Two years of the most enriching adventure of a Tolkien reader
Reflecting on our Tolkien readalong on our second anniversary
On 18th July 2017, a squad of tens on readers on the platform Litsy went on an adventure. They set off to read all of Tolkien’s major work one chapter a day.
I almost missed that adventure. I thought I was too busy for that. It was too much of a commitment. But so many people were reading The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion together and in the end, I couldn’t resist. I dived in.
Lots of people dropped off when we started The Silmarillion, but still who remained kept adding titles. By the end of the year, as we were reading The Children of Húrin, only a small group was still reading. By the time we finished Beren and Lúthien, only a handful of us remained.
Still, we were not ready to drop the read-along. Three of us went on, through a few of Tolkien’s minor stories and into The History of Middle-earth.
Last year, we celebrated one year of reading Tolkien (almost) every day. Last week, we celebrated our second anniversary.
