The Hall of Fire

vison, your words brought tears to my eyes this evening....good tears - the kind that come with smiles of recognition and memories and understanding.

Thank-you, from someone else who speaks to trees and longs to hear their answers.

And now for something completely different. :D On the purely practical side, if Nienor had been clad in the clothes of Menegroth (which I assume she would be, given that she had been living there) then surely Túrin would have recognized that, wouldn't he? And in doing so, wouldn't it have been possi...

You would only be asked to produce a passport because you poor guys don't have an ID-card. If you had an ID-card, that would be sufficient Well, isn't a passport essentially an ID-card.......with pages? :D Personally, I think passports exist in their traditional form because Customs and Immigration...

Athrabeth, if I don't already know you from another place, may I make your acquaintence now? Hello. Pleased to meet you. :D I think we may have passed each other on the seas of TORC a few years back, but the shipping lanes there were pretty busy then. It's great to meet you, as well. :) Question to...

Knowing the films is better than knowing nothing about LotR, which was true of most people before the films came out. But I hate to think of people deciding not to bother to read LotR because they saw the films—thinking they've had the full experience, when the book is so much more than the films e...

Don't get me wrong, he's a fascinating character, but he's also a total bastard. :agree: I "like" his character because of the layers that Rowling steadily peeled back. He was absolutely the most intriguing character of the series for me........until the final revelations in the DH added ...

Thanks, Rebecca!

Rowling's expositions of Snape and Dumbledore (among a few other aspects of the tale) have a subtlety and sophistication that really did surprise and impress me.

The more and more I read, the less and less I understand the ‘Snape is a really great guy and a better man than Dumbledore’ line. He hits a new all-time low with his ‘I see no difference’ line at Hermione’s cursed and rapidly-growing teeth. I can’t possibly understand why Lily didn’t want him… I do...

In my first readings of LOTR, I don't think I "got" Frodo at all. It really did feel that through him, I'd been swept into this grand tale, and I was so amazed and moved and terrified looking at everything through his eyes that I totally lost track of him . I never appreciated (or probably...

What a wonderful idea for a thread, Faramond! And what intriguing responses so far. As I've read through the replies, I've been nodding in agreement, because each of these characters feels dear to me, and I can very much understand how each could be "the one" (or “one of the ones”) that dr...

Imp, thanks for the tip! Those sound like they would be great additions to my class library. I'm making a trip into the city tomorrow, and it will give me an excuse to visit my favourite book store (as if I need an excuse ).

Well, I thought it was a bit like letting the Eagles show up at the Battle of the Five Armies. Tolkien could have let Men, Elves, Dwarves and Beorn mop up the goblins. It's just nice to have all the good guys have a lick at the bad ones. And vice versa, I suppose I must admit, the Battle of the Fiv...

I can see that it's going to be tricky, now that all the books are available, to figure out the best time for a given child to begin them I've been thinking about that too, Prim. I really can't recall a series of books that has developed at essentially the same pace as both its characters and its o...

Voronwë, this was exactly the kind of news I wanted to hear after yet another stressful overnighter in the little Big City. :woohoo: I'm very glad that you're feeling so positive about the whole experience, and that, like a true maverick of the shiny persuasion, you caused the ruffling of a few feat...

Please, guys, I'm not stupid. I know that there's possible explanations for these things, I'm just telling you my gut feeling on a re-read is that JK was going with the flow a lot and tidying up loose ends after. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not insulting the woman! Alatar, I don't think an...

We've had a water cooler for a number of years now, ever since the yearly testing of our well started to show some dicey numbers. The underground source of the well has always been a bit "sluggish", and it doesn't take much of a dry spell before we're "pulling from the bottom", a...

Hmm. Sounds like a fudge to me. In the first book we're led to believe that this is the real reason he dislikes Harry, whereas we know there's far more to it than that. Well, of course there's far more to it, but surely Rowling wouldn't have had Dumbledore telling Harry that James and Sirius had bu...

Finally, we are told that the reason Snape hated James more than anything was because he saved his life. Now, maybe I'm missing something here, but I have no recollection of this. Perhaps Dumbledore is speaking figuratively, in that he saved Snape from being a DeathEater, but that was really Lily, ...

Lazy Eye, by the Silversun Pickups (heard it at my daughter's last night and had it playing in my head most of today.....the first thing I did when I got home this evening was download it!).

Wampus! I didn't see your post! :hug: I'm so glad to hear that the Ladies Detective Agency books are close to your heart, as well. This particular book has caused me to finish two chapters with tears in my eyes, but they are never tears of despair, but rather tears that come with the tender sorrows ...