Well, I’m starting to feel that itch again.
Periodically, every couple of years or a decade or two, I run out of things
of interest to read about. It’s been happening to me since the end of
summer. And when that happens, I eventually (re)turn to Tolkien. It’s the
perfect antidote for what ails me.
I have a box of Tolkien’s works still in the storage
closet, unpacked since our move to Texas in the summer of 2021. It contains: Two
sets of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Two versions of The
Silmarillion, one a hardcover and the other a paperback. One copy of The
Hobbit and one of Unfinished Tales, both paperback, and one hardcopy
each of The Children of Hurin and The Fall of Gondolin. Excluding
duplicates, that’s something just a bit over 3,000 pages, if I had to
guesstimate.
My most recent re-reading of Tolkien was The Lord
of the Rings in the Spring of 2021, two-and-a-half years ago, just before we
learned we had to sell the house and move down south. It was my fifth journey
with Frodo et. al. A little over a year before that I voyaged
with Bilbo in The Hobbit, my third time to Erebor. I’ve read Children
of Hurin twice, in August of 2010 and June of 2017, and reviewed both reads
somewhere in these here electronic pages. The Silmarillion was a
three-peat, the first time down the Jersey shore in Lavallette as a
middle-schooler (I understood little of it back then), then as a recuperating
heart patient in 2008, and finally listening to it on audio CD and reading
along in 2017. The Fall of Gondolin was a birthday gift that I haven’t
yet read.
So every fiber of my being feels it’s time. Time. Time
to re-read the Professor again. But this time to do it right, because,
hey, I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore and can realistically hope for
another quarter century, which still can hold plenty of re-reads, but I want to
do it right, right now.
My plan is to read through the oeuvre according
to Tolkien’s internal chronology:
January 1, 2024: One month to read The Silmarillion.
February 1: Continue on with The Children of Hurin.
February 15: Move on to The Fall of Gondolin.
March 1: Read the first 2/3 of Unfinished Tales,
which deals with First and Second Age events.
March 15: Start The Hobbit.
April 15: Commence with the magnum opus, The Lord
of the Rings.
Finish by June 1 with a re-read of The Quest of
Erebor, the third part of Unfinished Tales.
[Dates approximate]
To help out my reading and cement my mastery of all
things Middle-earth, I have J.E.A. Tyler’s The Complete Tolkien Companion,
and have given myself permission to look up anything, anytime during my reader,
even in the middle of a sentence. Some of my favorite memories learning about
this world were the endless hours I pored over my Uncle’s copy of this encyclopedia,
researching this and that and piecing together the history through the Ages.
And if I wish to further nerd out, I picked up the 500-page
Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, excellent for trivia and insight into how he
thought, wrote, and created. I bought it back in 2019 and clocked 76 pages, but
never finished it.
I am also allowing myself to pick up anything else
Tolkien I come across in the used book shops, such as Unfinished Tales II,
and Christopher Tolkien’s History of Middle-earth series. I would also
love to read Leaf by Niggle, Father Giles of Ham, and Smith of
Wootton Major, which I haven’t seen in print in decades.
Anyway, here’s to a great 2024! Can’t wait …
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