Ankantoiel's Diary

No responses yet – published on Oct, 28 2009 at 16:02 under Hobby.

Since I found out that Prof. Tolkien has written more then the Lord of the Rings, I have tried to read every single bit of it. But I was never able to lay hands on The History of Middle-Earth – I would say the central part of Prof. Tolkien’s work. A problem was in fact that I always wish that the books within a series look “harmonic”. I hate the fact that publishers aren’t able to publish books of one series in the same dimensions, with harmonic covers and on the same type of paper… I often wonder why this isn’t possible.

The History of Middle-Earth was a special problem, nevertheless. There were several editions, but it was difficult – or better impossible – to get ALL books of one edition, and if they were available on Ebay or Amazon (usually in used state) they were to expensive for my flavor. I like the new paperback edition of Harper Collins with cover arts by John Howe, but was not able to get all twelve books – as a matter of fact they are not available at the official Harper Collins site either.

Long years I haven’t thought of looking again into this matter, but at our last Tolkien regulars table we were talking about the HoME and I mentioned that it is so difficult to find the series in one piece. The day after I tried my luck and I was quite surprised to see that the complete History of Middle-Earth was available in a hardcover edition of three volumes on Amazon.co.uk.

Part 1 includes volume I to V of the History of Middle-Earth, Part 2 holds volume VI to IX – these books are also known as The History of The Lord of the Rings – and Part 3 covers the last three books, volume X to XII:

1. The Book of Lost Tales, Part One
2. The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two
3. The Lays of Beleriand
4. The Shaping of Middle-earth
5. The Lost Road and Other Writings
6. The Return of the Shadow
7. The Treason of Isengard
8. The War of the Ring
9. Sauron Defeated
10. Morgoth’s Ring
11. The War of the Jewels
12. The Peoples of Middle-earth

I am now really looking forward to submerge into Ardas history, but I fear that this will be a task that maybe requires more than a winter. As a bonus I also bought a small book that holds all Poems from The Lord of the Rings with wonderful art by Alan Lee. It is really useful when you are searching for a certain poem and have not the books at hand, and it perfectly fits into every bag.

2 responses so far – published on Oct, 12 2009 at 16:52 under Holiday.

See more pictures of Helsinki

Back from Helsinki, getting a cold from the flight, and missing a wonderful city with nice and friendly people and a lot of fun. Helsinki was really amazing and it is so sad that this week is already over. It’s not one of these city where you only see tourists that run from one point of interest to another. But it is after all a very international city and you hear languages from all over the world. So it isn’t astonishing that you will also see a lot of foreign restaurants – there are e.g. 16 (!!!) Indian ravintolas in the center of Helsinki. It is really suprising that nearly all fins are slim as I have never seen so many fast food restaurants as there, but on the other side it is the cheapest you can eat. In a normal restaurant you will pay 14-25€ for a main course. But the really expensive stuffs are sweets, desserts, salads and starters. At lunch most restaurants offer a buffet or a menu for a good price between 8€ and 12€.
We were nearly each time very lucky with our choice of restaurant. Excellent was the Indian Restaurant “Namaskaar” that was not far from our hotel, the Sokos Hotel Albert, and we would recommend both. Also the Finnish restaurant Manala was quite good and offered traditional Finnish food along with dishes from the European cuisine – the sizes of the dishes were good and the price was fair. I guess it will be difficult to get that good a lunch here in Innsbruck, especially not Indian.

We, of course, also visited the standard touristic views as the Uspenski Cathedral and the Temppeliaukion kirkko. Very nice were the trips to Suomenlinna and Seurasaari. Suomenlinna was once the sea fortress before Helsinki and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. We made a nice, long walk there fighting against the rough wind and watching the old canons and tunnels that are located all over the rocky islands. Seurasaari on the other hand holds old wooden houses from all over Finland and is home of an “army” of squirrels. We took nuts with us to feed them and we had a lot of fun there – I guess we are lucky not to be eaten alive.
On Wednesday we took the Eckerö Line ferry to Tallinn. The weather was unfortunately very bad and there was nothing to do during the three hours the ferry needed to reach Estonia. In Tallinn we spent some pleasant hours in the “Olde Hansa” – a medieval restaurant where we ate one of the best lunches ever and drank cinnamon and honey beer. It was really great there as everything was decorated in a medieval style. So there were only candles and wooden chairs, and we drank from hand-made glasses and pottery. It was really something special.

Helsinki has a number of museums. We only visited the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and the Design Museum that had unfortunately closed everything despite the ground floor. To be honest we spent the greatest part of our time in Helsinki with shopping. Clothes and shoes are a bit cheaper than here down in Austria and you will find shop beside shop, and shopping mall after shopping mall – the variety of goods offered there is astonishing. So don’t be surprised that I came back with a lot of new stuff.