Our book club debate went off the rails over a map of Middle Earth

We were arguing about whether Frodo was a passive hero in Fellowship of the Ring, and I pulled out my old paperback to prove a point. Problem was, the map in the front was missing a chunk from a coffee spill years ago, so I couldn't show the route through Moria. Someone piped up that they had a digital version on their phone, but the resolution was too fuzzy to read the labels - took us 20 minutes to settle it. Has anyone else had a book club debate get stuck because of bad maps or missing pages in a physical copy?

3 comments

3 Comments

johnson.paul1mo ago

Things always get messy when we rely on old physical copies for modern debates.

hugomurray1mo agoMost Upvoted

I always thought the duct tape copies were the MOST trustworthy somehow, like they've been through the wars. But @robert_lopez64 is right, arguing over a coffee stain is a special kind of nerdy hell. I read somewhere that people actually prefer the errors in old printings because it makes the debate feel more personal. That said, I'd take a missing appendix over pulling out a phone any day, kills the whole mood.

robert_lopez641mo ago

And THEN we had a whole thing about the Shire's borders because my copy had a coffee ring right over the Brandywine River. Took us 15 minutes of arguing if Buckland was technically part of the Shire or not. I swear, every time I pull out my dogeared copy for a debate something gets lost. My wife's copy is even worse, the spine is held together with duct tape and half the appendix is missing. We ended up just googling the map on someone's phone and it completely killed the vibe of the conversation.