Thursday 8 November 2012

TREE AND LEAF

Just heard that there are some 106,000 English language copies of my Official Movie Guide out there waiting to be bought, plus over 232,000 copies of foreign co-editions: which sounds like rather a lot of trees have given up their lives in the interests of Hobbit fandom...

What would Treebeard say?

Many of those trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn; many had voices of their own that are lost for ever now. And there are wastes of stump and bramble where once there were singing groves. I have been idle. I have let things slip. It must stop!
Maybe prospective readers with iPads might like to consider opting for the Apple iBooks edition: just £9.99 with some interactive features and an amazing level of added luminosity. Prospective purchasers of this version are recommended to read the book with their iPad in landscape mode (rather than portrait) in order to best appreciate the illustrations and the interactive features.



Also just published: the companion volume to my own book, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Visual Companion by my good friend Jude Fisher, who wrote three previous Visual Companions to coincide with The Lord of the Rings trilogy.


Crammed with more than 100 lavish colour photographs from the film, The Hobbit: Visual Companion features a brand new fold-out map charting Bilbo's journey from Bag End to Wilderland. It can be ordered here.

Anticipation is certainly building and, if you haven't caught up with them yet, here are the characters whose adventure we're all going to be following five weeks from now...


 















And, of course, my precioussss...


Illustration of Treebeard by Alan Lee

11 comments:

SharonM said...

I have to say, surprisingly, that a couple of those Dwarves look hot!

SharonM said...

If I were a robot, maybe I'd find it easier to read these demand 'two words'!

Brian Sibley said...

Which Dwarves look hot? That's question! It depends: you may be right or it may be another case of "should have gone to Specsavers"!

Sorry about the robot thing: I hate them, too; but if you saw how many spam messages I delete before they hit the blog, you'd understand why I DAREN'T stop the moderation process.

SharonM said...

Kili and Fili and possibly Thorin.

You should have a moderation process, it's just that this particular one is often impossible to read.

Roger O B... said...

On the question of moderation, Brian, you are right. A local music venue is bombarded with messages from American undertakers (have they seen the band?), hairdressers (ditto), dating agencies and real estate agents plugging their wares

Dave said...

My copy arrived today :-)

Brian Sibley said...

Sharon – That's a relief! If you'd said one of the others, I'd have sent in the paramedics!

Roger – For some reason I haven't had any undertakers yet: just as well, really, I'm feeling under the weather as it is!

Dave – I hope you enjoy it! :)

Boll Weavil said...

Strikes me that a decent barber could make a reasonable living in The Shire.

Michael Flowers said...

Let's hope Ash trees about to get Ash die-back were used to make the books ;) Let's hope Mountain Ash (an unrelated species to Ash) are safe, or Bregalad may get rather hasty again ;)

Brian Sibley said...

Boll – An alternative source of income for Gaffer Gamgee, perhaps!

Michael Flowers – Indeed! :)

Tony said...

Brian, not sure what Treebeard would think of this:
http://stuntoftheday.tumblr.com/post/35624308624/tolkien-fan-creates-a-hobbit-house-with-2600

Best wishes