Lord of the Rings Lego

This is something that I need to have in my life. Finally, The Fellowship can sit with me while I work at my desk and guide me on my way. 

(via Gizmodo)

Here’s a fun little Google Easter egg for you. Head over to Google Maps, then get some directions. Start from The Shire, then put the destination as Mordor. Make sure that you select Walking directions.

Can you tell I’m all about Tolkien this morning? 

(via The Next Web)

After having just finished my epic extended-edition Lord of the Rings marathon last weekend, I’ve been scouring the interwebs for the lore behind the myriad of characters and places featured in both the books and film. I then stumbled across this little beaut. Now it’s not officially endorsed in any way, but Russian paleontologist, Kirill Yeskov, has created a short story (270 pages) of Mordor’s view of what happened during the Lord of the Rings. As the saying goes: “There’s two sides to every story”… so let’s find out what the bad guys thought…

As bad lots go, you can’t get much worse than the hordes of Mordor from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Led by an utterly evil disembodied entity who manifests himself as a gigantic, flaming, pitiless eye, and composed of loathsome orcs (or goblins), trolls and foreigners, Mordor’s armies are ultimately defeated and wiped out by the virtuous and noble elves, dwarfs, ents and human beings — aka the “free peoples” — of Middle-earth. No one sheds a tear over Mordor’s downfall, although the hobbit Sam Gamgee does spare a moment to wonder if a dead enemy soldier is truly evil or has simply been misguided or coerced into serving the dark lord Sauron.

Well, there’s two sides to every story, or to quote a less banal maxim, history is written by the winners. That’s the philosophy behind “The Last Ringbearer,” a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of “The Lord of the Rings”) and told from the point of view of the losers. The novel was written by Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, and published to acclaim in his homeland in 1999. Translations of the book have also appeared in other European nations, but fear of the vigilant and litigious Tolkien estate has heretofore prevented its publication in English. (Text via salon.com)

You can download the English translation by Yisroel Markov here