Reddit reviews J.R.R. Tolkien 4-Book Boxed Set: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

It wasn't enough... The script has leaked:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345538374/

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this exact set on amazon is currently $19.
I did however find a paperback version for $15.74
https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Towers/dp/0345538374/ref=tmm_mmp_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Stalking your history you're based in the states. On that basis I typed into Amazon.com "hobbit lord of the rings box" and found several results, the first being

• box set - movie tie-in covers for $25
  
  That seems reasonable enough. Pretty much any collection of LotR will have the appendixes, though if you read reviews I'm sure you'll spot those case which don't.
  
  Me personally I have a box set (seven volumes) of LoTR (millenium edition) and an unrelated hobbit. Not sure if you're specifically looking for related-editions, or just want new copies..?

The special edition that includes The Hobbit will give you a little additional clearance.

I'm a sucker for this series(You)

and here is my wishlist

I love Kevin!

I love me... that's still right because my name is also Kevin :-)

I love Kevin

I love almost everything on you list :-)

So I'll have to pick this

Love LOTR

And for me, Planet of the Apes!

I love Kevin Bacon... Oh, and you're pretty awesome too.

This is my favorite thing off of your wishlist. I <3 that series so much.

And this is my favorite item in that price range off of mine. It's the only season in this series I don't have yet.

P.S. I love Kevin

Get her something like this https://www.amazon.com/dp/0345538374/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_r2LOBbK44C23F

Cheap, free shipping, and contains the entire main story ( the Hobbit and all 3 books to the Lord of the Rings). There are other books to the saga, but they are more history and world building. The main story I'm sure she's referring to is in those 4 books. And if she wants the others, this is a damn good start.

The Narnia series. I read this series over and over as a child. Its the reason I read so much today. I had read books before that series but I wansnt into reading untill I read this series. It just had everything I was into at the time, Travel, adventure, danger, fictional characters. It also paved the way for me to be into book series more than single books. I think they can go into more detail and make you feel like your part of the story more than one book can and when they are over you almost feel as if a part of you is over. Like its a part of your past life.

a few of my favorite series are:

LOTR

The earths childrens series which is my favorite

The song of ice and fire

The touchstone trilogy

Based on the number of readings, I'd say Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (if you're only going to read one Thompson book in your life, this is it) and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien.

> it is only proving the point that he, as an writer, doesn't care for sales number.

>He SHOULD be worried more than anyone if someone doesn't buy his books because they will think it is a game adaptation.

Either sales matter or they don't. Make up your mind.

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> If sales number matters in a discussion about popularity and not flat fee profitability, it is because this discussion is ours, not Sapkowski's.

You started this discussion by quoting sales figures in response to my post regarding the games' popularity in relation to the books.

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> But I'm discussing about what Sapkowski thinks, and not about what you or me think.

No, you're discussing what you think he thinks.

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> I was not happy at book fairs or conventions, when the fans took my books in my hand, looked at the covers and scornfully put them away. Game related. Games are not interested in us, we will rather have something original, new Abercrombie, Aaronovitch or Tregillis.

What is he describing here? Do they actively go up to him and say out loud to him that they are not interested in his books because they think they are game related, or is he simply attributing their disinterest to that idea?

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> He is talking about the games covers on his books, and not the games themselves nor CDPR;

In that interview. In the one I linked and many others he is talking about the games. From the article:

"I have nothing against the game itself. I think it's a high-level product. All the benefits CDPR received for it are absolutely well-earned. I have nothing against video games in general. I have nothing against the people who play them, even if I don't and never will," Sapkowski says. "The whole animosity started when the game began to spoil my market."

That's him saying the games have started spoiling his market. Not the game art on the cover or the publishers, the games. Yes, he has nothing against the games as products, but he seems to focus more on the negatives their success brings him more than the positives.

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> He EXPLICITLY took off all the blame from CDPR in that regard in other interviews, making sure it is foreign publisher's fault.

Yet, he says this in this interview that was published last month:

"How are some of them supposed to know—especially in Germany, Spain or the US—that my books are not game related? That I'm not writing books based on games? They may not know that, and CDPR bravely conceals the game's origins. It's written in fine print, you need a microscope to see it, that the game is 'based on' [my books].""

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> If he is talking about "losing readers", he is clearly referring, by definition, to people who HAVE NOT bought his books. Of course that if someone bought his books even with that games covers, then this comment does not extent to them.

And just what are you referring to here? What do you think I wrote that would warrant this clarification?

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> But do you think that these game covers will help the books sell for those who have not played the games or aren't gamers themselves? The non-gaming public, which is a far larger target audience, never takes seriously what they consider to be a game adaptation.

This is where you lose me. Yes, the American covers for the Witcher series published by Orbit look like shit, and they do use assets from the games. I disagree about them "looking like adaptations". There are other books that use 3D models on their cover, without it being based on anything else. If you don't know the games well enough to recognize the character models, you're probably not going to make the connection that it is related to a game until you read the back where it says the books inspired the games, and not the other way around.

The covers aren't bad because they use assets from the game. They are bad because they are bad covers. You know what other covers are bad?

http://www.fantasyshop.cz/gfx/upload/fs_ob_200742311542.jpg
https://www.amazon.de/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/279-6489234-9877263?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Sapkowski
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/19/ac/92/19ac92959047dc057381d622be9730df.jpg
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/witcher/images/6/61/Blood_of_Elves_UK.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110601235454

That last one can't seriously be an actual cover, can it?

Everybody knows the idiom "don't judge a book by its cover" and anyone who's serious about reading abides by that. We've all seen books we know are good with terrible covers, and we've all bought books that looked good on the surfaces that turned out to be shit. Have you been in a fantasy section of a bookstore recently? If you can't look past tacky cover art chances are you aren't that heavily invested in the genre.

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> Tell me, what do you think is a larger public: those who played the games or the average fantasy reader like the ones from LotR, ASOIAF, Harry Potter, Narnia etc. etc?

How modest of you to bring up the absolute biggest fantasy books series as if the Witcher books were destined to be among them, or if interest in those books would translate into interest for the Witcher series if the covers were just differnt.

LotR and the Hobbit popularized the fantasy genre and has as such become somewhat of a definition of . If you have any interest in the genre you are probably going to read it.
Here it is being sold with assets from the movies on the cover.

ASOIAF had sold 60 million copies over 5 books and 3 novellas in 2015 (latest numbers available), while the Witcher game series has sold 25 million copies over 3 titles.
Here it is being sold with assets from the HBO series on the cover.

Harry Potter and Narina are children's books that are well written enough to be enjoyable by those who are older, so naturally they have a much wider demographic that the Witcher series could ever reach without changing it at its core.

Books like that don't become huge hits because of their covers or impulse purchases, but by word of mouth. If a friend recommends a book to you and you see it has a bad cover, will you not read it? If you like it would you not recommend it to your other friends, telling them to ignore the bad cover art?

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> I mean, why do you think he should not worry about his reputation as a serious and authentic fantasy writer, instead of someone who seems to only write games novelizations?

Because as I wrote earlier I think people who don't play the games probably won't make that connection, and in any case anyone qualified to pass that judgement wouldn't be making that mistake. Confused gaming fanboys are not any authority of literature. There are people out there that don't know that the movie Titanic is based on a real event. As any audience grows the amount of idiots within it will also grow.

If someone is looking for serious and authentic fantasy, they look for it by doing research and fishing for recommendations among friends or online, not picking up books at based on cover art because that's just a shot in the dark. A book cover is just an ad, and anyone looking for quality products know to look past the ads and check out the reviews for any quality issues.

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> That other quote about walking through the woods and talking to a squirrel means the same thing that when he says that no adaptation can match the original in terms of storytelling. He is not detracting any medium, he is just stating a well known fact.

That's not a fact, that's an opinion. You can't do it exactly the same, but that doesn't mean you can't do it just as good or better (not saying whether or not the games did do it better in the case of the Witcher). As an example, many of the works of Shakespeare are old folk tales and stories modernized (for the day) and adapted for the stage. Now they are held up as classics because of how he was able to present those stories.

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> Ask it to any book reader, especially to ASOIAF or LotR readers. Likewise, there's no way for a movie or a game to nail the omniscient description of a character's feelings, thoughts or any other circumstance with the same depth that a written word can. Everyone knows it, what is wrong about that?

Again, opinions. By people who identify as readers about their favorite medium. Pictures, movements, sounds, dynamic interactivity, etc can express and reveal things that would be to impossible or trite to put into text. Just because you and a lot of other people might favor depiction in written form does not mean it is an absolute fact.

if its this version you're thinking of getting, I would advise not purchasing. Throughout these revised editions, there are several typographical errors that sometimes change Tolkien's meaning entirely. I'd have to recommend just getting the lotr trilogy set and a separate copy of the hobbit, just to make sure youre not getting some abridged copy

EDIT: link didnt copy properly, click here to see the much criticised edition

You can literally save $208.60 by buying the Mass Market Paperback over the Audio CD!

Just to be clear here, the paperback comes with both The Hobbit AND all 3 LOTR books!

Is it really that expensive to have someone read the book, record it, edit it, master it, produce a CD, and distribute said CD? . . . I think I just answered my own question!

EDIT: I've just realized that with the title and the subject, someone is going to make a YOU SHALL NOT PASS reference . . . thanks!

https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Towers/dp/0345538374

So here's the thing about stories. The subject of a story changes depending on context. The Hobbit is all about Bilbo's Journey. The LOTR is all about Frodo's story.

Add them together, and it's all about the story of the ring being found and destroyed.

Add to that the Silmarillion, and the ring is pretty insignificant - now the story is that of the history of Arda.

As a LOTR tourguide, my entire job was about telling stories. The story of Tolkien, the story of Peter Jackson. The story of how the films were made, whatever. Everything ties together into a greater story.

My point is that the Hobbit and LOTR tie together into a greater story than either book. Just because they're not published under a single name doesn't maen they're separate.

Incidentally, they are published together:
https://www.amazon.com/Hobbit-Lord-Rings-Fellowship-Towers/dp/0345538374/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_t_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EZA9BD7TYRVVHP8MQYCB


Compare this with Star Wars: The first trilogy is all about Luke's journey. Add the Prequels to that, and the overall story (movies 1-6) is now that of Anakin's rise and fall. Everything you add to the smaller story changes the context. They're connected. It's like poetry.