The One hundred and sixty-ninth Roving Ranger

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

Life & Works

Jan 5, 1998. Roverandom (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is published in the UK.

Events & Shows

The Hobbit will be shown in a new theatre rendition (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) 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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)effort [CBC]

An accessible version of The Hobbit (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) will be shown in Madison, Wisconsin, USA [Feb 14]

Keep up to date with Taruithorn, the Oxford Tolkien Society - the Michaelmas Termcard (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) is seeting the bar high for the next couple of weeks!

A casting call (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) for The Hobbit is live now for the March dates (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) 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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [March 19]

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

My podcast: A Talk with the Tolkienist [Spotify (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) | YT (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) | RSS feed (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)]

Scholarship & Fandom

Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tol­kien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Literary Hub; by Michael Drout]

Tolkien Against the Grain (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Dissent]

Tom Hillman has The Digital Tolkien Project -- How it Helps My Work (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

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

doubtfulsea has Heffalumps? (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

David Bratman has children's classics (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and the annual year-end post (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

The Great Tolkien Reread: A Long-Expected Party (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Bluesky]

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

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

Miriam Ellis has Aldarion and Erendis: Driftwood from the Ancient World (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and When the Blue Mountains Dwarves welcomed Gandalf (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Bret Devereaux has New Acquisitions: Tolkien and Éowyn Between Two Wars (PPP Moot Keynote) (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

Thermal Insulation of Hobbit Holes Comfort in the Shire (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has reached #150 today, celebrating the theme: J.R.R. Tolkien (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Bluesky]

Merchandise & Franchise

Should you ever come across one of the Hobbit pinball machines (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) here’s the tutorial to rule them all (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Youtube]

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

The 10 Best New Board Games Of 2025 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Gamespot]

Another Kickstarter-fuelled movie based board game is coming: Foes of Middle-earth (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)³ [Kickstarter; coming soon]

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

In a podcast with the Economist titled Battle of the texts: which books changed the world? (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) 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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) and it continues on as a website (Öffnet in neuem Fenster).

What To Expect From Star Trek In 2026: A Franchise At A Crossroads (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [TrekMovie]

Ansible #462 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) has been published.

Warwick Davis has been named an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” in the New Year Honours List 2026 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). [Gov UK]

How did The Lord of the Rings end up so beloved by the right wing? (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Independent]

Peter Thiel-Backed Bank Erebor Raises $350M At $4.35B Valuation (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Yahoo Finance]

A pocket book lament (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Cartoon Brew]

Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain: 2025 Report (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) [Wormwoodiana]

Goodbye to the year of the Big Lie; hello, reverse centaur (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) : Facebook (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) : Bluesky (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) : Instagram (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) : Threads (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) : Mastodon (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - and have a look at all Roving Rangers published so far. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

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 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). ↩

2. ↩

3. h/t Brettspielbox (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). ↩

4. h/t File770 (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). ↩