Who has read this book?

ah! did you have to asks us?

surely, you did not mean us, was you precious?
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you will hardly find a geek who hasn't read either 'lord of the rings' or 'silmarillion' or lewis' 'the chronicles of narnia' even though the last one is baby stuff. even tolkien disliked it, inspite of having been lewis' friend and a major influence on narnia. it was because of the christian allegory and reportedly tolkien despised allegory.

many say that lotr is also a catholic allegory but tolkien insisted that he wrote a fantasy and was inspired by the anglo-saxon beowulf or the finnish classic kalevala. i had a fascination for tolkien - whether it is because of the linguistic part or the allegory which is closer to islamic eschatology. i had written about this somewhere, sometime ago. the lord of the rings is arguably the single most influential work on most fantasy works in the 20th century, including movies. star wars being the prime example.

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infact the modern 'harry potter' series is a crossover of lotr, narnia and star-wars. it has seven books like narnia. it has magic like both lotr and narnia. there are duels like starwars. etc. but i think it is more like narnia retold.

it was the other way round. tolkien was a linguist and as he put it himself, had a 'secret vice' of creating new languages. to use these languages, he created characters that spoke a different tongue etc. so he created an imaginary world and races and places.

you may want to have a look at this: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/
and here is the thain's book: http://www.tuckborough.net/index.htm

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min husni islami'l mar'yi tarkuhu ma la ya'anih / the beauty of a man's islam is that he renounces that which concerns him not.

ma la ya`ani also includes laghw and lahw which is pointless amusement. to read tolkien, shakespeare, twain or poe - to polish one's language skills is fine.

 

The Hobbit was a good read as well.

Did Tolkein write any other books apart from Lord of the Rings or related books?

 

I have read all three volumes. plus the Hobbit.

All were excellent.

 

Yes, you are right about it being a 'clean' novel. Most of the books, well those that are worth reading anyways, are full of either profanity or sex. It is becoming extremely difficult to find a book worth reading that isn't full of sex or abusive language. But i guess that's just the authors using freedom of expression.

 

The other great quality about The Lord of the Rings is that it is one of the few modern great novels which do not have any sex/nudity/profanity in them; one can read this to one's children/spouse/partner without any danger of embarassment!

 

Quite true. They say that all genius is a type of madness! You must read Parts 1 and 2 too though. The films were good--the Book read in its entirety is something else altogether. It begs a question in my mind: why did Islamic civilisation not produce the novel as a literary form?

 

:s1:

I didn't read the first two parts, had already watched the films. But i did read the last part, quite intresting actually.

What amazes me though is that how Tolkein (the author) actually conceived of the whole world of the Lord of the Rings in his mind. He made up a creation story for the world, made up powers of good and evil, even invented a new language for the different characters with their own alphabets. He made up the geography of the whole world, made geneologies and histories for all the different kings and queens for all the different species. It is only when you start reading the explanatory notes, which are seperate books, that you realize the genuis or the madness of Tolkein.

 

The Lord of the Rings?

[p.s. Before someone goes ape about this not being an Islamic book, I don't think it is unislamic either and Shaykh AHM recommends it as a good book to improve one's English! So there!]