🎆 Let Freedom Ring

Happy Fourth of July, all! It’s a holiday here in the States and so for today’s newsletter I thought I’d picture some of our favorite characters attending an imaginary holiday get-together. Join me in picturing this wild, eclectic gathering:

Gandalf shuffles excitedly back and forth from his cart to the lawn, where he is setting off fireworks with glee.

Bilbo has confused half of the guests half as well as he should like and insulted less than half of them half as well as they deserve but then suddenly vanishes.

Aragorn sits alone in the corner, smoking his pipe moodily and mysteriously.

Pippin has just accidentally kicked a football over the fence, which upsets the neighbor, an old colleague of Gandalf who is squatting in the basement of the abandoned Dwarven mansion next door and is a bit of a hothead.

“I enjoy this holiday,” Boromir shouts over his mug of ale to those in his general vicinity. “The United States has no king. The United States needs no king!”

As Sam makes potato salad in the kitchen, Sméagol asks him, “What's tater salad, Precious?”

“PO-TA-TOES!” Sam insists indignantly. “Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a salad!”

Frodo shifts uneasily as he converses with the host. “You said this camera system you installed is called…Ring?”

Gimli and Legolas are currently engaged in a hot dog eating contest, shouting their totals—“seventeen!” “eighteen!” “twenty!”—between mouthfuls.

Denethor looks up from eating tomatoes in the most disgusting way possible to see that Faramir is in food coma.

“My line is ended!” he laments a tad too dramatically.

Pippin runs over to get Gandalf, who takes one look and yells “Someone get that lighter fluid out of Denethor’s hands!!”

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Which other characters can you imagine attending this party? How might they act or contribute to the scene? Let me know in the comments! And have a Happy Fourth!

Appendices

• Amazon has a good number of Tolkien items on sale as Prime Day approaches, including the Illustrated by the Author editions of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion

  

  I’ve put them plus some other Tolkien items on a list on Amazon, which you can find here: Tolkien Prime Day Deals

• Speaking of Tolkien books, there’s a new deluxe illustrated version of The Lord of the Rings illustrated by Alan Lee that’s available for preorder. It’s gorgeous and has a custom-built illustrated slipcase stamped in silver foil, three removable art cards, and two foldout maps of Middle-earth. It releases on October 1st. Preorder it here: LOTR Deluxe Edition

  

• Finally, a new collection of Tolkien’s poetry releases September 17. This three-volume set collects almost 200 works with commentary and notes by world-renowned Tolkien scholars. Preorder it here: The Collected Poems of JRR Tolkien

  

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