Has anyone read Tolkien outside of LOTR? I've read several of his other stories as well as some essays, and I'm now making my way through his letters.

Of the non Middle earth books I've read are
Leaf by Niggle
Farmer Giles of Ham
The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son
Tree and Leaf
Smith of Wootton Major
On Fairy-Stories
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Orfeo
Pearl

And published after his death.
Finn and Hengest
Roverandom
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún

Roverandom and farmer Giles of Ham are his best. Though the others are good too.

I haven't read Roverandom, but, yes, Farmer Giles was good. Of the ones you listed, I think I enjoyed On Fairy-Stories the most. I guess I like seeing the depth of thought he put into his stories. He also wrote an essay that analyzed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that was amazing. I have to admit I always found that story a bit odd, but his analysis was enlightening.

Roverandom is probably my favorite (non middle earth) story.

Some other good ones are Leaf by Niggle and Smith of Wooten major.

I really would like to read The Silmarillion. I've heard so much about it.

But I have yet to read anything outside of The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings by Tolkien.

I've read Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and Leaf by Niggle. I really need to read On Fairy-Stories one of these days...

As a child, I absolutely loved the Father Christmas Letters, and read them over and over---and that's a book I haven't seen mentioned in this thread so far.

A couple of years ago, my family got Roverandom from inter-library loan and read it aloud for "family reading." I ... seem to recall having somewhat mixed feelings about it.

I think I read Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain in my British Literature class my senior year of college, but I don't remember that very well (because the class went so fast through so much literature ...)

I've just started reading The Hobbit again, the last I read of Tolkein was LOTR. Does anyone else find his writing style, comparing the Hobbit to the LOTR, to be completely different?

Definitely, although from what I recall, the writing style shifts through the Hobbit. It's been a while, though.

The style is different between the Hobbit and LotR, and the style shifts during both of them as well, though I would say it shifts less in the Hobbit than LotR. I think I heard somewhere that somebody (Tolkien?) said LotR was a children's story got out of hand. It begins like a children's story, if you think about it. The first sentence involves the excitement of the hobbits about Bilbo's upcoming birthday party. Not exactly an epic tone there. Later on, the epicness comes out, until you have the battle of Pellenor fields and Shelob and the witch-king and all sorts of things like that. The Hobbit kept a more fairytalish tone throughout the entire work, however.

Yep.

Tolkien started the sequel as a children's story, like the Hobbit. However, the primary audience that he wrote for remained his children, and they had grown up. Consequently (though only partially because of this), the story grew too, and he later had to go back and revise his earlier stuff so that it would be more in-line with the older-essence that the Lord of the Rings had gained.

Oh wow, I didn't know that! How interesting, that definitely explains it then!

Really? I sort of remember that he wanted to write the story of the end of the Third Age, and then he thought of connecting it to The Hobbit.

(Not that I care enough one way or the other to go digging in the relevant volumes of The History of Middle-Earth, the Christopher Tolkien-edited critical editions of all of his father's old drafts and revisions. )


I agree that the primary audience was always his children, who had indeed grown up, but in the introduction or preface to The Lord of the Rings he says that he had the whole story in mind from the beginning.


The only major-even-for-Tolkien revision-for-consistency that I'm aware of is that after The Lord of the Rings was published The Hobbit was revised to make the sequence in which Bilbo acquires the Ring fit how The Lord of the Rings said it happened.

DISCLAIMER: I have a horrible memory that is prone to large bouts of extreme forgetfulness. Everything I say should be taken with a grain of salt. ...I think.
That is not necessarily antithetical to what I'm saying here.

(I haven't read most of those volumes yet, so most of my info related to this would probably have come from the Tolkien Professor.)

I'm not saying that he didn't have it in mind from the beginning. My point is that when he started to write the Lord of the Rings, he originally expected it to turn out like the Hobbit (the story proved to have other ideas).

I think the changes I am referring to had to do with tone/style and not content/consistency.

Once I checked out and read every Tolkien book in the library...simultaneously. XDDDDDD hahahahahaha so...I think I can say I've read almost every book he's written.
I liked Roverandom, Letters from Father Christmas, and...the one where there was a magic silver star in a piece of cake? Anybody know that one?

That would be Smith of Wooten Major.

Thanks! It was years ago, so I couldn't remember.

I admit I'm not as up on my Tolkien as I should be. I remember a poem about...an elephant I think. I also remember liking it. I've read some of his other poetry as well--and I LOVE the Father Christmas letters. So sweet.

Yep. Though Sam only knew it as an Oliphaunt.