What is Best in Life

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite www.isleyunruh.com Monday feature!  Middle Earth being the place of enchantment and wonder that it is, each month I will use my love of fictional cartography to transport you to another time and place.  So why not take a moment to fill your head full of knowledge that will have no bearing  at all on the real world?

This month I’ll be discussing Drúwaith Iaur and its mysterious inhabitants. (more…)

Hello dear readers, it’s MAILBAG MONDAY again!  On this special day I will search through my mountain of reader mail and answer the five most pressing questions!

What’s that you say?  Do I really get that much mail?  Well, I’ll admit…the contact section of this website doesn’t get used that often, but, one of the perks of wordpress stats is that I can see the google search terms that people use to find my site.  And I’m going to go ahead and pretend that these search terms will count as reader mail, since they are often entered in the form of a question.  So as you read these, remember that each “question” was something that someone actually typed into google that brought up my site as a hit which they then clicked on thus letting wordpress stats report to me the search they used to find my site.  I could make up the questions myself, but it turns out the actual google searches are far better than anything I could come up with!

This time I answer the questions:

• “Common western themes”?
• What’s a good romantic comedy with a good looking boy?
• “Minor Key” haunting soul?
• How many calories in plain unfilled burritos?
• Does Gimli fart in the movie lotr?

So, without further ado, it is time to dig into the old Mailbag to see what kind of things have been on my reader’s minds in the last month! (more…)

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite www.isleyunruh.com Monday feature!  Middle Earth being the place of enchantment and wonder that it is, each month I will use my love of fictional cartography to transport you to another time and place.  So why not take a moment to fill your head full of knowledge that will have no bearing  at all on the real world?

This month I’ll be discuss the famous fords of the river Poros, the gateway to the realm of Gondor from the South. (more…)

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite www.isleyunruh.com Monday feature!  Middle Earth being the place of enchantment and wonder that it is, each month I will use my love of fictional cartography to transport you to another time and place.  So why not take a moment to fill your head full of knowledge that will have no bearing  at all on the real world?

This month I’ll be talking about Isildur’s final resting place in the reed strewn marshes at the mouth of the river Gladden. (more…)

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite www.isleyunruh.com Monday feature!  Middle Earth being the place of enchantment and wonder that it is, each month I will use my love of fictional cartography to transport you to another time and place.  So why not take a moment to fill your head full of knowledge that will have no bearing  at all on the real world?

This month I’ll be looking at the desolate valley of The Withered Heath in the Grey Mountains to the North of Mirkwood. (more…)

Occasionally I will get some very pressing “reader mail” in my google search terms.  So pressing that I just can’t wait for Mailbag Monday proper.  Today is one of those days, so sit back for this special “Mini Mailbag Monday” as I answer some important reader questions about the supposed “lateness” of Middle Earth Monday! (more…)

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite www.isleyunruh.com monday feature!  Middle Earth being the place of enchantment and wonder that it is, each month I will use my love of fictional cartography to transport you to another time and place.  So why not take a moment to fill you head full of knowledge that will have no bearing  at all on the real world?

This month I’ll be looking at the ruined city of Fornost Erain. (more…)

Everyone knows that I was a particularly vehement opponent of the Lord of the Rings movies.  My thoughts on adaptations are well publicized and they basically amount to the unyielding law that it is unconscionable to change even one line of the author’s text.  And when we are talking about a master on Tolkien’s level, well you can imagine my speechless rage to find out that they had decided (to name one of a countless number of grievances) to portray Gothmog, Lieutenant of Mordor as an orc even though his name is obviously Sindarin in origin and therefore he obviously could not be an orc!  And don’t even get me started on that winged Balrog…

Anyway, with the painful experience of watching my favorite book in the world getting “Hot Carled” for 12 straight hours fresh in my mind, it was with a great deal of trepidation that I greeted the news of a Hobbit movie.  And it appears that my initial fears were founded as more and more rumors have come in.  The rumors range from bad to awful, but some are so horrible that I fall asleep screaming each night wishing for the sweet release of my nightmares.  Of these I have selected ten of the most upsetting.  For those who think their constitution is doughty enough (we’re talking 17-18 range here), read on to hear how many orifices the first part of the Red Book of Westmarch should start preparing for violation. (more…)

The fantasy fiction community was once again rocked when more previously unreleased sections of The Lord of the Rings were discovered. This “grail” of a literary find amounted to a new lost segment cut out of the original manuscript by censors. Years of suppression by the Tolkien estate followed, but the wait for this new lost section is finally over!  For those of you that want to print this out and staple it into your copies of the book, this new section takes place towards the beginning of the Chapter “The Ring Goes South” where the final roster for the nine members of the Fellowship is still being determined after Frodo’s narrow escape from Nazgul at the fords of Bruinen. I have started this monumental find with a section from the book as published in bold for context. Enjoy! (more…)

I’ve said before, I don’t actually read as much fantasy as most people would think for someone whose favorite book is The Lord of the Rings. Of course I’m open to the idea, it seems like a no-brainer for a person of my inclinations (read: “nerdy”, “all gay for hobbits and shit”), it’s just that I usually come away disappointed and I’d like to try to explain why this is.
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The fantasy fiction community was once again rocked when more previously unreleased sections of The Lord of the Rings were discovered. This “grail” of a literary find amounted to a new lost segment cut out of the original manuscript by censors. Years of suppression by the Tolkien estate followed, but the wait for this new lost section is finally over! This new section takes place immediately after the Ent-led sacking of Isengard in the third to last page of the chapter “The Road to Isengard” for those of you that want to print this out and staple it into your copies of the book. I have started this monumental find with a section from the book as published in bold for context. Enjoy!

(more…)

The fantasy fiction community was once again rocked when more previously unreleased sections of The Lord of the Rings were discovered. This “grail” of a literary find amounted to a new lost segment cut out of the original manuscript by censors. Years of suppression by the Tolkien estate followed, but the wait for this new lost section is finally over! This new section takes place during the funeral of king Théoden on the fourth page of the chapter titled “Many Partings” in Return of the King for those of you that want to print this out and staple it into your copies of the book. I have started this monumental find with a section from the book as published in bold for context. Enjoy!

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The fantasy fiction community was rocked last month when previously unreleased sections of The Lord of the Rings were discovered. This “grail” of a literary find amounted to a lost chapter, “A Wind from the West” that had apparently been cut out of the original manuscript by censors. Years of suppression by the Tolkien estate followed, but the wait for this lost chapter is finally over!

The bulk of the writing takes place after Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas and various other minor characters passed through the halls of the dead in order to rouse the undead army of soldiers who had broken an oath of fealty to Isildur long in the past. It would have been included between chapter 3, “The Muster of Rohan” and chapter 4, “The Siege of Gondor” in The Return of the King for those of you that want to print this out and staple it into your copies of the book.

Following the lost chapter I have posted two smaller fragments that were also cut out due to continuity problems arising from the chapter’s removal. Notes as to their placement in the text precede the fragments.
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While it may be astounding that some people still believe The Lord of the Rings is just a book, this is perhaps only to be expected what with the wealth of misinformation out there. What I would like to make clear here is not *that* The Lord of the Rings took place on the earth (a fact opposed only by holocaust deniers and people who think Crash was a great movie), but rather *when* The Lord of the Rings took place on earth.
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