Have you red or the intention to red Arda Reconstructed

[Aran e-Godhellim]

I agree, Aiwendil. It sounds most intriguing.

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

Hi folks. Yes Voronwë the Faithful does in fact equal Douglas Kane, and Arda Reconstructed is in fact, my book.

gondowe, to answer your question, no I did not have access to the original manuscripts, only the material published in HoMe, UT, CoH, LotR, Letters, and Words, Phrases, and Passages, etc.

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

I wonder particularly about the "inserts that seemed initially to have been editorial inventions shown to have come from some remote portion of Tolkien's vast body of work".

Aiwendil, examples of that type of thing include a few passages that were taken directly from things included in BOLT that never reappeared, things taken from different essays like Quendi and Eldar, Of Dwarves and Men, the Shibboleth, the Problem of Ros, etc., and passages that were moved from different places (e.g., passages from the Grey Annals inserted into parts of the story that otherwise were covered in the Annals of Aman and the corresponding portion of the Quenta, and otherwise moved around in strange ways). And in one case a passage that seems to have been derived from one the Letters.

Hope that helps. If any of you are Mythlore subscribers there will be a review of the book in the upcoming issue, and there also will be one in this years Tolkien Studies. And you can get more information about the book at www.arda-reconstructed.com

Hookbill, I was disappointed that the publisher set the list price so high, but the reason was that the extensive tables tracing the source material were very time-consuming to set. But I do think those tables provide a very valuable recourse, particularly for this group of folks! And at least Amazon is selling it at a significant discount of 28%.

Cheers to all!

[gondowe]

I was expecting for your book but when I knew al last of its publication it was out of stock, and I decided to wait, but I see it is now in stock again. So now I'm goint to wait the availability of Sigurd and Gudrun to buy both books now.

What do you think about our projects (mine in Spanish).

Greetings.

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

I haven't examined the projects here in great detail yet, but they look very impressive. You all are looking at things from kind of the opposite side than I did. I didn't set out to create an expanded or complete Silmarillion, just to examine in detail exactly how the published version was created. Although I do express a number of opinions about what I thought should or should not have been included, and about the effect that some of the editorial decisions had on the final product. Some of those opinions are likely to prove to be (and in fact already have been proven to be) somewhat controversial.

Hopefully the book will continue to stay in stock, although as you have noted Amazon has seemed to have had difficulty in keeping up with the demand. If Amazon doesn't have it available when you are ready to buy it, you may want to check other sources such as Barnes & Noble. They have had in stock pretty consistently for a couple of months now (and they just increased their discount so that it almost matches Amazon's).

[Aiwendil]

Hi Voronwe - thanks for the information. I plan on ordering your book very soon; it sounds quite interesting - and useful. I frequently find myself puzzling over the source of some passage or other in the published Silmarillion, and a work that lays out the sources will probably save me many a hunt through HoMe.

I'm also interested to hear (or read) your opinions on some of Christopher Tolkien's editorial decisions. While I think I speak for everyone involved in the project here when I say that we have tremendous respect for Christopher Tolkien's scholarship, dedication, and sheer effort in bringing forth and elucidating his father's work, it was partially dissatisfaction with some of his decisions in the published Silmarillion that led us to embark on the project.

[Voronwë_the_Faithful]

I think it is fair to say that that is fairly close to my feelings as well, with the added caveat that hindsight is 20/20, and that it because of Christopher's tireless efforts that we have the benefit of a far more organized and detailed understanding of the source material than he had at the time that he produced the published Silmarillion.

I will be particularly interested to hear what you and your colleagues think of the book, Aiwendil. I think it is fair to say that y'all are among the small group of people that have looked at the source material with the same kind of intensity that I have, albeit for a somewhat different purpose.

[Aran e-Godhellim]

Thank you for going to the trouble of making an account just to answer a few questions about your book! I look forward to reading it sometime soon. (hopefully) It sounds very interesting.