Random Tolkien thought

[icepixie]

Today, on Obscure Questions I Pose Because That Was Always My Favorite Part of Studying Literature: Was Tolkien a John Masefield fan?

The MLA database is silent on the matter. Me, I'm going to go with "yes."

Back to your regularly-scheduled B5 commentary in a bit. I spent the past two days re-reading The Historian (which I just, oh, I love it, even if I do see what critics mean about the characters being a bit featureless--but vampires and history and working with primary sources and YES), so I've left other things by the wayside for a bit.

Comments

[icepixie]

I love that you tried to teach yourself Anglo-Saxon. :D I still have my old textbook--The Cambridge Old English Reader. I remember we also had a little red book that had a great dictionary in the back, but as I don't remember the title, that wouldn't be helpful to you. (I'm pretty sure I sold it back, or it would be here, so I'm guessing at the time I thought the Cambridge one was the better book.) I haven't looked at it since 2005, though, so I'm not sure how accessible it would be without a teacher.

Talking about it made me nostalgic, so I found a picture of the room. It's in an old house that dates from the 1850s--several classrooms and offices are housed in similar residences. We had several buildings burn down over the years as well, but we just rebuilt them, unlike your university. (I imagine part of that had to do with there being no other buildings in town to move to. Even now there are only 600 permanent residents in Gambier. The college is just about the only employer.)

they really are rats with wings

EXCELLENT description! Although they're kind of cute as well. Still, rats with wings, yes.

I can see how you would not be wanting to go out on the water again after something like that!

Heh, yeah, at least in anything smaller than, oh, a car ferry or the like.