The One hundred and sixty-ninth Roving Ranger

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

Life & Works

Jan 5, 1998. Roverandom (Si apre in una nuova finestra) is published in the UK.

Events & Shows

The Hobbit will be shown in a new theatre rendition (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra)effort [CBC]

An accessible version of The Hobbit (Si apre in una nuova finestra) will be shown in Madison, Wisconsin, USA [Feb 14]

Keep up to date with Taruithorn, the Oxford Tolkien Society - the Michaelmas Termcard (Si apre in una nuova finestra) is seeting the bar high for the next couple of weeks!

A casting call (Si apre in una nuova finestra) for The Hobbit is live now for the March dates (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [March 19]

For all events check out the Tolkien Guide (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

My podcast: A Talk with the Tolkienist [Spotify (Si apre in una nuova finestra) | YT (Si apre in una nuova finestra) | RSS feed (Si apre in una nuova finestra)]

Scholarship & Fandom

Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tol­kien (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Literary Hub; by Michael Drout]

Tolkien Against the Grain (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Dissent]

Tom Hillman has The Digital Tolkien Project -- How it Helps My Work (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Dimitra Fimi has In Tolkien's footsteps: how "On Fairy-stories" shaped the thinking of later fantasy writers (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Substack]

doubtfulsea has Heffalumps? (Si apre in una nuova finestra)

David Bratman has children's classics (Si apre in una nuova finestra) and the annual year-end post (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

The Great Tolkien Reread: A Long-Expected Party (Si apre in una nuova finestra)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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Bluesky]

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

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

Miriam Ellis has Aldarion and Erendis: Driftwood from the Ancient World (Si apre in una nuova finestra) and When the Blue Mountains Dwarves welcomed Gandalf (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Bret Devereaux has New Acquisitions: Tolkien and Éowyn Between Two Wars (PPP Moot Keynote) (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

Thermal Insulation of Hobbit Holes Comfort in the Shire (Si apre in una nuova finestra)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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has reached #150 today, celebrating the theme: J.R.R. Tolkien (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Bluesky]

Merchandise & Franchise

Should you ever come across one of the Hobbit pinball machines (Si apre in una nuova finestra) here’s the tutorial to rule them all (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Youtube]

Joy Shannon Crafts a Mystical Masterpiece with Tolkien-Inspired ‘In the Forest Singing Sorrowless’ (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [That Eric Alper]

The 10 Best New Board Games Of 2025 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Gamespot]

Another Kickstarter-fuelled movie based board game is coming: Foes of Middle-earth (Si apre in una nuova finestra)³ [Kickstarter; coming soon]

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

In a podcast with the Economist titled Battle of the texts: which books changed the world? (Si apre in una nuova finestra) 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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) and it continues on as a website (Si apre in una nuova finestra).

What To Expect From Star Trek In 2026: A Franchise At A Crossroads (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [TrekMovie]

Ansible #462 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) has been published.

Warwick Davis has been named an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire” in the New Year Honours List 2026 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). [Gov UK]

How did The Lord of the Rings end up so beloved by the right wing? (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Independent]

Peter Thiel-Backed Bank Erebor Raises $350M At $4.35B Valuation (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Yahoo Finance]

A pocket book lament (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Cartoon Brew]

Second-Hand Bookshops in Britain: 2025 Report (Si apre in una nuova finestra) [Wormwoodiana]

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

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 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). ↩

2. ↩

3. h/t Brettspielbox (Si apre in una nuova finestra). ↩

4. h/t File770 (Si apre in una nuova finestra). ↩