Currently Reading

The Tolkien Reader is a collection of stories and essays written by JRR Tolkien at various points over the years. While I’m not much of a fan of Tolkien’s writing, I did discover that this book included his essay "On Fairy-Stories" (which you can learn more about here and here), which is something that has been on my “to read” list for years. I’m not too far into the book yet, but so far it is more compelling than his fiction.

Now I guess I should qualify my distaste for his fiction before I start getting death threats from overly obsessed Middle Earth lovers. I think Tolkien did something amazing in his creation of Middle Earth. He made a world that was so rich and real, with such a vast and compelling history that you can’t but be in awe of what he did. Unfortunately his fiction, especially The Lord of the Rings trilogy, is very hard to read. He spends way too much time in describing certain minute details that really don’t progress the story and because of that it is a bloody slow read (I honestly think I enjoyed reading the Appendix more than I did the actual books). It is for this reason why I do not enjoy reading Tolkien. I like to read for fun and when the reading feels like work, I just hang it up and go look for any damsels that might be in distress.

The Tolkien Reader on Amazon
The Tolkien Reader on Wikipedia