Books like The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and Other Verses from the Red Book

Tom Bombadil is such an enigma. I mean who exactly is he? Some Tolkien fans would argue that he is Eru, the creator of all life within Tolkien’s Middle Earth, though I think somewhat differently. He breaks any sense of definition with his odd existence: he simply is. We can’t say for a certainty either way, but we do know that Tolkien wanted him to remain somewhat mysterious and beyond the realms of categorisation. I don’t think Tolkien quite knew what he wanted him to be. So that’s how I treat him.He appears briefly in The Lord of the Rings, saving Frodo from the barrow wight, and spends most of the time singing in odd verses about himself. In this book the Hobbit poet captures his image: \ Old Tom Bombadil was a merry fellow;Bright blue his jacket was and his boots were yellowGreen were his girdle and his breeches all of leather,He wore in his hat a swan-wing feather.He lived up under Hill, where the WithyywindleRan from a grassy well down into the dingle. \ Bombadil leads an odd, somewhat quaint, existence. His behaviour is equated with the natural world; he wonders in fields and exists among the trees. Perhaps his character, at least on the surface, is a simple version of man: a man who remains untroubled by the problems of the world and is just happy to spend his days singing, frolicking and remaining a complete mystery. However, I don’t feel like the title of this is overly appropriate. If anything, it is very misleading. Only two of the poems actually focus on Bombadil, the rest talk about all manner of random things Middle Earth related. So we have two Bombadil adventures, followed by twelve other poems that address things from Cats to Oliphaunts. Then there’s one that’s rumoured to have been written by Frodo himself, describing a vague dream he had about his experience with the ring. I find it truly hilarious that Tolkien effectively has a counter for any criticisms of weak poems within this book. In the preface, he says that this book was written by Hobbits. Their rhyming structures and metre are a watered down version of Elvish poetry; thus, any remarks about the weakness of such writing can be aimed at the limitations of Hobbit verse. He side-steps the negative reactions with such a statement, and it’s incredibly ironic and self-preserving. It made me laugh. So this book is a construct of Hobbit writing, and, once again, Tolkien gives his world more foundation. It's a fun collection of verses, but by no means anything remarkable in Tolkien’s world. The scholarship that has gone into my edition is of a very good standard, it tells the history of this book’s publication. And if you are interested in reading this book, I do recommend this edition edited by Scull and Hammond. Other than that, I’d say that this one is likely to appeal more to the serious Tolkien enthusiast rather than the casual fan.