Hobbit bones

[oldBPLstackden…]

Yes, lorien, as usual, you have provided us with enough links to last a lifetime! ( well - almost!)  

TiggerBear - at one point I did try entering: [ hobbit bones mystery solved 2008 ] and it did come up with a recent article ( from March of this year ) ---

If you want to know how downright goofy I can be sometimes - whenever I saw that Thread Heading of:

[  Hobbit People Of Indonesia ] - I always assumed it was concerned with some present-day people, living

"hobbit-style", I guess, in the jungles of Indonesia!    

I turn Fifty-One today, an auspicious number of years for a mature ( well, that's debatable! )    

 hobbit of my age.

Best Wishes To All,

Ardo Whortleberry

[lorien]

Ah, you have crossed the halfway threshold. Happy Birthday!

Well, you have just reached the age for an "adventure". If I were you I would check my front door for any odd markings. And beware of any old men in pointy hats!

---

oldBPLstackdenizen wrote:

Yes, lorien, as usual, you have provided us with enough links to last a lifetime! ( well - almost!)

TiggerBear - at one point I did try entering: [ hobbit bones mystery solved 2008 ] and it did come up with a recent article ( from March of this year ) ---

If you want to know how downright goofy I can be sometimes - whenever I saw that Thread Heading of:

[ Hobbit People Of Indonesia ] - I always assumed it was concerned with some present-day people, living

"hobbit-style", I guess, in the jungles of Indonesia!

I turn Fifty-One today, an auspicious number of years for a mature ( well, that's debatable! )

hobbit of my age.

Best Wishes To All,

Ardo Whortleberry

---

[Dagor]

---

oldBPLstackdenizen wrote:

Yes, lorien, as usual, you have provided us with enough links to last a lifetime! ( well - almost!)

TiggerBear - at one point I did try entering: [ hobbit bones mystery solved 2008 ] and it did come up with a recent article ( from March of this year ) ---

If you want to know how downright goofy I can be sometimes - whenever I saw that Thread Heading of:

[ Hobbit People Of Indonesia ] - I always assumed it was concerned with some present-day people, living

"hobbit-style", I guess, in the jungles of Indonesia!

I turn Fifty-One today, an auspicious number of years for a mature ( well, that's debatable! )

hobbit of my age.

Best Wishes To All,

Ardo Whortleberry

---

Hey Ardo, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Uh-oh, hobbit-wise, of course, you now need to start distributing presents to all and sundry...

[TiggerBear]

Ardo
Happy Birthday, and many more!

[oldBPLstackden…]

lorien, Dagor & TiggerBear ---

Thank you all for your kind birthday wishes.

lorien -  I think I have mostly managed to keep clear of getting entangled in any Adventures lately, but I will  certainly heed your advice ...

Dagor - Oh, man! I had completely forgotten that bit about that present giving-away part of it all! ---

Ardo 

[BarbaraN]

Hi folks.

I asked Maria to move our TTT threads above the line and a couple of threads out. Let me know if you think any others should go. I think maybe the "Religion" thread should go below and just keep the "Prancing Pony", "Introduction", "Books", "Schedule" and the current book chapters above.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Good Afternoon/Evening/Morning, Everybody...

This goes back to that time we were kicking around that "Continental Drift Theory" business.

From all that I have been able to gather, that ancient sub-continent, "Cimmeria" was most likely not named after Mr. Howard's fantastical creation , after all, but more likely after a "real" locale...

I guess the "Howard" theory was mainly wishful thinking on my part... ----

A.W.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Hello Everybody, One More Time ...

I've been searching for the proper place to plug this little item in - and finally realized that this is the best place for it - especially considering that the subject matter is all sort of silly stuff, anyway...

For anyone who watched at that Rankin/Bass animated version of "The Hobbit" ( from 1977 ) [  or even at just looked at some of the artwork from that production ] - you probably noticed that Gandalf was given an extra long nose in that cartoon...

Similarly, if you have seen the Rankin/Bass production of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" -

you probably remember the character

of " Winter" ( who, it appears, is some kind of former sorceror/wizard whose previously formidable  magical powers have been depleted or otherwise taken away from him ) - who also has an inordinately long nose...

Along with the white hair, beard and "Wizard Outfit" - the general conception of Wizards, coming out of the Rankin/Bass Studios, seems to include this regulation "Ultra-Cyrano" style nose job...

Only one thing, though - I seem to recall the Gandalf wizard character coming across as being rather grim, stern, and perhaps even a little mean ( in the 1977 "Hobbit" ) ---

But "Winter" wizard comes off as such a sweet, nice guy -a little befuddled, perhaps, but with such a darling, winsome expression on his face ---

Ardo Whortleberry

[TiggerBear]

Ardo,
Hmm long noses, do you remember those Punch and Judy puppets? Long noses too.

[oldBPLstackden…]

Good Afternoon Everybody...

Apropos of nothing, I'm beginning to ponder taking a haitus from the Tolkien discussions...

Mainly because there seem to be less and less correspondents sending in their varied opinions on diverse matters...

I guess I'm mainly just wondering: "Where did everybody go?" ---

I realize this is probably a common "pattern" in the progression of any of these Book Club discussions... ( just guessing! ) --- 

Perhaps they have already said all they felt that they needed to say on the subject - perhaps they have all moved on to other discussions - or other interests - or other pressing matters...

Perhaps they are tired of hearing Ardo hogging much of the discussion much of the time...

[ Whenever I seem my name appear as the last posting-person on several different Threads, I start to feel

embarassed, actually hoping ( each time ) that there will be other names there.

For one thing, I prefer to think that others are "bouncing ideas" off of my ideas, and also vice-versa...]

Anyway, "The More, the Merrier" seems like it might apply here, as well... ---

I would like to take a little time to consider carefully some more ( well thought out, I hope ) contributions to some of the Threads - and I certainly have enjoyed being able to express myself so freely in this forum over the last few months [  sometimes it feels like I have just talked too much -  I am reminded of a saying that goes something like: "A fool keeps his heart in his mouth ..." { but I forget what the "Wise Man" does... } ] ---

Still, should I decide to do this, I know it may prove difficult for me to keep this new "resolution" to shut up for a while - I know it will probably prove to hard for me to stay away, anyway...

I guess this is more of an open invitation for more readers to send in their thoughts to these discussions -

so we all can have more of a variety of viewpoints and opinions and theories ( arguments, even ) ...

For everyone who has still been sending in their ideas, I think you are all still doing great!!! 

Ardo Overwordy Whortleberry

[lorien]

It is not you Ardo. You are probably the one most responsible for keeping this board open and going. It is a problem in all the clubs and it is being discussed in the Community Room right now.

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/bn/board?board.id=CR&page_of_message_id=6156

Our group is suffering from a lack of moderator and a lack of participants. As you are probably noticing it is no fun to have a conversation with yourself. We are loosing participants because there are not enough participants. We are down to three people.

You at least have been trying to stimulate conversation since we don't have a moderator either.

The other problem is that this is a "First Look" month and that club pulls a lot of people off the boards that otherwise might participate. The appeal there is that it is an exclusive club and they send out hundreds of free books to participants. Take a couple of hundred people off the boards and you don't have much left for the remaining clubs. Now they certainly could perk up things here on the Tolkien club by sending out 200 Free LOTR books to the first 200 people who signed up. That would work!

Message Edited by lorien on 06-06-2008 10:22 PM

[TiggerBear]

Now I thought there were 5 of us.(smile)


On some boards: the book in the past months, well I'd never read them.
On some boards: lost a moderator
On some boards: there never was fast traffic
On some boards: the conversation has fallen down to thumb text, or even worse the post contain
sooo many other posts(I talking 5 imbeded) that it's near impossible to tell what going on anymore

(shrug)

[TiggerBear]

Another thought
schools are letting out, how much has this to do with trafic?

[lorien]

We seem to have lost Dagor and Fan. Maybe they are only gone temporarily and will be back. No one can fault this group with lack of variety or originality of topics! We just need more bodies who are willing to say something. We do have plenty of silent readers so we must be saying something interesting.

---

TiggerBear wrote:
Now I thought there were 5 of us.(smile)


On some boards: the book in the past months, well I'd never read them.
On some boards: lost a moderator
On some boards: there never was fast traffic
On some boards: the conversation has fallen down to thumb text, or even worse the post contain
sooo many other posts(I talking 5 imbeded) that it's near impossible to tell what going on anymore

(shrug)

---

[Dagor]

Well, I'm still here, I have a tendency to post in spurts when/as the proper mood takes me, with longish pauses between my periods of activity. I think Fan is about the same. School is now over for me so I should have more "free time," though I do use the summer recesses for revisions -- currently working on new notes for the courses that will start up again this Fall.

I actually joined this B&N group, partly out of nostalgia, I was in the very first Tolkien Class B&N ran under its B&N University platform back in 2001 (I believe) -- so in a way this seemed a bit like "coming home." And this current B&N bookclub, was the only Tolkien site that seemed to be actively discussing the books on a regular basis. So, in these "degenerate" days, I think this site is actually doing quite well, the inter-net is fairly littered with dead-site Tolkien fora where there has been no activity for years!

This situation of "posting drop-off" seems to be a consistent problem. The following is a message I posted three, no, gasp, four years ago on a Tolkien site that once boasted more than two thousand members -- currently it is down to one or two posts per month, usually personal messages: "Hi, where is everybody?"

__________________________

"An Obsessive Tolkien-Chatterer's Plaint:"

POSTED 10/26/04

I have been a long-time devotee of the Middle-earth phenomenon, and I can recall a college professor of Eng Lit (1967) who once asked me why I was doing a book report on a silly fantasy filled with such absurd characters as this Frodo Baggins "thing with hairy feet." I remember when Tolkien stalwarts used to scrawl "Frodo Lives!" on classroom chalk boards, and the prevailing answer was "Who's Frodo? Does he fit in with Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo?"

Tolkien's LotR books were available from the mid fifties on, and seemed to sell only just enough copies to keep them from being remaindered. But, times changed as the "baby boomers" came of age, and the certainties of the 50's (we had just validated our culture, our economic system, our political system, our values by winning WW II, don't cha know?) became the insecurities of the 60s and 70s.

Suddenly "fantasy," and suddenly "escapism" were in vogue, and Tolkien's deep message of hope, his confidence that there still can be a "happy ending" struck a sympathetic chord with many Vietnam era, troubled minds. After 1965, LotR and The Hobbit sold like hotcakes. Since then, I think the mere statistics of book sales show Tolkien's writings are still enormously consumer-effective -- but, has the interest peaked?

If Tolkien could be largely ignored in the 50's, it is possible that public needs and public tastes in literature will change again in the future. Can the "Author of the Century," the 20th Century, become the "Who's Tolkien?" of the 21st? Maybe.

For those of us who really "live" in Middle-earth, I think there should be no grave alteration in our enjoyment of Tolkien's works, whether current levels of his booksales drop off, or not; and if the "Media" lose interest, and even if the Professor is no longer mentioned in 30 second vid-bytes, I can still live in Middle-earth. In fact, many of us will undoubtedly die, toothless as Gollum, hairless as Gollum, wrinkled-up and dessicated as Gollum - but still clutching our first copies of the LotR (mine is the first edition 1965 BB paperback that sold then for 95 cents - so "precious" I keep it in an air tight container, hoarded away from the sun, protected from its own acid paper in the freezer, while I drip coffee on my later,"expensive" hardbound edition).

I do not doubt that Tolkien will still command a handsome following a hundred years from now, but I do wonder if the broad wash of his popularity has spent its main energies?

I think crucial to an understanding of this point, is Asfaloth's statement about the impact of the visual versions from the movies. I certainly agree that there were many, many marginal, movie-boom sites run up after 2002, and I expect that a large number of the now "vanished" groups were of this caliber. But, most of the Tolkien Sites I once joined, were started back in the mid-late nineties when no one thought that the money squabbles surrounding movie rights would ever be settled. Many of these early sites had dedicated, "scholarly" writers diligently cranking out "three-part" essays complete with cited bibliographic references and explanatory footnotes. Alas, these "wonder-forums" are all but gone. Some have a sort of continued, "life-support" existance, but they have become social clubs where hobbit recepies are exchanged, and the caliber of writing rarely rises above the level of "WOW! I sure do think that Frodo was a kewl dude! Wish I was a Hobbit!" Others are just plain gone.

There was a brief influx of new members as the movies finally hit the screen, and a vast host of "movie-Tolkien" discussion was generated, but it often had little to do with the books themselves -- remember the "I just LUV Legolas-Orlando" phase? I think now, most "casual," movie-watcher fans have trickled back into the woodwork. Luckily, a few readers from that surge have remained, and most of them express the sentiment that they find the books far surpass the movies. So our "hard-core" fanatic-reader element has received some recruitment, but how many, and, echoing Shanaye, how long will they stay?

The basic fact I cannot disregard, is that so many, once thriving, book-oriented, pre-movie Tolkien Sites have fallen upon hard times. Is this something we should be concerned about? Or, as Shanaye puts it, is it something that we can take steps to check, and maybe even reverse? I hope so!

Maybe I'm just being selfish here, but I seem to have still so much to say/ discuss and learn from/ about the Middle-earth corpus and my fellow readers. Will I wind up posting in a vacuum, and then resort to answering my own posts!? ARGGGGGG!!! I do hope not.

One of the more academically-oriented sites I still contribute to, has dwindled from 106 members to only four actives, perhaps because the kind of effort required to produce "foot-noted" expositions just became too great. As members exhausted their favorite topics, they one by one fell away.

At another "pre-movie" site, there was, I think, too much emphasis on socializing, too much "I wanna be a hobbit" posting. Eventually, its three or four "serious" writers went elsewhere, leaving a fairly happy, homogenous rump behind, though I do not think they ever string more than three or four sentences together in a single post, and rarely do they actually talk about Tolkien or his writing.

In this regard, Shanaye, I think that there is a lot that can be done to keep the membership rolls healthy and active. One positive step is to realize that different people enjoy Tolkien for quite different reasons. A flexible posting forum that addresses the needs of reader-enthusiasts whose reading/ writing comprehensions, tastes, and interests are at different levels is vitally important.

From what I've seen here at TABA, despite the fall-off in activity seemingly detailed on the "Long-Lost Members" topic, I think there is enough variety in the types of posts, the available activities (RP, quizzes, riddles, trivia lines etc) to keep this a healthy Tolkien community. We'll see...

_____________________________

Back to the present:

Well, I guess "we did see:" the once great site with over two thousand members, is now moribund, and here at B&N bookclubs, with only three or five or six "active" participants, there are many, many more posts per week than the old sites get in a month or three...

So, has interest in the Tolkien Phenomenon peaked and waned already?

Message Edited by Dagor on 06-07-2008 01:25 PM

[lorien]

Oh Dagor you're back! [Jumping up and down!] I thought you had left us. Maybe Fan will be back too and then we'll be five again. I really enjoyed your essay. It inspired me to stick around. I agree--we have hardly touched the surface of Tolkien and there is so much to talk about, especially since his writings cross so many interesting topics. We have dozens of unfinished threads on interesting topics that we just haven't had time to get back to and still move forward. And wait until we get to the Silmarillian! A lot of us (or so there were) haven't even read it yet.

So we are the best Tolkien board out there! Maybe that is why we get so many "readers". I'm sure there are some Tolkien people out there just starving for a good discussion. Too bad they haven't found us. Well, once the new Hobbit movie gets going we will start to get plenty of new people. In the meantime we do have nice stimulating little community.

---

Dagor wrote:
Well, I'm still here, I have a tendency to post in spurts when/as the proper mood takes me, with longish pauses between my periods of activity. I think Fan is about the same. School is now over for me so I should have more "free time," though I do use the summer recesses for revisions -- currently working on new notes for the courses that will start up again this Fall.

I actually joined this B&N group, partly out of nostalgia, I was in the very first Tolkien Class B&N ran under its B&N University platform back in 2001 (I believe) -- so in a way this seemed a bit like "coming home." And this current B&N bookclub, was the only Tolkien site that seemed to be actively discussing the books on a regular basis. So, in these "degenerate" days, I think this site is actually doing quite well, the inter-net is fairly littered with dead-site Tolkien fora where there has been no activity for years!

This situation of "posting drop-off" seems to be a consistent problem. The following is a message I posted three, no, gasp, four years ago on a Tolkien site that once boasted more than two thousand members -- currently it is down to one or two posts per month, usually personal messages: "Hi, where is everybody?"

__________________________

"An Obsessive Tolkien-Chatterer's Plaint:"

POSTED 10/26/04

I have been a long-time devotee of the Middle-earth phenomenon, and I can recall a college professor of Eng Lit (1967) who once asked me why I was doing a book report on a silly fantasy filled with such absurd characters as this Frodo Baggins "thing with hairy feet." I remember when Tolkien stalwarts used to scrawl "Frodo Lives!" on classroom chalk boards, and the prevailing answer was "Who's Frodo? Does he fit in with Harpo, Groucho, and Zeppo?"

Tolkien's LotR books were available from the mid fifties on, and seemed to sell only just enough copies to keep them from being remaindered. But, times changed as the "baby boomers" came of age, and the certainties of the 50's (we had just validated our culture, our economic system, our political system, our values by winning WW II, don't cha know?) became the insecurities of the 60s and 70s.

Suddenly "fantasy," and suddenly "escapism" were in vogue, and Tolkien's deep message of hope, his confidence that there still can be a "happy ending" struck a sympathetic chord with many Vietnam era, troubled minds. After 1965, LotR and The Hobbit sold like hotcakes. Since then, I think the mere statistics of book sales show Tolkien's writings are still enormously consumer-effective -- but, has the interest peaked?

If Tolkien could be largely ignored in the 50's, it is possible that public needs and public tastes in literature will change again in the future. Can the "Author of the Century," the 20th Century, become the "Who's Tolkien?" of the 21st? Maybe.

For those of us who really "live" in Middle-earth, I think there should be no grave alteration in our enjoyment of Tolkien's works, whether current levels of his booksales drop off, or not; and if the "Media" lose interest, and even if the Professor is no longer mentioned in 30 second vid-bytes, I can still live in Middle-earth. In fact, many of us will undoubtedly die, toothless as Gollum, hairless as Gollum, wrinkled-up and dessicated as Gollum - but still clutching our first copies of the LotR (mine is the first edition 1965 BB paperback that sold then for 95 cents - so "precious" I keep it in an air tight container, hoarded away from the sun, protected from its own acid paper in the freezer, while I drip coffee on my later,"expensive" hardbound edition).

I do not doubt that Tolkien will still command a handsome following a hundred years from now, but I do wonder if the broad wash of his popularity has spent its main energies?

I think crucial to an understanding of this point, is Asfaloth's statement about the impact of the visual versions from the movies. I certainly agree that there were many, many marginal, movie-boom sites run up after 2002, and I expect that a large number of the now "vanished" groups were of this caliber. But, most of the Tolkien Sites I once joined, were started back in the mid-late nineties when no one thought that the money squabbles surrounding movie rights would ever be settled. Many of these early sites had dedicated, "scholarly" writers diligently cranking out "three-part" essays complete with cited bibliographic references and explanatory footnotes. Alas, these "wonder-forums" are all but gone. Some have a sort of continued, "life-support" existance, but they have become social clubs where hobbit recepies are exchanged, and the caliber of writing rarely rises above the level of "WOW! I sure do think that Frodo was a kewl dude! Wish I was a Hobbit!" Others are just plain gone.

There was a brief influx of new members as the movies finally hit the screen, and a vast host of "movie-Tolkien" discussion was generated, but it often had little to do with the books themselves -- remember the "I just LUV Legolas-Orlando" phase? I think now, most "casual," movie-watcher fans have trickled back into the woodwork. Luckily, a few readers from that surge have remained, and most of them express the sentiment that they find the books far surpass the movies. So our "hard-core" fanatic-reader element has received some recruitment, but how many, and, echoing Shanaye, how long will they stay?

The basic fact I cannot disregard, is that so many, once thriving, book-oriented, pre-movie Tolkien Sites have fallen upon hard times. Is this something we should be concerned about? Or, as Shanaye puts it, is it something that we can take steps to check, and maybe even reverse? I hope so!

Maybe I'm just being selfish here, but I seem to have still so much to say/ discuss and learn from/ about the Middle-earth corpus and my fellow readers. Will I wind up posting in a vacuum, and then resort to answering my own posts!? ARGGGGGG!!! I do hope not.

One of the more academically-oriented sites I still contribute to, has dwindled from 106 members to only four actives, perhaps because the kind of effort required to produce "foot-noted" expositions just became too great. As members exhausted their favorite topics, they one by one fell away.

At another "pre-movie" site, there was, I think, too much emphasis on socializing, too much "I wanna be a hobbit" posting. Eventually, its three or four "serious" writers went elsewhere, leaving a fairly happy, homogenous rump behind, though I do not think they ever string more than three or four sentences together in a single post, and rarely do they actually talk about Tolkien or his writing.

In this regard, Shanaye, I think that there is a lot that can be done to keep the membership rolls healthy and active. One positive step is to realize that different people enjoy Tolkien for quite different reasons. A flexible posting forum that addresses the needs of reader-enthusiasts whose reading/ writing comprehensions, tastes, and interests are at different levels is vitally important.

From what I've seen here at TABA, despite the fall-off in activity seemingly detailed on the "Long-Lost Members" topic, I think there is enough variety in the types of posts, the available activities (RP, quizzes, riddles, trivia lines etc) to keep this a healthy Tolkien community. We'll see...

_____________________________

Back to the present:

Well, I guess "we did see:" the once great site with over two thousand members, is now moribund, and here at B&N bookclubs, with only three or five or six "active" participants, there are many, many more posts per week than the old sites get in a month or three...

So, has interest in the Tolkien Phenomenon peaked and waned already?

Message Edited by Dagor on 06-07-2008 01:25 PM

---

[TiggerBear]

lorien
Now you've got me wondering how many of those "readers" just are marking the board as read, and how many actually read our head thumpings.


Dagor
Sadly some the recent rise in readership of Tolkien withered out after the movies. They did create a nice surge of new readers for a while though.
But this got me thinking, for books that do not get read as school assignments. Don't get placed in the children's or even the TA section of a book store. And recently have been squished with the non new reader friendly Hard cover title only presentation for their only common availability. Tolkien draws in a bigger crowd than one would expect.

[lorien]

---

TiggerBear wrote:
lorien
Now you've got me wondering how many of those "readers" just are marking the board as read, and how many actually read our head thumpings.


Dagor
Sadly some the recent rise in readership of Tolkien withered out after the movies. They did create a nice surge of new readers for a while though.
But this got me thinking, for books that do not get read as school assignments. Don't get placed in the children's or even the TA section of a book store. And recently have been squished with the non new reader friendly Hard cover title only presentation for their only common availability. Tolkien draws in a bigger crowd than one would expect.

---

I look at the "view" column for the thread. I just tested it and it doesn't get bumped up when you mark the board as "Read" only when you click on the thread. You can also look at the individual messages. Dagor's recent post has already been read by 34 people and Ardo's from last night by 65 people. And this is a slow weekend! Some people might not read a thread if they are not interested in it and read what they want to read and then mark "All as Read" but only the actual "Read" threads get bumped up. A person who doesn't even sign on to boards can read a thread and will bump up the count, though they won't have any threads marked with new messages since the board doesn't know who they are. Some people may come back and reread a thread even though no new messages are indicated. Since we started Book 4, 441 people have clicked on the first thread. You can't really judge too specifically. It is possible that just the four of us each felt compelled to read Ardo's posting at 16 different times since last night! I also can't vouch for the fact they actually read the message or just looked at it.

[Dagor]

Re: Tiggerbear's -- "Dagor -- Sadly some the recent rise in readership of Tolkien withered out after the movies. They did create a nice surge of new readers for a while though.
But this got me thinking, for books that do not get read as school assignments. Don't get placed in the children's or even the TA section of a book store. And recently have been squished with the non new reader friendly Hard cover title only presentation for their only common availability. Tolkien draws in a bigger crowd than one would expect."

Spot on, Tiggerbear! And each year still sees a dozen or so "explanatory," secondary texts being published on various Middle-earth themes. Still, quite a going concern.

[TiggerBear]

I look at the "view" column for the thread. I just tested it and it doesn't get bumped up when you mark the board as "Read" only when you click on the thread. You can also look at the individual messages. Dagor's recent post has already been read by 34 people and Ardo's from last night by 65 people. And this is a slow weekend! Some people might not read a thread if they are not interested in it and read what they want to read and then mark "All as Read" but only the actual "Read" threads get bumped up. A person who doesn't even sign on to boards can read a thread and will bump up the count, though they won't have any threads marked with new messages since the board doesn't know who they are. Some people may come back and reread a thread even though no new messages are indicated. Since we started Book 4, 441 people have clicked on the first thread. You can't really judge too specifically. It is possible that just the four of us each felt compelled to read Ardo's posting at 16 different times since last night! I also can't vouch for the fact they actually read the message or just looked at it.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, I found the pages where you can see exactly how many views. Looking at my own; Now that's just scary - over 5000 people read my center stage post. And sad - no wonder no one has suggested a good Indian cookbook, less than 30 people ever glanced at it. So you're right. There are quite a few people reading our head thumps on Tolkien. And flipping through; a few people have popped in, got a happy welcome and then disappeared like morning mists.

This material(excepting the Simarillion) is not heavy. They are left out of school books because it is still looked down upon as mere popular literature. These ARE fun books, so that's not it.
We are not unfriendly. New comers have been excitedly welcomed by one and all. And even when we are actively bashing are heads against each others, we're polite about it.
We are not exactly just casually social, but we do wander that way on occasion.

Soo, hmm a definate puzzle.

Are right how about it?! HEY ALL YOU CASUAL LURKERS! Speak out!
Obviously were interesting enough to read. We promise to be nice. Talk back to us. Disagree, chime in if you do agree. Hey I know I'm open to suggestion. If you don't normally post on these threads, but do read us, and you have ANY improvement ideas. TELL US!