![Cover of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings [collection/set]](https://covers.hackerbooks.org/c/255844.webp)
The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings [collection/set]
by J.R.R. Tolkien · first published 1979
14% recommend79% neutral7% critical
Contains: - Hobbit - The Fellowship of the Ring - The Two Towers - The Return of the King
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J. R. R. Tolkien's Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, Most of the Jules Verne's books, The Iliad and The Odyssey from Homer, The Godfather from Mario Puzo, Hermit in Paris,…
on “Ask HN: What book have you re-read 3x or more?” ↗Not sure which one the OP had in mind but if you're into more theatrical audiobooks / podcasts check out "An Unexpected Journey" by "Samwise Gamgee" on Spotify. Absolutely top-tier audiobook of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
on “Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)” ↗In case you didn't know (and this is deep geekery, so I don't know why you would): It's a conceit of Tolkien's presentation that the story we're reading in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings was recovered from historical manuscripts written by Bilbo and the other hobbits, which were collected by later hobbits in a tome called the Red Book of Westmarch [1]. That big red leatherbound edition…
on “There and Snack Again: How to Eat Everything in the Lord of the Rings” ↗…for preview on Amazon... I'm still not sure. To explain that, I'll start with some background. The previously available books by Tolkien (many edited by his son Christopher) took different forms: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are traditional narrative stories; The Silmarillion blurs together the styles of the Bible, a history textbook, and historical fiction; Unfinished Tales is a collection of isolated or incomplete stories…
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗I doubt the sum total of royalties for the work released by Christopher Tolkien amounts to even a single percent of those for the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, even if you include The Silmarillion. He could just have leaned back and counted the checks incoming.
on “Tolkien's Paintings” ↗…much an LLM knows about Tolkien's work, and it was fun to delve into many of the nooks and crannies of Tolkien's lore. Some features: - Plot on the map the journey of the main characters in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. - Follow a list of events in the chronological Timeline - Zoom in on the high-def map and explore many of the off-the-main-plotline places - Use the 'measure distances' feature to see how far apart things…
on “Show HN: An interactive map of Tolkien's Middle-earth” ↗This is a bit much, but let me give you a couple of real world examples of names that I've read over and over yet somehow managed to misread every time. I read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy many times, and managed to see the name Grandalf instead of Gandalf every single time. I was looking up a quote from a former Intel CEO just tonight and found out that his name wasn't Paul Ortelli,…
on “Website allows you to experience what it is like to live with dyslexia (2016)” ↗…because reading fast is a HUGE advantage in every setting (even taking into account the speed variability, depending on the topic). I'm a very fast reader. To give you an example, I can (easily) read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings in english during during the weekend (2 days), and english is not my first language. In comparison, my brother, who has a LOT in common with me (including education level, and going to the same school…
on “The average person’s reading speed is slower than commonly thought” ↗…had no language of their own; rather, they used a particularly crude form of the Common Speech, often peppered with words from the Black Speech. (This is the in-story reason why the protagonists in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are able to understand and be understood by goblins and orcs.) Anyway, none of this detracts from your point: invention of fictional languages does not imply a reluctance to get to grips with actual…
on “Weird English” ↗I think you seriously overestimate the competence of the “professionals” doing the typesetting on ebooks. Most of the ones I've paid for are shockingly awful. This includes ebooks like the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, Ender's Game, or more modern titles such as Freakonomics/Superfreakonomics, or even classics like the Count of Monte Cristo or the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, from a variety of sources, including…
on “Why do ebooks cost so much?” ↗I tend to rearrange the letters in a word, and also add letters that are not there and/or remove letters that are there. For instance, I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and genuinely thought that the Wizard's name was Grandalf. I had a tough time in grade school learning to read and write, but I credit my Grandmother constantly reading to me for giving me a…
on “I am dyslexic” ↗…the history of MUME, the clock starts over. Again, it is the year 2850 of the Third Age. Gandalf has just obtained the key of Erebor from Thrain in the dungeons of Dol Guldur. The events told in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are ready to happen. - Dáin
on “1980: MUD” ↗…answer was a story about Gandalf beeing hurt badly, beeing rescued by some random dwarfs, and so on. I asked ChatGPT in which book this is described, and it told me that you can read about it on both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. So it makes up fun stories. This makes me wondering how much of its explantions about physics (which I don't understand completely) are made-up.
on “Microsoft and OpenAI Working on ChatGPT-Powered Bing in Challenge to Google” ↗…author whose process is so radical. Not just in the languages, though those are the most obvious, but the lifetime obsession. It can be hard to recall that in his lifetime he only ever published The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He never published The Silmarillion, because he kept revising and revising. It was never fully compatible with either The Hobbit (it wasn't intended to be) or The Lord of the Rings. The published document…
on “The Letters of JRR Tolkien Is Getting an Expanded Edition” ↗…Unfortunately, my wife's schedule changed when we got to Truman and the effort was abandoned due to a changing evening schedule. Note that this was in addition to having read all the C.S. Lewis Narnia books, _The Hobbit_ and _The Lord of the Rings_, Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising_ pentalogy and many, many other more traditional book choices. The big thing in child-rearing is to offer the child chances and experiences and age-appropriate choices…
on “What shall I teach my son?” ↗