by JanieM
In 1966, the summer I was sixteen, the Saturday Evening Post published an article entitled, "The Hobbit-foming World of J.R.R. Tolkien." The subheadline called The Lord of the Rings "the hottest-selling item in U.S. campus bookstores."
I would like to think I was drawn in by the description of the story itself, not just by the desire to be cool like the college kids, and subsequent history supports that conceit. I bought and read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that summer, then reread the trilogy every year for almost the next fifty, long after I let go of the desire to be cool like the college kids.
It has been a few years since I stopped reading LOTR word for word every single year. Some years I do need the solace of the whole thing; usually this happens in the winter. Other years it's enough to read scattered bits, some chosen at random, some deliberately.
"I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel…"
But I really sat down to write about rereading. ….More below the fold.