Into the Woods

Tolkien’s letters

Just last week the new edition of Tolkien’s letters was released. There was a previous edition of Tolkien’s letters (1981, a book that I have had for years), but the new edition adds about 150 new letters, bringing the total number of letters to 500.

In many ways, I find the letters of notable figures just as interesting as biographies — Oscar Wilde, the Brontës, or the Freud-Jung letters. My to-be-read stack is pretty high at this point, but I’m eager to get to this volume.

Encounters

A couple of weeks ago, a strange new book on UFO’s was published. I haven’t yet read it, but apparently it takes UFOs very seriously. Ken made me aware of it. Ross Douthat mentioned it in his New York Times newsletter (to which Ken subscribes) and included a link to an interview with the author: “UFOs and Aliens Are (Probably) Not What You Think: An Interview with Diana Walsh Pasulka.” (For the record, neither of us is conservative enough to follow The European Conservative, but Ross Douthat certainly is.)

Ken has almost finished the book and is intrigued. I will write more about the book after it comes up in my stack of reading.

Ken is here

Ken is here for a week. He spoke at High Point University on Monday, and he’ll be here not only for a proper American Thanksgiving (he now lives near Edinburgh) as well as — dare I mention it — my 75th birthday, a few days after Thanksgiving.

Ken’s last book was This Land Is Our Land: How We Lost the Right to Roam and How to Take it Back, in 2018. I’m very excited about a new book proposal he’s working on and that he plans to have ready for his agents in a month or so. It’s such a great idea that I’m sure he’ll get a book contract, and, if so, of course I’ll write more about that later.

Meanwhile we’re caught up in a social whirlwind, because everybody wants to see Ken while he’s here.