, is no batteries are needed (that, and you can take it into the tub with you, according to our copyeditor).
There are many ways to enjoy a Tolkien story. One of our favorite ways is the "straight through" method. The idea is to go from the beginning to end without stopping. This was barely possible with the DVDs. We are not sure if we can do it with the audio books. However, it will be fun to try!
We are taking a drive to Ayer this weekend to check out a Sigma zoom lens. It is not a really long trip, but it will be a good time to start on the 52 hours of LOTR. If you only see sporatic postings of articles next week, you will know why :-) Have a great weekend! [Permalink] - Tolkien
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