Reading Tolkien

I read the Hobbit when I was sixteen. The Trilogy followed quickly. That world has enshrined itself in my heart.

As it happens in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, it is this day that Baraddur and the Necromancer Sauron fall together, at least according to journalist Sean Kirst, who organized this day as Tolkein Reading Day.

As he wrote, “My grandparents were fishing folk from Buckie in the north of Scotland, carriers of the old stories and legends, and the trilogy has filled a certain hole in my life. I have many friends here in New York who were equally moved by the book, reignited by the film, and we all wondered: is there any day devoted informally to readings from the trilogy, in the way that “Bloomsday” is devoted to Joyce?”

Today, all those who love the stories are invited to read the various works of the master.

The theme for this year, according to the Tolkien Society is life, death, and immortality. The Society informs us “The theme was chosen for 2016 to coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. Tolkien fought and survived this dreadful battle, but lost his close friend and fellow T.C.B.S. member Rob Gilson. With the death of G.B. Smith later that year, the First World War undoubtedly shaped Tolkien’s outlook on life and death, with mortality and immortality looming large in the Middle-earth legendarium.”

With that invitation I’m not sure suggesting you enjoy is precisely the right word. But what an invitation! Enjoy is part of it. But, more, as well. Off, into the great depths.

There, and back again.

And seeing it all new…