I’m doing some travelling and, naturally, have the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Kindle while waiting and flying. Recently Tolkien’s works have become available, and I picked up Lord of the Rings, in Kindle format, all three books, for $14.00. As I begin to read these books again, I’m reminded of what a reading treat they are. Tolkien did not write these books to impress anyone, or hope they would be made into a movie, from which he would garner residuals. He wrote for the sheer pleasure of writing them. He could not even afford to have his manuscripts typed, by a “ten fingered typist” as he once put it. The story of the horrible problems these books went through via various editions and printings at multiple publishing houses was interesting to read.

The edition I picked up has a nice summary of the history of the texts, but the text itself is the thing. This is a piece of literature that one must savor. There is nothing “quick” about Lord of the Rings. You are along for a long ride, and you just need to sit back and enjoy it, as I’m doing, mightily. It has been a few years since I read LOR, in fact, I think the last time I read LOR was a year before the first of the Jackson movies came out. It is fun comparing and contrasting what is in the books to what Jackson put in his movies. I’m very impressed by how Jackson handled things down to a very fine level of detail, capturing verbatim parts of the dialogue, and on the other hand, how artfully and skillfully he turned the printed page into a movie.

I’m looking forward to several weeks of a reading banquet, courtesy of JRR Tolkien and the wonderful world he created, inhabited by some of the truly most unforgettable characters in all of literature.