The Middle Earth read-through

Somewhere in the second part of 2020, after some time of idly coveting one, I have purchased a boxed set of four Tolkien’s Middle Earth books: the three The Lord of The Rings trilogy parts and The Hobbit. Then, because book purchases are a slippery slope, I also bought Silmarillion from the same edition.

Once they sat prettily on my book shelf, the obvious thought was: “Lets re-read all of them.”

Order of things is thus:

Silmarillion – currently in progress
The Hobbit
The Lord of the Rings

Rambling, archived from fandom.ink

*determined inhale* wish me luck folks, I’m gona do (re-read) the thing!

This will be INTERESTING, since I read all of these (1)in translation, (2)between 10 and 20 years ago(!), and (3)with very different outcomes.

I read Hobbit as a 9-years-old, give or take. I liked it, but it wasn’t a favorite. I remember thinking it was a bit silly.

LOTR I read when I was 11-12 after I saw the movie, and I LOVED it. Definitely one of my gateways to fantasy, reread it multiple times as a teen.

As for Silmarillion, I can actually check the library records so I know I read it at 15. I did. Not. GET IT. Like, at all. I floundered without an overarching plot, I kept getting lost in the elven names, it was a slog. I finished it and wouldn’t say I hated it, but I think I remember more from fandom than the actual book.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how different the books will be after so many years! Especially Silm aka the Elven Bible, since I have an actual goddamn Religious Studies degree now.

… also, I might have read various amounts of fanfic about characters from all of these books since I read them last 😅 (not to mention meta, cracky and otherwise).