509. The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien 
1954-1955
Around 1200 pages

The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released on my birthday July 29, just 41 years off. Truly, this must portend great things for me (terrible but great). As I have squealed before on this blog, I am a huge Lord of the Rings fan. That being said, I fully understand why 1200 pages of Middle Earth might be a slog for some people. But I just have so much fun with this universe, that I never tire of reading about these characters, even if they are just walking.

This was originally intended to be part of a two volume set with the The Silmarillion, but for economic reasons was split into three novels. We pick up after the Hobbit, with Bilbo Baggins celebrating his eleventy first birthday. Hobbits are so damn charming. Bilbo passes the Ring he stole from Gollum to his heir Frodo, who is our quintessential fantasy hero. Gandalf the Wizard of course, knows what's up, and starts Frodo on an epic quest to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom and save Middle Earth from evil.

I wish Tolkien had spent a little more time on the practical world-building questions, (i.e. how does the economy work? Where are all the women?), but that's just a personal preference. He is obviously a master at creating a world that you just want to disappear into, provided you didn't have to be an orc. He's also a very moral and quotable author, and makes you feel like good will always triumph over evil.

The characters are also unforgettable; I will be in love with Aragorn until the day I die. Samwise Gamgee is also one of my favorite characters in literature, and Merry and Pippin warm my shriveled heart. This story contains everything you want in an adventure: heroic battles, fantastical beasts, and the power of love and friendship conquering all. Post War Europe needed this.

RATING: *****

Interesting Facts:

Over 150 million copies sold.

The work was named Britain's best novel of all time in the BBC's The Big Read.

"Tolkienian" and "Tolkienesque" have entered the Oxford English Dictionary.

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391. The Hobbit

The Hobbit
J.R.R Tolkien
1937
Around 310 pages

Like many nerds, I can trace my lineage to reading The Hobbit in middle school. I absolutely love the world that Tolkien created in his matter-of-fact English way. I would love to live in the Shire, and at 5'2" I would hardly need to duck. I remember putting the novel down in the cafeteria, trying to solve the riddles Gollum posed to Bilbo myself. I definitely would have died in the caves. I sure had some wild times back then.

Gandalf tricks Bilbo into throwing a party for 13 dwarves, who are on a quest to reclaim their ancient home from the dragon Smaug. Gandalf encourages Bilbo as the group's burglar, because dwarves suck at stealth. 

As I've gotten older, my tastes have shifted away from Middle Earth, because I want more sex and blood in my stories. But of course I still love the OG of the fantasy world, and I know that a lot of my future favorites were heavily inspired by this. And how could they not be? He's an excellent world builder, and I'll read any story with a dragon. 

I know we hate on the movies a lot, and rightfully so, but I am excited we finally got a hot dwarf.

RATING: *****

Interesting Facts:

Tolkien's friend C.S. Lewis wrote of the novel: "The truth is that in this book a number of good things, never before united, have come together: a fund of humour, an understanding of children, and a happy fusion of the scholar's with the poet's grasp of mythology... The professor has the air of inventing nothing. He has studied trolls and dragons at first hand and describes them with that fidelity that is worth oceans of glib 'originality.'"

Tolkien would often write letters to his children from Father Christmas. Tolkien, you old softie.

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