November 2016
I will start this month with a post that I felt that I could have written myself, except for the details of the neglects
Brenton Dickieson, Tuesday, 22 November 2016, ‘Battling a Mountain of Neglects with J.R.R. Tolkien’
The fact that it is (at the point of writing this) less than a week until Christmas is, I suppose, telling of my own situation. I have often enough thought of Tolkien’s letters when writing these introductions, and Dickieson’s clever use of Tolkien’s phrase, and his elegant weaving together of his own situation and Tolkien’s struck me as particularly apt.
For this reason, you will probably find that more of the links are given without comment than I usually do – even in months when I have been busy, but I hope you will nontheless find them interesting. This month I have also re-used a few of the best pieces of art-work that I have been permitted by the artists to use this year.
October 2016
There is nothing new, really. Except, perhaps, that I have managed (apparently without any permanent injury) to pass, as my children lovingly remind me, a farthing score decades …. Personally I like the slow polysyllabic distinguishedness to semicentenarian 🙂 Tolkien obviously featured on my wish list, and my own present for myself, Jenny Dolfen’s brilliant Songs of Sorrow and Hope arrived just a few days after, with more to appear at a later date. My pre-order of the second edition of Scull & Hammond’s J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide probably being last to arrive as it will not be released until September next.
September 2016
I begin to feel that I am copying Tolkien with my perpetual excuses about time – having too much to do and too little time to do it. But a lack of time (or, rather, an excess of things to do) is nonetheless a very real part of my life, so my usual disclaimers apply about newness, completeness and relevance (or any other implication of responsibility) are as pertinent as ever (all errors, omissions, inaccuracies etc. are of course my own). One way that I indent to deal with this is to leave more entries uncommented, and merely trust that you can judge the merits for yourselves 🙂
August 2016
I had these transactions something like 80% done before going to Oxonmoot, but couldn’t get the last bit finished due to my other preparations. Now, however, I wish to get it out – to get it off my mind, so that I can work on other things (such as e.g. a report from my first Oxonmoot). This means that most entries will appear without commentary, and that there will be things I ignore simply because I haven’t the time to dig out all my notes (if anything important turns up later, I will of course include it in a later issue).
July 2016
As you will see below, July has been a deliciously busy month with conferences and interesting papers coming up. And due to the summer holiday season in Denmark, I’ve been able to keep up better than usual.
As I can see that the end of August and start of September is going to be quite busy for me, I had better warn that the next transactions may end up being somewhat delayed. If I haven’t posted when I take off for Oxonmoot on the 8th, there is a good chance that I’ll merge the August and September issues …
I seem to spend a lot of space here apologising for, or complaining about, my lack of time, though the first half of this year seems to have been worse than usual (hopefully culminating in June). My available time seems unlikely to change much, so the reduced commentary this month is likely to stay the norm, at least for a while.