Relatively early in the Pandemic, in the late spring of 2020, I decided to revisit one of my lifelong favorite books, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, and for whatever reason, I chose to "blog" my way through the experience on Facebook. At the time, I had a small number of faithful readers, and the experience of composing those posts and then engaging in some conversation afterwards was positive. In the end, looking back at them, I realized I'd created a pretty massive document, and I converted them into this website: https://sites.google.com/view/pandemiclotr/
Anyway, time passed, and there appeared on the horizon the prospect of a TV series on Amazon Prime called The Rings of Power -- I didn't know a lot about it initially, but eventually I learned that it would cover the Second Age of Tolkien's Middle-earth. In talking with friends, I realized that I hadn't ever really immersed myself in the details of the Second Age -- which at the time weren't centralized anywhere, but instead were scattered across half a dozen volumes, most of them published after Tolkien's death. And I still had that community of Facebook friends who liked talking Tolkien. So, why not "blog" my way through that material too?
So, this site is the collection of the posts from that Second Age adventure, covering material from The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and numerous volumes in the History of Middle-earth series that relates to that era in the history of Arda. You'll see, also, my responses/reviews of the episodes of The Rings of Power, since those of us who'd talked about the Second Age throughout the summer of 2022 wanted to keep the dialogue going as the episodes unfolded. I've lightly edited all these posts to remove some elements that make less sense here, although you'll still see references to my "posting the next one tomorrow", etc., and at times I'll be sharing material I added as a comment on a Facebook post, which in that space was part of actual conversations I was having with other people (not recorded here). Given the toxicity of a lot of online Tolkien content these days, I do want to be clear -- this is a site that both celebrates all the tremendous work Tolkien did and is constructive in what is said here about The Rings of Power, since personally I find a lot to like in that series (as I describe in some detail). It's a site full of rambling thoughts that maybe nobody asked for, but enough folks have engaged with what I'm saying positively that I feel like there's something here worth sharing -- I'm glad you're here, and I hope you enjoy it.
My name is James Rosenzweig, and I have a long history with Tolkien and the broader field of speculative fiction -- I grew up reading Tolkien's novels, and spent much of my teens and twenties diving more deeply into the rest of his work, from posthumous works like The Silmarillion to biographical material (including his collected letters) to the interpretation of his work by noted authors like Shippey and Garth. Meanwhile, I pursued a degree in English literature, I ended up working as a language arts teacher for some time in public secondary schools, and ultimately earned a graduate degree in librarianship and became an academic librarian. In that capacity, I certainly deal with books all the time (including Tolkien's work, at times), and I've had the opportunity to teach courses for first-year students in both science fiction and folklore (though never yet the work of Tolkien -- there's a faculty member who already does so with greater skill than I could manage). Before embarking on the project captured here, I "blogged" my way through The Lord of the Rings during pandemic lockdown in the late spring of 2020 -- you can read that project here: https://sites.google.com/view/pandemiclotr/ Anyway, the sum of all this experience is that I'm someone used to reading deeply and thoughtfully and then talking about what I've read at length, and I'm someone who's spent decades thinking about Tolkien's legendarium, and as a result, while you could find plenty of more erudite thoughts about that material elsewhere, I'm sure, I feel like I've got something to say, and I hope you enjoy reading it. If you have thoughts to share in reply, you can use the contact form below, or find me on Mastodon at https://thegreendragon.online/@notthathelpful