The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and other verses from The Red Book
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The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book is a collection of poetry written by J. R. R. Tolkien. A volume of songs, rhymes and poems, they tell of Tom's encounters with Goldberry, Old Man Willow, the Badger-folk, and with the ghostly Barrow-wight.
Other poems in the book are an assortment of bestiary verse and fairy tale rhyme. Three of the poems appear in The Lord of the Rings, as well. The book is part of Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium and the Middle-earth canon.
The book, like the first edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, is presented as if it is an actual translation from the Red Book of Westmarch, and contains some background information on the world of Middle-earth which is not found elsewhere: e.g. the name of the tower at Dol Amroth and the names of the Seven Rivers of Gondor. There is also some fictional 'background' information of those poems, linking them to the Hobbit folklore and literature as well as their actual writers (some of them were written by Samwise Gamgee).
The volume includes what W. H. Auden considered Tolkien's best poem, The Sea-Bell, subtitled Frodos Dreme. It is a piece of great metrical and rhythmical complexity that recounts a journey to a strange land beyond the sea.
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It's not the book, it's me. I have a really hard time understanding poetry, so I had to push myself to finish this. I wanted to know more about Tom Bombadil, and even though this book didn't provide the answers I was looking for, I still liked Tom's adventures.
This is the third in Tales from the Perilous Realm, but this one was a first time read for me. I admit that the ‘other verses' kind of went over my head or I misunderstand, because about halfway through I was like “what in the world does this have to do with Tom Bombadil?” So I actually listened to this twice today.
This is actually a collection of poems by Tolkien. It includes two about Bombadil, who readers will know from Frodo meeting him in The Fellowship of the Ring. As one of the strangest characters I personally think he ever created, it still does not surprise me that Peter Jackson skipped that part entirely.
The collection includes three that are actually featured in The Lord of the Rings as well, and the book had a very cool ‘in-universe' (esque) preface. It speaks of how some of the stories are written by Bilbo or Sam, and how one featured is actually a dream that Frodo had, although probably not actually written by him.
During my first listen through, as I stated above, I was looking for the Tom Bombadil context and was super confused. On the second, I enjoyed it and appreciated it for what it was. Poetry is not really my thing, but some of these are considered to be very good works by Tolkien, so I'm glad to have experienced them.
The 16 featured poems are: The Adventures of Tom Bombadil Bombadil Goes Boating Errantry Princess Mee The Man in the Moon Stayed Up too Late The Man in the Moon Came Down too Soon The Stone Troll Perry-the-Winkle The Mewlips Oliphaunt Fastitocalon Cat Shadow-Bride The Hoard The Sea-Bell (OR ‘Frodos Dreme') The Last Ship
Enjoyable, well down works written throughout his life. Personally a 4/5* for the king.
I bought this book on a whim because of its lovely cover and its relation to the LotR universe (particularly with the Hobbits). I honestly didn't know it was a book of poems and I for one am not particularly fond of them so much.
Even so, I did really enjoy reading them and appreciated the different structures of a poem that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in.
If I'm being honest, I only ever read the poems and skipped the appendices containing a bit of history and analyses for each of the poems. It wasn't particularly interesting to me.
