Forth Eorlingas!

I grew up on Tolkien. Dad read The Hobbit aloud when I was just a wee lad, and I shivered hearing Riddles in the Dark. I heard The Lord of the Rings read aloud from when I was nine or so till I was twelve, and then I began reading them on my own. I read them every year for five years. Two or three years ago I stopped, and save for a devouring of The Hobbit, my Tolkien reading was stinted. 

I fixed that last month. The final two days of break I began the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. I devoured it (a verb I use frequently with respect to Tolkien) in a few readings, and borrowed the entire volume from Greenfield Library. I finished The Return of the King yesterday. 

What a magnificent piece of storytelling! No other author can move me to awe, tears, and laughter in less than ten pages! Reading about the Riders of Rohan hurtling to their doom at Minis Tirith and the death of Theoden, weeping over Eowyn, and laughing at Merry and Aragorn (if you do not laugh at the chapter "Houses of Healing" you need a new sense of humor) has never meant so much to me. I have seldom identified more with character than in Middle-Earth. Once again I will put The Lord of the Rings on the top of my permanent reading list, the List whose constituents fit on one numbering hand; so far the Bible and Dante's Commedia are on it, but this is the third. 

Tolkien also reminded me why I love good writing and great literature. I doubt I shall ever read Rowling's work ever again - there is simply nothing there. Any urge I could have towards her work is met fuller and deeper by far in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Unifinished Tales, and Silmarillion. Even her fourth book, which I think was the best of the lot, holds little interest now. A nice story, but not much there. Thus I rededicate myself to the book I loved as a child. It is inexhaustible; rather, it has grown with me, and I think it shall continue to do so. Farewell, Middle-Earth! I will see you in my dreams, and ride with Theoden as a Rider of Rohan. Forth Eorlingas!