2025 in retrospect: fifteen notable events
The new year has come and gone and I am in a pensive mood. I am tired and in pain, by the by, but that is not going to keep me from my...
Category: Rants
Ten years ago two German comedians pranked the nation with a fake Elven singer called Ulmo and made the charts
On November 18, 2015, a video by the singer Ulmo Ocin hit Youtube. It is titled MANDALO. In about two months time it was to amass more than two million views – a...
MY OXFORD YEAR (2025), review
A running commentary, mild rant, and appreciation by Marcel R. Bülles aka the Tolkienist I was born to do a review of this particular romantic comedy. I will tell you why. I have...
Boromir’s Bloggish Bebotherments
Boromir’s Bloggish Bebotherments is an on-going series of top tier whining by me, myself, and I why the internet is a shit place to find relevant information, how curating a Tolkienian newsletter is...
![[Study of Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf] (c) Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library et al.](https://thetolkienist.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/sendak_hobbit-520x347.jpeg)
Why Maurice Sendak did not illustrate J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’
ocial media have their most wonderful advantages and you may know that Twitter is probably the one I like most these days. (Addendum: This is June 2024, and no, Twitter is no longer...
Why J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis would never have been friends in the age of Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp
he edutainment website Wisecrack recently published a “Text Talk: Writers” piece in which famous friends J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis talk about the publication of ‘Narnia’ exchanging messages on their smartphones – and...
AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER. How Discworld shaped my life: Remembering Sir Terry Pratchett (or rather, PTERRY.)
must have met Rincewind for the first time in my life in 1987. I had just recently read The Lord of the Rings for the first time which had quite a few immediate...
Poor Bert? Research finds internet trolls to show patterns of sadism
f you have read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien you will have come across one of the early scenes in the story where Thorin & Co. and Bilbo are caught by three disgusting...
Middle-earth Travel Guide [infographic] by CheapFlights full of mistakes
UPDATE: An updated and corrected version of this infographic is now available! he Tolkienist is a project with a long-term plan 🙂 I will not bore with the details but do believe me...
Why did you call this blog “The Tolkienist”?
here are a number of obvious reasons for this. First of all, any website would do well in chosing a decent name. I could have called it http://www.damn-i-love-middle-earth-so-much-man.com but that wouldn’t be easy...
Middle-earth and Modernity. Part 1: Don’t deal out death in judgment.
n recent years I have read many criticisms of Tolkien’s works, some of them more elegant and convincing than others. As with any writer of his time and age, particularly in comparison to...
How algorithms rule our world, Klout doesn’t know Tolkien and why care you should
have been working on developing a social media campaign in recent months to support my continuing work here at the Tolkienist. Although the number of articles is still small, the scope of what...