* The table-of-contents for the journal Tolkien Studies #19 (2022 issue, delayed) has now been announced. I still can’t afford to get the 2021 issue yet, but of special interest to me for 2022 will be…
— “Tolkien, the Medieval Robin Hood, and the Matter of the Greenwood”.
— “Early Drafts and Carbon Copies: Composing and Editing “Smith of Wootton Major””.
— John Garth reviewing The Nature of Middle-earth.
— The “Year’s Work in Tolkien Studies 2019”, and the “2020 Bibliography”.
* I see the 2009 book Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians has been translated into what might be Spanish. I wasn’t aware of either version before encountering the news of the new translation. It appears that the author looks for the influence of Aquinas on both men, and thus the book is partly about a probable influence on the young Tolkien.
* This week the Reading and Readers podcast reviews Austin M. Freeman’s new book Theology through Mythology with the Maker of Middle-earth.
* At the start of December 2022 the Athrabeth podcast released Episode 53: Interview with Dr. Sarah Schaefer and Dr. William Fliss, co-curators of the 2022 “J.R.R. Tolkien: The Art of the Manuscript” exhibition in the U.S.A.
* And finally, the first fan-edits have appeared for That Recent TV Series. This has been radically trimmed and re-cut to make two coherent movies, The Light of the Eldar, and The Three Rings. Apparently the cuts remove a lot of the stock ‘TV soap-opera emotion-wrenching’ and superfluous filler scenes, much violence and gore, and also what are said to be the great many over-the-top whizz-bang CGI action-scenes. In general it sounds like a quieter and less padded version, cut from 9½ to 4½ hours in total. Doubtless there will be other fan-edits in due course.