Tolkien ’24

 

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 …