10:52 p.m. - 10 March 2003
T is for Tolkien
T is for Tolkien
I freely admit that I'm a Tolkien geek. Although, I must admit, I'm not nearly the Tolkien geek others are. I've never felt the urge to develop a recipe for lembas, for example, but that didn't stop me from trying a recipe that Lee found and sent to me (the verdict? Not bad, but would be more lembas-like baked on a pizelle iron than a waffle iron). Nor I have I ever learned Elvish, but I think it's a beautiful language.
The one thing that's preventing me from being much more than a Tolkien geek than I already am is that I've never read The Silmarillion. I've started it several times, but I have yet to make it much beyond the first chapter or two of the Silmarillion proper (there are a few other stories before it, including a rather beautiful creation myth). I'm not terribly depressed about this, though, since it actually took me three or four tries to make it all the way through Lord of the Rings the first time. I kept getting stuck around the Council of Elrond, which you have to admit, is very dull. Particularly to a 10-year-old.
My parents encouraged us all to read Tolkien. The first time my dad gave me The Hobbit as a reading suggestion I was six or seven (it was while we were still living in Wilmington, and I had just turned eight when we moved away from there); I don't remember finishing it. I know that for their first anniversary, my mom gave my dad a beautiful hardback edition of the trilogy; I also know that my sisters and I ruined them by dragging them off to school and on other adventures. To make up for that, I gave them the Millennium Edition a couple of years ago for Christmas (Note: I didn't pay nearly that much for it, either). My mom's one complaint? The maps are too small. I admit, that was a definite bonus about the editions they already had: the maps folded out at the back of the book. Luckily, Lee has a copy of the book An Atlas of Middle-Earth, so that's not really a problem for us.
Actually, I think him lending me that book fairly early in our relationship convinced my parents that he was a good person. I was sitting at the table reading it, and when Mom found out where I'd gotten it, she asked me, "Is he one of us?" When I answered that he was, I could see her relax; she figured that anyone who liked Tolkien enough to have a book like that couldn't be all bad. One of the years before we got married he bought me a set of the trilogy and The Hobbit for my very own; it has really horrible artwork on the covers, and the footnotes in the Appendices don’t match up, but it's still mine and I adore it.
I can't even count the number of times I've read the whole series by now. In college, and for a few years after that, I read all four books every summer. I meant to read them before the first movie came out, but I never got around to it; I'm stuck towards the end of the Appendices on this go-round. I know there are some people who just read favorite passages, but I can't do that: I've got to read the whole damn thing, preferably in as few sittings as possible. And even as many times as I've read it, I pick up new details each time. My husband would say that's because I read too fast to see them all the first time, and I don’t deny that may be the case. As far as I'm concerned, that just gives me a reason to read them again. And again. And again….
This has been an entry for AlphaBytes. I'm working my way through the alphabet backwards just because I can.
