Reading Tolkien again…

Well folks, the time has come around again. Time to begin my yearly reading of LOTR.

Am beginning right at the beginning with The Silmarillion this time around.  I figure that I cannot be a true Tolkien aficionado and not be familiar with the history of Middle-Earth.  Plus it drags out the amount of time that I can be reading the thing…

Having got a hundred pages in, I am quite taken with the character Feanor.  He may be the closest thing to an angry elf – tis nice to have some of the blanks filled in, and understand some of the grief that you hear the elves speak of from time to time.

So what of the simarils?  A metaphor for the greed of mankind maybe?  One man made them, but everyone desires them, to the detriment of all.

I’ll go back to my reading now, or at least juggling with a copy of the text that is falling apart…I have two bulldog clips holding the thing together.

Here is a nice post on The Silmarillion from another blog in word press.  (Added 19/3/09)

JRR Tolkien

Few people in history have as profound an effect on me that Mr Tolkien. 
I first discovered LOTR in my teens, and have read the thing at least once a year since (that’s 25+ times.  Not bad for a 1000 page epic.)  In fact I limit myself to reading it once a year, or else I would read it continually, and never get anything else done.

 On Hobbits:
Being not overly tall myself, I can associate with Bilbo, Frodo and friends and the crazy things they get up to.  One gets a sense that the hobbit tends to feel under-sized, under-skilled and basically inadequate to achieve anything much in Middle-Earth.  As a person it is easy to feel this way sometimes.  Any one who says otherwise is selling something.  Other than this, a being who loves to eat, sing and laugh is definitely someone I can appreciate.
One other thing you can pull out of LOTR is that people need each other.  Frodo ‘wouldn’t have got far without his Sam,’ and relies on him to get him through the quest.  Life is like that.  We need each other to travel the journey with, for wisdom or just for friendship.

my precious