Regularized Inglish: rules

Consonants:

PIPE: p, pp

BOB: b, bb

TUT: t, tt

DEED: d, dd

KICK: k, -ck, c(A), cc(A)

KICK+WIN: qu, *cqu, also compositionally

GIG: g(A), gg(A), gu(I), gi- usually, *g(I) sometimes

THOTH: th

FIFE: f, ff

VALVE: v, vv

SIS: s, ss, c(I), *sc(I),  ps-

ZOOS: z, zz, -s plural and possessive, x initial, *s

SHUSH: sh, occasional unstressed: s(u), ss(u), se(V), sse(V), si(V), ssi(V)

ZHIVAGO: g(I) sometimes, s(u) unstressed, si(V) unstressed

CHURCH: ch, tch, occasional unstressed: t(u)

JUDGE: j, dg(I), *g(I) usually, *d(I) sometimes

YOYO: y(V)

HAHA: h

WHITE: wh

MIME: m, mm

NUN: n, nn, *gn-

siNG: -ng, ng(C)

siNG+GIG: ng(A)

siNG+JUDGE: ng(I)

siNG+KICK: nk

LOLL: l, ll

ROAR: r, rr, *wr-

KICK+SIS: x, cc(I), also compositionally

Vowels:

KIT: i short, y short

DRESS: e short

TRAP/BATH: a short

TRAP+/r/: -ar(V)

LOT/CLOTH: o short

STRUT: u short

FOOT: oo short

NURSE: -er, erC, -ir, irC, -ur, -urC, -urr, -yr, -yr(C)

FLEECE: e long, ea, ee, -ie-

FACE: a long, ai, ay, ei, ey, ae* sometimes, *aigh, *eigh

PALM/BATH: aa, *a, *-ah

THOUGHT: au, aw

GOAT: o long, oa, oe, *-eau

GOOSE (with or without /j/): eu, ew, u long, ue, ui

GOOSE (without /j/): oo long, 

PRICE: i long, -ie, y long, -ye

PRICE+/r/: ir(V), yr(V), *iar, *ier, *ior

CHOICE: oi, oy

MOUTH: ou, ow, *ough

MOUTH+/r/: our, owr, ower

NEAR: ear, eer, er(V), ier, er(V), yr(V)

SQUARE: air, ayr, eir, eir, ar(V), er(V), err, *aer

START: -ar, ar(C)

NORTH: -or,  or(C),

FORCE: -oar, *-our sometimes, ourC

CURE (with or without /j/): eur, ewr, ewer, uer, ur(V)

CURE (without /j/), oor

Reduced vowels:

lettER; Vr, -our, -re, -ure

commA: V, -ou(s)

happY: -ie, -y, *-ey

Notes:

Notations: * means “unproductive spelling”;
parenthesized letters give context;
C, V, I, A mean “any consonant letter”, “any vowel letter”,
“i, y, or e”, and “a, o, or u” respectively.

Silent consonants: -(e)t in French borrowings sometimes,
*gh, h sometimes, t in unstressed  -stle, -sten.

Long vs. short single vowels: a vowel in the last syllable is long
if there is a silent -e; a following double consonant marks a short vowel.
most other vowels are short but many are long.

Minimal respelling: Words are respelled only if their
pronunciation is not valid by the rules,
but if a word is respelled, more than one
change may be made, as dubble for double.
Words are not respelled merely to make them
fit more common patterns or to disambiguate homonyms.
The creation of new homonyms is avoided.

Unmarked distinctions: /ks/ vs. /gz/, commA vs. chickEn,
/θ/ vs. /ð/, /j/ vs. no /j/ before GOOSE or CURE
(except when spelled oo),
vowel digraphs vs. separate syllables
(create does not rhyme with street, nor mishap with bishop)

Blog posts:  intro, theory, wordlists.

Blake's "Infant Joy" and "Infant Sorrow"

Here's a small selection from Blake's collection (originally two collections) of verses, Songs of Innocence & of Experience Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Of course, contrary does not mean contradictory. The most famous of the contrastive poems are "Tyger! Tyger!" and "The Lamb", but the ones I think that best show the contrast are "Infant Joy" and "Infant Sorrow, thus:

"Infant Joy"	"Infant Sorrow"
‘I have no name:	My mother groan'd! my father wept.
I am but two days old.’	Into the dangerous world I leapt:
What shall I call thee?	Helpless, naked, piping loud:
‘I happy am,	Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Joy is my name.’
Sweet joy befall thee!
Pretty joy!	Struggling in my father’s hands,
Sweet joy, but two days old.	Striving against my swadling bands,
Sweet joy I call thee:	Bound and weary I thought best
Thou dost smile,	To sulk upon my mother’s breast.
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!

Twittering

I am now twittering under the name, not of Sanders, but of @Woldemar_Avalon, because I am John Woldemar Cowan and my home city is New Avalon, or in English, the Big Apple.  So far I am mostly using it as a publicly readable commonplace book: somewhere to write down the quotations that decorate my mental structure.  Follow and enjoy.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

Or as Bilbo put it, escaping goblins to be caught by wolves.  After pretty much recovering from the meningitis and its psychological sequels, I stepped on a minute piece of glass in my kitchen.  Although I had bled a bit, my wife Gale got the glass out, and I went to the podiatrist to be fixed up.  The lesion was only 5 mm x 5 mm and 1 mm deep and looked fairly trivial.  But within three days, I had massive cellulitis (bacterial infection of the skin) in the foot and lower leg.  Foot trouble for diabetics is far worse than foot trouble for anyone else, and hey presto, I was back in the hospital being looked after by three separate teams of doctors: podiatry, infectious diseases, and family medicine (one of the analogues of general practice in the U.S.)

Heavy-duty antibiotics relieved the pain in the leg (I feel no pain, touch, or temperature sensations in my feet, though I do feel pressure) within a few days, but the external signs were still very ugly.  So my podiatrist decided to cut me open at the worst-looking spot, basically chopping from the top of my foot down almost to the sole.  Fortunately, I've had no pain from this.  More antibiotics and having my foot squeezed to get the pus out was pretty successful, and I was sent home after two weeks: a very different story from two days, but at least my mind wasn't affected this time.  Of course, I'd gone from an infected foot to a wounded one (the trivial cut on my sole had healed already), though at least the wound was clean and straight.

So I've been back at home for the last two weeks with a permanent IV line installed and a less comprehensive antibiotic, after I was found to have non-MRSA staph.  The surgical wound is healing better than expected: fortunately, my gross circulation is fairly unimpaired (you can feel strong pulses in my feet), so it's quite likely that I'll come out the other side essentially as well off as before. (I have two permanently broken toes on that foot, but the don't impair my walking.)  Meanwhile, I'm working from home and attending meetings by Skype, but only at 85% of full time thanks to all the doctors I have to visit repeatedly.  I'm walking on the heel of the bad foot using a surgical shoe (a sort of sandal with a very stiff sole) plus a crutch on the good side, and hopefully will be upgraded to something less restrictive after tomorrow.  Again hopefully, the IV will be terminated after Wednesday.

Oddly, no connection was ever found between the glass cut on my sole and all the pus in my foot, so just how the staph got into my foot remains completely unexplained.  Gale, who is not diabetic, had had cellulitis a month before, but she had a visible scratch on her leg, and two days in the hospital on IV fixed her right up.  Also, the cold I mentioned turned out to be an allergy, which nose drops are slowly clearing.  Nothing has been done about the low hemoglobin yet, and I also will have to see a vascular surgeon when I can walk again.

Getting sick and getting better

This post is mostly meant to account for what has happened to me since August 23, with some explanation of the things I have posted on the Internet lately.  It will be of interest, if at all, to (a) people interested in me and my physical, mental, and emotional state; (b) people interested in certain medical matters which I exemplify; (c) people who are puzzled by my recent lack of postings followed by rather oddball postings and private emails (or remarks, if you know me in person).

I will mostly state what happened to me in the order it happened.

On August 23, I left work very ill, and arrived home shortly thereafter, where I was found to have a fever.  I took acetaminophen to try to reduce the fever, and rested.  On August 25, I went to an internist and received a diagnosis of strep throat (although my throat did not hurt) based on a quick strep test.  I was then given a large penicillin injection to kill the strep organism, though I was told it would not much shorten the course of my disease.  I was advised to rest and drink fluids so
that I would not become dehydrated from the fever.

Unfortunately, there were two mistakes here.  One was that the positive result on the test was false, and therefore the penicillin was useless though harmless.  The other was that because I had undergone roux-en-Y surgery in December 2012, it was impossible for me to drink sufficient fluids sufficiently quickly to avoid dehydration.  Over the period from at least August 23 on, therefore, I was suffering from an unknown illness, which turned out to be two illnesses: viral meningitis, and an upper-respiratory viral infection in the nature of a cold.  I was also, as a result of the fever, suffering from progressive but unsuspected dehydration.

On October 1, I went to another internist; due to a change in my insurance between August 25 and October 1, my first internist could not see me unless I paid him cash in full on the spot.  This second internist ran further tests establishing that I did not have the flu, or pneumonia, or any of a variety of other diseases, but could find no specific disease.  I was again sent home and told to rest (which I did) and drink additional fluids (which I did not and could not).  The cold was evident at this point, but did not account for the fever; the meningitis was as yet unsuspected.

Unfortunately, of the two fever-reducing drugs I was told to take, one (acetaminophen) was effective but easy to overdose on, so I could only take it in limited amounts.  Either for that reason, or because of the natural course of the meningitis, I was feverish on some days but not other days.  The other drug (ibuprofen) was also effective, but had the bad side effect of causing me to shiver.  In order to stop shivering, I had to add outside warmth (a blanket was insufficient), which would revive the fever.  When I finally noticed this pattern, I stopped taking ibuprofen, but continued to take acetaminophen.

The ongoing and untreated dehydration had several side effects.  For one thing, my blood sugar (I am a diabetic) went some 200 points above my previous worst-case reading, which was itself some 200 points above non-diabetic normal.  Another was that I urinated less than usual, and with darker urine.  Yet another was that I found it hard to draw blood for blood-sugar tests.  My thinking function became disordered, not only when I was feverish (a familiar phenomenon enough) but also when I was not feverish.  As a result I began to fear that even if I recovered from whatever I had (besides the cold), my thinking would remain disordered, and I would be unable to work thereafter.  (I did not fear absolute starvation for myself and my family, but I know too well how difficult the life of a partly mentally disabled person in the United States is.)  Lastly, I began to stop producing normal tears, so that my eyes partly dried out.

Due to the dry eyes and the high blood sugar, I decided to go to the emergency room on October 5th.  I was admitted to the hospital (something I do not remember) and was put on IV fluids and a Foley catheter (a device which causes urine to flow out of my bladder through my urethra into a bag without volition on my part).  I was also found to have a bacterial infection in my blood and my kidneys, for which I was put on antibiotics.

Investigation of the blood work done on the 25th but never yet looked at revealed that I had never had strep throat.  I was given a lumbar puncture in the hospital, which finally diagnosed the viral meningitis that I had had since the 23rd.  This was now passing off, as the virus was no longer active (nor would there have been any treatment other than supportive treatment if it had been).

On October 7th, the hospital concluded that I no longer needed fluids and removed the fluid bags from my arms.  On the same day, I demanded that the hospital remove the IV taps (under the specious claim that they hurt me), and later that day signed myself out of the hospital against medical advice, as I could see that the hospital had nothing to offer me medically, and was only trying to keep me in a bed out of an abundance of caution.

I wanted to leave because, as is often the case in hospitals, I had had very bad nights there, being unable to sleep well.  Furthermore, I had a roommate who was dying of terminal cancer and kept insisting that the hospital release him; sometimes he lost his grip and believed instead that he was no longer in the hospital but in a police precinct, a Chinese restaurant, or some other presumably non-existent location. The fact that during one period there were in fact police in his room, apparently to protect the hospital staff from his aggressiveness, no doubt tended to confirm this particular delusion.  Although I was recovering from the meningitis and dehydration that had disordered my thinking, being exposed to all this nonsense was also disordering it, leading me to conclude that it was outright mentally harmful (and not physically beneficial) for me to be in the hospital.

Indeed, I had come to believe that if I died in the hospital (as seemed likely in my disordered state of thinking, though objectively it was not) that I would be dying in Hell, something I desperately wanted to avoid.  The impersonal treatment I received seemed to underscore this.  So I came home, still suffering from the same cold, but free of meningitis and fever, and cured of my blood and kidney infections as well as my dehydration.  Once I had a good night's sleep at home, many of my mental issues were relieved.

I went to a third internist on October 9th, who had access to my hospital records and in fact had been the one who had admitted me to the hospital: he told me several more diseases I did not have (though two remained, and as far as I know still remain, possible; though they had not grown out on a bacterial culture, they might still do so).  By his advice, I spent the next few days recovering from both my sickness and my bad hospital experiences, began to work (without going to the office) on October 12, and went to the office for the first time October 13 and for the second time on October 14.  I had gone to the office, unwisely, on another day (I forget which one) sometime early in October, but got little done that day.  On October 19 I will be seeing yet a fourth doctor, an infectious-disease specialist who saw me briefly in the hospital.

The upshot is that while my thinking is no longer (I believe) disordered in general, I still suffer from the fear that it may be disordered in particular instances.  Therefore I have been asking questions whose answers may seem obvious, and making remarks whose truth surely is obvious, to outside observers.  I am doing this not to be funny, nor to be ironic (to pretend to know less than I know) but to reassure myself that I am in fact understanding correctly and reasoning correctly.  Since my confidence in my thinking (as opposed to my thinking itself) may take some time to restore, this may continue for some time.

I hope I have been sufficiently clear in writing this.  I am entirely open to answering any questions, in the comments or privately, about any part of my experiences.

Update:  It turns out the blood poisoning and kidney infection were not confirmed by the lab test, so things weren't quite as bad as they were thought to be.  My mind continues to clear.  However, my hemoglobin is only about 60% of what it should be (probably accounting for my continuing fatigue), so here beginneth a new round of doctor visits and lab tests.

I'm being laid off ...

... so I'm looking for work. Though I've been a programmer most of my professional life, I've spent the last four years doing document schema design and ontology. I have survived quite a lot of generations of programming technologies, so I am nothing if not adaptable. For any given tech-of-the-moment, my answer is "I may not know it yet, but I will know it very quickly."

If you, my readers, know of anything either in New York City or its environs, or in telecommuting land (I've been working mostly-at-home for the last four years, and especially in the past year), I would certainly like to hear about it. Here's my resume in Word and PDF formats, and you can contact me at cowan@ccil.org.

Update:  After working a bunch of short-term consulting jobs, I am now employed full-time as a back-end programmer and team lead at Tablet Hotels, an online travel agent specializing in boutique and specialized hotels, which we check out individually.

U.K. Whacking Latin Keyboard for Windows

I'm announcing my UK Whacking Latin family of keyboard drivers for Windows.  They allow you to type more than 900 different Unicode characters, without interfering substantially with the regular use of a UK keyboard.  The way in which the additional non-ASCII characters are reached is by using the AltGr key.

The keyboards are designed for people who use the regular or extended UK keyboard heavily, but occasionally need to type other Latin letters (especially accented ones), symbols, and punctuation.  In particular, the keyboard supports the Windows-1252 (U.S. and Western Europe) repertoire, as well as almost every Latin letter in Unicode.

This keyboard handles only the extended Latin alphabet.  If you want a regular Greek, Russian Cyrillic, or full IPA keyboard, I recommend the standard Microsoft Greek keyboard, the Russian Phonetic YaWert keyboard, and the Benct X-Sampa keyboard respectively.

If you want a similar keyboard driver for the US physical keyboard, use my Moby Latin keyboard driver instead.

There are two basic ways to type characters other than the regular ASCII set. A few characters are directly typed by holding down AltGr and pressing another key.  For example, to type the character æ, simply type AltGr+a.  As you might expect, the capital version Æ is typed as AltGr+Shift+a.  However, the great majority of characters are typed using AltGr plus some key, followed by another key that doesn't use AltGr. For example, the letter a with diaeresis (ä) is typed with AltGr+; (that is, AltGr plus semicolon) followed by a, or by A if you want the capital a with diaeresis (Ä).

Combinations like AltGr+; are known as "dead keys", because they appear to be dead when you type them; you need to press a following key to actually input a character.  The current version, F, of the Whacking Latin keyboard has a total of 33 dead keys.  23 specific accent marks and modifying strokes are provided, as well as curly quotation marks and other punctuation, math symbols, Roman numerals, fractions, arrows, pointing hands, math Greek letters and symbols (no accents), obscure Latin letters, and a subset of IPA letters needed for English.  (Some math symbols were taken from the space cadet keyboard.)  Some of these dead keys are typed using AltGr+Shift, which makes them a little awkward to type, but they are intended to be as easy to remember as possible.

Update: There are four variants in the Whacking Latin family:  Whacking John, which is meant for English only; Whacking Sandy, which is meant for English and Scottish Gaelic; Whacking Mick, which is meant for English and Irish; and Whacking Taffy, which is meant for English and Welsh.  They all have the same repertoire of characters, but the last three variants make it easier to type texts in those specific languages.  Whacking John is upward compatible with Microsoft's UK keyboard, and Whacking Sandy with Microsoft's UK Extended keyboard, except for the AltGr combinations on those keyboards.

You can look at the README file to see the full range of characters that can be typed.

These keyboards and the associated documentation are Open Source, and may be freely copied and modified.  The license terms for all is the MIT License.  Use, share, and enjoy!

How many languages is that?

Serbo-Croat? Serbian? Croatian? Bosnian? Montenegrin? How many languages is that?  Saying that there are four languages, or that there is one, are both oversimplifications. Here's an approximation of the whole truth:

 In the linguist's sense, there is just a single language, a South Slavic dialect continuum with a dozen or more dialects and  four standardized forms. However, Standard Serbo-Croat, which prevailed until 1989, was never a single standard.  Rather, it was a fusion of two existing standards, an agreement that Standard Croatian and Standard Serbian (both of which already existed) would be treated as equally acceptable for all purposes. In this way it is like the position of Standard Bokmål and Standard Nynorsk in Norway, and like what would be the case if British society decided to accept Standard American English as a written standard with a status equal to Standard British English, or vice versa. It is that agreement which came apart when Yugoslavia did, and it has been followed by the creation of a third standard for Bosnian and a fourth one for Montenegrin.

All four standard languages are founded on the historic dialect of Eastern Hercegovina, an instance of the neo-Štokavian macro-dialect which is now the most widely spoken variety of naš jezik 'our language', as it is politely called, in the whole of the former Yugoslavia. (Macro-dialects are conventionally labeled by the word they use for 'what?' — in this case, što.) They differ roughly as follows:

• Standard Croatian employs exclusively Ijekavian forms (that is, the descendant of historic jat vowels is ije), admits influences from the Chakavian and Kajkavian macro-dialects, is relatively hostile to Western loanwords and does not normally respell the ones it accepts, and is written exclusively in the Latin script.
  
  
• Standard Serbian allows either Ijekavian or Ekavian forms, has no such influences from the other macro-dialects, is relatively friendly to Western loanwords and respells the ones it accepts to match Serbian pronunciation conventions, and is written with equal acceptability in the Latin and Cyrillic scripts.
  
  
• Standard Bosnian is close to Standard Serbian, has some influences from the palaeo-Shtokavian macro-dialect, is exclusively Ijekavian, and uses the Latin script only.
  
  
• Standard Montenegrin is even closer to Standard Serbian, but it uses the Latin script only and is exclusively Ijekavian.
  

There are also many differences in vocabulary, on about the same scale as the differences between British and American English.

My understanding is essentially dependent on the work of Miro Kačić, the Croatian linguist (in both senses of that term). While highly respected, Kačić's work is of course controversial, like everything else about the language he worked on.

U.S. Moby Latin Keyboard for Windows

I'm announcing my U.S. Moby Latin keyboard driver for Windows.  It allows you to type more than 900 different Unicode characters, without interfering substantially with the regular use of a U.S. keyboard.  The way in which the additional non-ASCII characters are reached is by using the AltGr key.  (Not too many keyboards actually have this key, but its equivalent is the right-hand Alt key, or on keyboards without a right-hand Alt key, using the Ctrl and Alt keys at the same time.)

The keyboard is designed for people who use the regular U.S. keyboard heavily, but occasionally need to type other Latin letters (especially accented ones), symbols, and punctuation.  In particular, the keyboard supports the Windows-1252 (U.S. and Western Europe) repertoire, as well as almost every Latin letter in Unicode.

This keyboard handles only the extended Latin alphabet.  If you want a regular Greek, Russian Cyrillic, or full IPA keyboard, I recommend the standard Microsoft Greek keyboard, the Russian Phonetic YaWert keyboard, and the Benct X-Sampa keyboard respectively.

If you want a Moby-style keyboard driver for the U.K. physical keyboard, use my Whacking Latin keyboard driver instead.

There are two basic ways to type characters other than the regular ASCII set. A few characters are directly typed by holding down AltGr and pressing another key.  For example, to type the character æ, simply type AltGr+a.  As you might expect, the capital version Æ is typed as AltGr+Shift+a.  However, the great majority of characters are typed using AltGr plus some key, followed by another key that doesn't use AltGr. For example, the letter a with diaeresis (ä) is typed with AltGr+; (that is, AltGr plus semicolon) followed by a, or by A if you want the capital a with diaeresis (Ä).

Combinations like AltGr+; are known as "dead keys", because they appear to be dead when you type them; you need to press a following key to actually input a character.  The current version, C, of the Moby Latin keyboard has a total of 33 dead keys.  23 specific accent marks and modifying strokes are provided, as well as curly quotation marks and other punctuation, math symbols, Roman numerals, fractions, arrows, pointing hands, math Greek letters and symbols (no accents), obscure Latin letters, and a subset of IPA letters needed for English.  (Some math symbols were taken from the space cadet keyboard.)  Some of these dead keys are typed using AltGr+Shift, which makes them a little awkward to type, but they are intended to be as easy to remember as possible.

You can look at the README file to see the full range of characters that can be typed.

This keyboard and the associated documentation are Open Source, and may be freely copied and modified.  The license terms for both is the MIT License.  Use, share, and enjoy!

A Tolkien Virgin

Back in 1999-2002, starting before the Peter Jackson films had appeared, a blogger named Mark-Edmond Howell undertook to read the whole of The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings in that order and to write chapter-by-chapter commentary in Tolkien Online as he went.  As he himself says, he had started The Hobbit some years before but not gotten very far into it, and was vaguely aware of some of the pre-Jackson films.  While theonering.net has undertaken to lovingly preserve A Tolkien Virgin, their index is in reverse order of posting (which sometimes differs slightly from book order), and is chopped up arbitrarily, making it hard to navigate.  As a public service, therefore, I am providing this organized and properly ordered table of contents to A Tolkien Virgin, using chapter titles rather than numbers in all cases (Book IV, Chapter 4, what's that?  "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit", ahhhh!)  Share and enjoy.  And as Mark-Edmond says, keep thinking!

Introductory

• "The first in a series"

The Silmarillion

• "The journey begins"
• Ainulindale
• Valaquenta
• The Quenta Silmarillion
• Of the Beginning of Days
• Of Aule and Yavanna
• Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor
• Of Thingol and Melian
• Of Eldamar and the Princes of the Eldalië
• Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkor
• Of the Silmarils and the Unrest of the Noldor
• Of the Darkening of Valinor
• Of the Flight of the Noldor
• Of the Sindar
• Of Men
• Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor
• Of the Return of the Noldor
• Of Beleriand and its Realms
• Of the Noldor in Beleriand
• Of Maeglin
• Of the Coming of Men into the West
• Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin
• Of Beren and Luthien
• Of the Fifth Battle: Nirnaeth Arnoediad
• Of Túrin Turambar
• Of the Ruin of Doriath
• Of Tuor and the Fall of Gondolin
• Of the Voyage of Earendil and the War of Wrath
• "Summary of the Quenta Silmarillion"
• Akallabêth  (including Mark-Edmond's epilogue to The Silmarillion)
• Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (not read by Mark-Edmond)

The Hobbit

Note that some commentaries cover two or even three chapters.

• An Unexpected Party
• Roast Mutton
• A Short Rest  (included with above)
• Over Hill and Under Hill (included with above)
• Riddles in the Dark
• Out of the Frying-Pan into the Fire
• Queer Lodgings (included with above)
• Flies and Spiders
• Barrels out of Bond
• A Warm Welcome (included with above)
• On the Doorstep
• Inside Information (included with above)
• Not at Home
• Fire and Water (included with above)
• The Gathering of the Clouds
• A Thief in the Night (included with above)
• The Clouds Burst (included with above)
• The Return Journey
• The Last Stage (included with above)

The Fellowship of the Ring

• Book I
• A Long-expected Party
• The Shadow of the Past
• Three Is Company
• A Short Cut to Mushrooms
• A Conspiracy Unmasked
• The Old Forest
• In the House of Tom Bombadil
• Fog on the Barrow-downs
• At the Sign of The Prancing Pony
• Strider
• A Knife in the Dark
• Flight to the Ford
• "Book I Overview"
• Book II
• Many Meetings
• The Council of Elrond
• The Ring Goes South
• A Journey in the Dark
• The Bridge of Khazad-dûm
• Lothlórien
• The Mirror of Galadriel
• Farewell to Lórien
• The Great River
• The Breaking of the Fellowship

The Two Towers

• Book III
• The Departure of Boromir
• The Riders of Rohan
• The Uruk-hai
• Treebeard
• The White Rider
• The King of the Golden Hall
• Helm's Deep
• The Road to Isengard
• Flotsam and Jetsam
• The Voice of Saruman
• The Palantír
• Book IV
• The Taming of Sméagol
• The Passage of the Marshes
• The Black Gate Is Closed
• Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
• The Window on the West
• The Forbidden Pool
• Journey to the Cross-roads
• The Stairs of Cirith Ungol
• Shelob's Lair
• The Choices of Master Samwise

The Return of the King

• Book V
• Minas Tirith
• The Passing of the Grey Company
• The Muster of Rohan
• The Siege of Gondor
• The Ride of the Rohirrim
• The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
• The Pyre of Denethor
• The Houses of Healing
• The Last Debate
• The Black Gate Opens
• Book VI
• The Tower of Cirith Ungol
• The Land of Shadow
• Mount Doom
• The Field of Cormallen
• The Steward and the King
• Many Partings
• Homeward Bound
• The Scouring of the Shire
• The Grey Havens (with the Appendices and Mark-Edmond's summaries of The Lord of the Rings and A Tolkien Virgin)

There is room for vast amounts of meta-commentary here.  Let me just point to Mark-Edmond's fascination with Círdan the Shipwright, and how satisfying he finds it that Círdan reappears at the end.