The One hundred and sixty-ninth Roving Ranger

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

Life & Works

Jan 5, 1998. Roverandom (Abre numa nova janela) is published in the UK.

Events & Shows

The Hobbit will be shown in a new theatre rendition (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela)effort [CBC]

An accessible version of The Hobbit (Abre numa nova janela) will be shown in Madison, Wisconsin, USA [Feb 14]

Keep up to date with Taruithorn, the Oxford Tolkien Society - the Michaelmas Termcard (Abre numa nova janela) is seeting the bar high for the next couple of weeks!

A casting call (Abre numa nova janela) for The Hobbit is live now for the March dates (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) [March 19]

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Abre numa nova janela).

My podcast: A Talk with the Tolkienist [Spotify (Abre numa nova janela) | YT (Abre numa nova janela) | RSS feed (Abre numa nova janela)]

Scholarship & Fandom

Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tol­kien (Abre numa nova janela) [Literary Hub; by Michael Drout]

Tolkien Against the Grain (Abre numa nova janela) [Dissent]

Tom Hillman has The Digital Tolkien Project -- How it Helps My Work (Abre numa nova janela).

Dimitra Fimi has In Tolkien's footsteps: how "On Fairy-stories" shaped the thinking of later fantasy writers (Abre numa nova janela) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Heffalumps? (Abre numa nova janela)

David Bratman has children's classics (Abre numa nova janela) and the annual year-end post (Abre numa nova janela).

The Great Tolkien Reread: A Long-Expected Party (Abre numa nova janela)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 (Abre numa nova janela). [Bluesky]

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

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

Miriam Ellis has Aldarion and Erendis: Driftwood from the Ancient World (Abre numa nova janela) and When the Blue Mountains Dwarves welcomed Gandalf (Abre numa nova janela).

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 (Abre numa nova janela).

Bret Devereaux has New Acquisitions: Tolkien and Éowyn Between Two Wars (PPP Moot Keynote) (Abre numa nova janela).

Thermal Insulation of Hobbit Holes Comfort in the Shire (Abre numa nova janela)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 (Abre numa nova janela) has reached #150 today, celebrating the theme: J.R.R. Tolkien (Abre numa nova janela). [Bluesky]

Merchandise & Franchise

Should you ever come across one of the Hobbit pinball machines (Abre numa nova janela) here’s the tutorial to rule them all (Abre numa nova janela). [Youtube]

Joy Shannon Crafts a Mystical Masterpiece with Tolkien-Inspired ‘In the Forest Singing Sorrowless’ (Abre numa nova janela) [That Eric Alper]

The 10 Best New Board Games Of 2025 (Abre numa nova janela) [Gamespot]

Another Kickstarter-fuelled movie based board game is coming: Foes of Middle-earth (Abre numa nova janela)³ [Kickstarter; coming soon]

The huge Middle-earth: From Script to Screen: Building the World of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [ICv2; see the respective posts by Stonemaier (Abre numa nova janela) and Ignacy Trzewiczek (Abre numa nova janela) (reddit)]

In a podcast with the Economist titled Battle of the texts: which books changed the world? (Abre numa nova janela) 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 (Abre numa nova janela) and it continues on as a website (Abre numa nova janela).

What To Expect From Star Trek In 2026: A Franchise At A Crossroads (Abre numa nova janela) [TrekMovie]

Ansible #462 (Abre numa nova janela) has been published.

Warwick Davis has been named an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” in the New Year Honours List 2026 (Abre numa nova janela). [Gov UK]

How did The Lord of the Rings end up so beloved by the right wing? (Abre numa nova janela) [Independent]

Peter Thiel-Backed Bank Erebor Raises $350M At $4.35B Valuation (Abre numa nova janela) [Yahoo Finance]

A pocket book lament (Abre numa nova janela) [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 (Abre numa nova janela) [Cartoon Brew]

Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain: 2025 Report (Abre numa nova janela) [Wormwoodiana]

Goodbye to the year of the Big Lie; hello, reverse centaur (Abre numa nova janela)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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According to German law I have to inform you all links to enterprises, artists, products etc. are [unpaid advertisements.] Some purchase links may earn me a small commission from Blackwell's (Abre numa nova janela), Bookshop.org (Abre numa nova janela), or Genialokal (Abre numa nova janela), the (independent) bookshops of my personal trust (one with a Tolkien connection!)

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

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 (Abre numa nova janela). ↩

2. ↩

3. h/t Brettspielbox (Abre numa nova janela). ↩

4. h/t File770 (Abre numa nova janela). ↩