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First Time Readers

First Time Readers

By: Jon Danny Kristen Jenn Lizzy
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About this listen

 It's every fan's dream to read the books they love for the first time again. The wonder, the joy, the excitement and forums and not knowing what is going to happen on the next page. It's one of the best experiences ever. Join four readers as they read and talk about Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and other nerd worlds. So come vicariously live through some first-time readers!First Time Readers Art Literary History & Criticism
Episodes
  • The magical system of Middle Earth is Bizarre...

    The magical system of Middle Earth is Bizarre...
    Oct 4 2025
    One of the things I hear over and over is how Tolkien is creating a soft magic system. I think in my mind I define that just as an ambiguous magic system…one where you don’t see magic all that often and then one that also doesn’t go into detail about some of the things that are happening. So I don’t know if some of you have any answers to these questions because it feels like Tolkien’s work just stays forever at a soft magic system. I would be very intrigued and curious if he ever went into detail about that? To be honest, it feels to me like he wouldn’t but I’m only a tiny percentage into the work of Tolkien.
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    10 mins
  • JRR Tolkien is the best perspective shift writer I've ever read.

    JRR Tolkien is the best perspective shift writer I've ever read.
    Oct 3 2025
    When I was in college, I took a writing class. In that class one of the very first things that they taught was to never, ever, under any circumstances, switch the perspective of your writing. Now, there was a reason for why they forced us into this, because they wanted us to stick to either first person or third person for our writing, and they believed that when you switched perspectives too much is messes with your ability to keep that straight, and it messes with the readers ability to follow what you write. But there was another secondary reason that my teacher gave after the lecture. She said, essentially, the reason I want you to not switch perspectives when you write a story is because it’s really hard to do that in any sort of convincing way to your audience. It’s just flat out hard to do it well. Plenty of authors do it, but we needed to learn the rules before we learned how to break them.
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    11 mins
  • This was the moment Pippin became a man...or a hobbit

    This was the moment Pippin became a man...or a hobbit
    Oct 2 2025
    I think you can only really know the measure of a man by how they handle adversity and challenges. In this case, you can only really know the measure of a hobbit by how they handle adversity. None of us like to be in those situations, but how we handle them is the thing that matters the most. I think that’s a huge theme of Tolkien’s writing right now.
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    10 mins
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