Autumn has come upon the prairie, the tallgrass is turning a beautiful rust color, and the sumac is a startling blood-red this year. The wind has turned around to the north and Rob’s World of Beers is carrying about 50 different varieties of “Octoberfest”. All this means it’s time (at our house, anyway) for our annual reading of The Lord of the Rings. We usually begin around Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday, which in the book is September 22. (I am aware that if one converts the Middle-Earth calendar to ours it ends up being September 12 or something, but I don’t care. What am I, a nerd?)
This year there are five of us reading it (Elanor will need a couple of years before she can discover where her name came from) so for the sake of peace in the home I went and bought two more copies of the trilogy, in addition to the two we had from last year and the one we picked up at a garage sale last summer. We also retired the set I bought Kiersten back in 1999, as it is disintegrating before our very eyes. I feel like the guy who assassinated John Lennon who supposedly had to buy a copy of A Catcher in the Rye anytime he came across it in a bookstore. Somehow, though, I think this is different.
Anyway, the point is that I thought I might try to put down in writing some of my thoughts as I travel with the company through the Old Forest and across the Downs and down the Loudwater and over the Mark and to Orodruin. I don’t expect it will amount to much, and what you’ll get (if anything) will probably tend more toward a description of my experience as I’m reading than it will to actual exegetical insight into the stories, but if you love Middle-Earth like we do, you might find something to think about. Every year the story is better, every year I see something new that I’ve never noticed before, and every year I grow in my hope and sincere belief that the “real world” is much more like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth than the dull and sterile machine that we have had forced down our throats for almost 400 years now.
2 responses so far ↓
Marcy // at
I probably shouldn’t say this, but I still haven’t read the entire trilogy (or do you count the Hobbit, too?). I still remember you about jumping over the table at me when I said I stopped reading the books because I didn’t want to ruin the movie.
Maybe my winter resolution should be to just start from scratch and read the entire thing for once.
Sean // at
Yes, I think that would be a good idea.
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