Hobbits. Elves. Dwarves. Wizards. If any of those don’t sound familiar to you, I’m about to introduce my all-time favorite books and movies: The Lord of the Rings. This is a trilogy written by J.R.R. Tolkien back in the 1950s and is still considered one of the best fantasy worlds ever created.
The entire trilogy is an adventure. There are a lot of themes, including friendship, determination, morality, love, and power. I once heard that some aspects of the book were inspired by Tolkien’s experience fighting in World War I, but despite the tragedies he had experienced, his books are for all ages.
I read The Lord of the Rings a year or two after reading The Hobbit for school (which I hated back then). Over the summer after 8th grade, my friends and I were sitting in a café discussing our favorite books. One of my friends recommended that I read LOTR, and since I wasn’t reading anything else at the moment, I decided to give it a shot.
It took me about half the book to become interested in the adventures, though. I just didn’t see the point, and then suddenly everything began happening at once, and I started reading it nonstop.
There are three books in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King. The second book is my favorite, but I just love the trilogy as a whole. If you’re like me and cannot get enough lore, Tolkien actually created an entire world, not just Middle-earth. A lot of other stories regarding the Tolkien universe are in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.
The Silmarillion takes place well before The Hobbit, in the First Age (for reference, an Age is about 1,000 years in Middle-earth and LOTR takes place in the Third Age). It’s about the creation of Tolkien’s world, how Middle-earth was established, where the elves and dwarves came from, and overall history. There’s also the Second Age, in which we first learn about Sauron, the main antagonist of the trilogy, and where Gandalf comes from (he’s important!).
The Silmarillion was actually published after Tolkien’s death, thanks to his son Christopher Tolkien. There are a ton of other writings that Christopher also put together and had published after his father’s death. For all the other Tolkien nerds out there, there’s even a 12-book series of collected writings that have lots of extra details about his world. Again, though, I’d only recommend those if you’re really interested. Otherwise, even scaling The Silmarillion after reading the main trilogy is a feat.
So that’s a little rant about my comfort books! And trust me, this was short…