J.R.R. Tolkien

A Life Inspired

By: Wyatt North

Narrated by: David Glass

Length: 2 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford. His research on Beowulf is still considered a standard in the field. Tolkien, however, unlike most Oxford dons, stepped out of his role as professor to create popular literature. Tolkien's best-known writings were The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, in which he created a fully realized world known as Middle-earth, vaguely identifiable as Northern Europe in a pre-history that never was. To bring his world to life, he produced detailed geography and cartography as well as a legendary background. He peopled the world with diverse types of inhabitants and created spoken and written languages for them. By doing this, he essentially created modern fantasy literature and a standard for subsequent writers to chase and miss. A British poll at the end of the 20th century named The Lord of the Rings the most important English-language work of that century. During his lifetime, Tolkien did not appreciate people focusing on him rather than on his writings. He felt that his writings were more worthy of attention. With apologies to the late gentleman, he is now due some notice.

©2014 Wyatt North Publishing, LLC (P)2014 Wyatt North Publishing, LLC

A great story marred by an awful narration

Would you try another book from Wyatt North and/or David Glass?

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the producers chose this narrator, and then stuck with him throughout production. Nasal, high pitched, using an odd rhythm and accenting all the wrong places in the flow of the story. Terrible reading. I have 400 some audio books and I'm never had to just abandon a book like this because of the narrator. How hard could it have been to get a good one? Or even a less bad one?

Would you be willing to try another one of David Glass’s performances?

No, no, no, no, no. Don't understand how he got into the business.

Was J.R.R. Tolkien worth the listening time?

No, because of the narration. I will read the book instead as I am a huge Tolkien fan.

Nice History of Tolkien

Good account of Tolkien's life, including the Inkling era. However, I wasn't impressed with the last two chapters that had nothing to do with Tolkien and were just previews of the author's biography on the current pope.

Insight into a Genius Mind

A Life Inspired gives insight into what and who allows J.R.R. Tolkien to create the characters and worlds of Middle Earth. From his world of Oxford and "words" Tolkien creates a mixture of myth and fantasy. The voice of this book explains where Tolkien gets titles for villages and kingdoms. Tolkien would not let the discouragement of WWI to destroy his optimism thoughout his writing.

The narration was tolerable at 1.25

The biography was clear and concise, but the narration is one of the worst I've heard. Having said that, if I had set it to 1.25 to begin with, the beginning wouldn't have been as hard to listen to.

Informational

I like the book because I was able to learn more about Tolkien. I wanted him to go more in detail on the Lord of the rings. I would suggest the Book to any hard-core Lord of the rings fans.

So interesting...

I have always been a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and learning more of what inspired his works makes the series all the more special.

I’ve been pronouncing “Tolkien” wrong all these years.

A very informative biography and light literary analysis of Tolkien’s famous works. I had no idea about the conflict between Lewis and him about the philosophy of allegory. Great listen. Now I’ve got to reread the “Fellowship of the Rings.” Thank you Audible.

it says Tolkien so I bought it. Not much to it.

it was ok. not new, nothing deep.
but why are the last few chapters on Pope Francis?

Good in formation......BUT.......

For such a short book it has plenty of information in it that is very interesting. Here is where the BUT comes in.......the narrator is beyond poor.....sounds like a robot very very poor and takes away from the book because of it.

college level report on Tolkien

Generic biography, about as thorough as it can be for being so short. *NOTE* this audio includes about 30 minutes of a book on pope Francis so it is even shorter than listed.
It would have been better if the author put more perspective on Tolkien and his times. This work comes across as "just the facts" without much pointed out as to why the facts are of interest.