[Nesacat]

GOLLUM - Just finished reading Strange Pilgrims and they certainly don't come any stranger. Have been looking for House on the Borderland as a graphic novel for some time but have yet to find it. Ah well, the quest continues. Am listening. Definitely listening.

Like JD I'm also curious about your take on the tales in Horror in the Museum. JD is right though about The Mound. I needed to re-read it.

Roverandom - Here is what Amazon has to say:

Begun in 1925, this fantasy was roughly finished later, but set aside in favour of sequels to The Hobbit.

Here, at last, two Tolkien scholars present it, with five illustrations by the author sandwiched between a long, minutely detailed introduction and padded but sometimes illuminating endnotes.

Changed from a live dog into a toy after incautiously biting a wizard, Rover is dropped on the beach by his young owner, where he meets a second wizard who sends him on a gull's back to the Man-in-the-Moon.

Sporting wings and a new name, "Roverandom" irritates the Great White Dragon that causes lunar eclipses and visits a valley where sleeping children gather for pleasant dreams, among other places, then returns to Earth to beg the first wizard, a bumbling sort who has since married a mermaid and moved under the ocean, to make him a real dog again.

Despite a wandering plot and minor inconsistencies, the old Tolkien magic is here in full force: in evocative names, glimpses of supernal events, and wonderfully exotic locales seen through the eyes of a comfortably familiar character.

Enthusiasts will pore over the notes, but the story stands well enough on its own as an incidental piece from one of our century's great literary imaginations.