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uncle Iorlas
Nargothrond
Mon, 4:54am
Post #1 of 3
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a road, going ever on and on, as they do
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It's been a couple of months since I completed a long, unhurried read-through of Lord of the Rings with my youngest kids, aged 9 and 7 when we got through. For over a decade I've been reading that or the Hobbit out loud to some little person or other more often than not. I have read it myself more times than I can count; in my teens and twenties it was probably annual.
I am fifty-three, and I feel a little like a machine whose warranty has expired. I mean, in many ways I really don't feel old at all, I feel palpably the same clueless git I ever was, but maybe that dissonance is just the new normal. Certainly I do see myself changing my choices somewhat to accomodate the process of aging, and one standout sign of this is, I try not to reread things any more. I only have so much time and reading lists always tend to grow faster than one can keep pace. Even favorite movies, at this point, I will only watch over again if I have someone new I want to show them to.
Am I done? It took a few days for the question to cross my mind. I am not the greatest Tolkien scholar around, by any stretch, as a casual perusal of this site never fails to show. By the same token, I never would be, not unless I started devoting my days to the task. I know the material pretty well, better than most. I harbor an enormous fondness for this somewhat fustian professor who would plainly never have approved of me if we'd had occasion to meet; also I harbor a whole bouquet of critiques for him, in the way one can hold warm loyalty and profound opposition at once for an old family member. Seldom do forty-eight hours go by without my thinking over some part of his legendarium or constructing some Tolkienian analogy for other matters in my life and times. It's pretty well baked in at this point. But am I done reading him?
I realize that, per se, is not a question for the membership here, but I do wonder if this is an experience that has come for others.
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sevilodorf
Dor-Lomin
Mon, 5:47pm
Post #2 of 3
(68 views)
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From the 70s to the 1990's I pretty much reread Tolkien yearly. Then two or three read throughs with the movies and some in depth "scholarship" inspired by the Reading Room.
Then from 2001 to 2015 I was "heavily" into a fan inspired writing group that relied on Tolkien as a base so lots of rereading of specific sections and expansion into some of the HOME volumes and Unfinished Tales. Also Fonstad's Atlas
Then life and cancer hit and the group faded-- I reread LOTR and the Hobbit in that time.
Then 2023 and cancer hit again -- and again I reread Tolkien.
I find comfort in rereading -- and as I grew older (grew up??) I actually read the poetry and lengthy descriptions rather than skimming through them.
And find enjoyable rewatchings of the movies (all umpteen minutes as my granddaughter says) --- though the places the movie and books deviate become more irritable over time --
Exploring Tolkien's life and seeing how that is reflected in his writing and how Middle Earth is so well crafted in numerous areas but sort of iffy in others continues to intrigue me.
Fourth Age Adventures at the Inn of the Burping Troll http://burpingtroll.com
Home of TheOneRing.net Best FanFic stories of 2005 and 2006 "The Last Grey Ship" and "Ashes, East Wind, Hope That Rises" by Erin Rua
(Found in Mathoms, LOTR Tales Untold)
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