Review: J.R.R. Tolkien, A Life Inspired

Having been a Tolkien fan since I was nine years old, I naturally nabbed Wyatt North’s biography J.R.R. Tolkien: A Life Inspired a week or so ago when a FaceBook contact noted that it was available for free on Amazon Kindle (it’s usually $2.99 for Kindle). I’d never heard of the book before, but the price was right. I started reading it on Christmas day, and was surprised at how quickly we got through Tolkien’s childhood. His youth passed almost as quickly. And so did everything else: in print, the book is only 108 pages long, and doesn’t go into great detail about anything.

In short, if you’re entirely unfamiliar with Tolkien the man, this might be a good first introduction; otherwise, it’s going to leave you wanting something meatier. For my part, I’d recommend Humphrey Carpenter’s The Inklings and The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (edited by Carpenter). Carpenter has also written a full biography of Tolkien, but having not read it I can’t recommend it one way or another.

However, I did learn one or two things I hadn’t known before, and I do like the cover.