💎 Treasures #023: March '25 Mathoms

Welcome to the latest edition of “Mathoms,” a feature here at Jokien with Tolkien where I share things I I enjoyed or found interesting and don’t want to necessarily discard but also don’t really have a place to share otherwise, such as quotes, ideas, notes and excerpts from what I’ve been reading recently, some of my favorite recent Substack reads, research that didn’t make it into a recent essay or article, and more!

Mathoms: an old word of the hobbit-dialect, not recorded as being in use outside the Shire. It was used to refer to "trinkets" or any item that Hobbits had no particular immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away. -Tolkien Gateway

In today’s issue:

• My current reads thoughts on the books I’ve finished recently

• Recent articles and Substack newsletters I enjoyed

• Newsletter topics that are bouncing around in my head but that I haven’t gotten to yet

• Extended Edition Spotlights!

This last category is where we’ll begin. I’ve surveyed current Extended Edition members and asked if they have anything that they have written or created recently that they’d like me to spotlight. Here’s the first crop of responses:

Extended Edition Spotlights

---

• Tiffany Chu
  has compiled essays from her Substack
  The Untangling
  into a recently released e-book, which you can find on Amazon.

• Amy Mantravadi
  has finished a book before her eleventy-first birthday and without the benefit of a relaxing writer’s retreat in Imladris. You can find Broken Bonds: A Novel of the Reformation at 1517.org (or listen to her talk about it and make some Tolkien references on a podcast)

• Minor Fossil
  is releasing releasing an ambient album later this year where each song is based on a different Jules Verne novel. Here is a link to the post for "Cavern" from that album: Cavern

---

Enjoy the rest of this feature, Extended Edition members! Thank you for your support of this newsletter. And please share some of your own mathoms with me here in the comments!

Want to join the Extended Edition members in getting your recent work spotlighted, access to the rest of this feature, and all the other paid features (Monthly Essay, Full Discord access, free copies of my e-books, etc.)? Upgrade your subscription below: