The One hundred and sixty-ninth Roving Ranger

-:- Strange as news from Bree. Epiphany edition -:-

Life & Works

Jan 5, 1998. Roverandom (Opens in a new window) is published in the UK.

Events & Shows

The Hobbit will be shown in a new theatre rendition (Opens in a new window) at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada [April 23, 2026 ff.]

St. John’s pub owner reads The Hobbit aloud for 10 hours straight in fundraising (Opens in a new window)effort [CBC]

An accessible version of The Hobbit (Opens in a new window) will be shown in Madison, Wisconsin, USA [Feb 14]

Keep up to date with Taruithorn, the Oxford Tolkien Society - the Michaelmas Termcard (Opens in a new window) is seeting the bar high for the next couple of weeks!

A casting call (Opens in a new window) for The Hobbit is live now for the March dates (Opens in a new window) at the Kathleen C. Cailloux City Center for the Performing Arts in Kerrville, Texas, United States. [I am just wondering - is there a Grocery Boy in The Hobbit?]

The Wade Center has announced "The Ring of Righteousness: Justice in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth" with Youtube (Opens in a new window) [March 19]

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Opens in a new window).

My podcast: A Talk with the Tolkienist [Spotify (Opens in a new window) | YT (Opens in a new window) | RSS feed (Opens in a new window)]

Scholarship & Fandom

Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tol­kien (Opens in a new window) [Literary Hub; by Michael Drout]

Tolkien Against the Grain (Opens in a new window) [Dissent]

Tom Hillman has The Digital Tolkien Project -- How it Helps My Work (Opens in a new window).

Dimitra Fimi has In Tolkien's footsteps: how "On Fairy-stories" shaped the thinking of later fantasy writers (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Heffalumps? (Opens in a new window)

David Bratman has children's classics (Opens in a new window) and the annual year-end post (Opens in a new window).

The Great Tolkien Reread: A Long-Expected Party (Opens in a new window)¹ [Wrong Questions; connections to Jane Austen]

For those with an interest in the upcoming Hunt for Gollum film, James Tauber of Digital Tolkien is providing facts from Tolkien’s works for every like given (Opens in a new window). [Bluesky]

Robin Reid has OMS 4: Proceedings Available. More Perilous and Fair: Women and Gender in Mythopoeic Fantasy (Ed. Janet Brennan Croft) (Opens in a new window) as well as I Despise the Dudebros Purveyors of AI. . . (Opens in a new window) [Substack]

Walter Stephen Judd, co-author of Flora of Middle-Earth: Plants of J. R. R. Tolkien's Legendarium, has passed away. (Opens in a new window) [Bluesky; a second edition has been in preparation for 2026/2027 (Opens in a new window)]

Miriam Ellis has Aldarion and Erendis: Driftwood from the Ancient World (Opens in a new window) and When the Blue Mountains Dwarves welcomed Gandalf (Opens in a new window).

Stephen C. Winter has “They Say that Men Who Go Warring Afield Look Ever to the Next Hope of Food and Of Drink.” Pippin Makes the Acquaintance of Beregond of the Guard (Opens in a new window).

Bret Devereaux has New Acquisitions: Tolkien and Éowyn Between Two Wars (PPP Moot Keynote) (Opens in a new window).

Thermal Insulation of Hobbit Holes Comfort in the Shire (Opens in a new window)² [Physics Special Topics]

Tolkien Tuesday, the positive-action community event on social media centred around a weekly theme chosen via a steerage group and also from community suggestions (Opens in a new window) has reached #150 today, celebrating the theme: J.R.R. Tolkien (Opens in a new window). [Bluesky]

Merchandise & Franchise

Should you ever come across one of the Hobbit pinball machines (Opens in a new window) here’s the tutorial to rule them all (Opens in a new window). [Youtube]

Joy Shannon Crafts a Mystical Masterpiece with Tolkien-Inspired ‘In the Forest Singing Sorrowless’ (Opens in a new window) [That Eric Alper]

The 10 Best New Board Games Of 2025 (Opens in a new window) [Gamespot]

Another Kickstarter-fuelled movie based board game is coming: Foes of Middle-earth (Opens in a new window)³ [Kickstarter; coming soon]

The huge Middle-earth: From Script to Screen: Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (Opens in a new window) is finally being reprinted after way too many years.

10 years of development, dozens of freelancers and no budget. How the biggest Lord of the Rings game modification was created (Opens in a new window) [Dev UA; on the Total War mod]

Pre-order one of the '“classis adaptations’” Bilbos.

Inter alia

Two publishers have dueling visions on the future of board games (Opens in a new window) [ICv2; see the respective posts by Stonemaier (Opens in a new window) and Ignacy Trzewiczek (Opens in a new window) (reddit)]

In a podcast with the Economist titled Battle of the texts: which books changed the world? (Opens in a new window) Lord of the Rings is named.

The UChicago Library exhibition Charting Imaginary Worlds: Why Fantasy and Games Are Inseparable may be closed but here’s a review (Opens in a new window) and it continues on as a website (Opens in a new window).

What To Expect From Star Trek In 2026: A Franchise At A Crossroads (Opens in a new window) [TrekMovie]

Ansible #462 (Opens in a new window) has been published.

Warwick Davis has been named an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” in the New Year Honours List 2026 (Opens in a new window). [Gov UK]

How did The Lord of the Rings end up so beloved by the right wing? (Opens in a new window) [Independent]

Peter Thiel-Backed Bank Erebor Raises $350M At $4.35B Valuation (Opens in a new window) [Yahoo Finance]

A pocket book lament (Opens in a new window) [Facebook]

Mass market paperbacks made Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and Frank Herbert’s Dune into huge successes, just as they turned J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings into a bestseller and in so doing created the vast field of modern fantasy literature.

Upcoming Animated Movies Calendar: A Look At 2026 Feature Animation Releases (Opens in a new window) [Cartoon Brew]

Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain: 2025 Report (Opens in a new window) [Wormwoodiana]

Goodbye to the year of the Big Lie; hello, reverse centaur (Opens in a new window)⁴ [the BMJ]

Without a doubt—and more clearly than ever before—the world bows to the power of the corporation. Hail the multinational, the conglomerate. All hail the tech bros. We live in their age of surveillance capitalism.

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If you are interested in my other Tolkien-related work please have a look:
The Tolkienist Blog (Opens in a new window) : Facebook (Opens in a new window) : Bluesky (Opens in a new window) : Instagram (Opens in a new window) : Threads (Opens in a new window) : Mastodon (Opens in a new window) - and have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Opens in a new window)

As this is 2025 I would like to note that this newsletter is 100% human-made, curated by me, Marcel R. Bülles. This also holds true for everything I write with my blog and here at Steady. Also, the minimum time of curating this newsletter ranges from 8-12 hours every week. Please consider supporting me so I can continue offering the Roving Ranger - thank you.

1. h/t File770 (Opens in a new window). ↩

2. ↩

3. h/t Brettspielbox (Opens in a new window). ↩

4. h/t File770 (Opens in a new window). ↩