Commentary I first read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” in the summer of 1971-2. I’m a slow reader, always preferring to savour the language (especially when it’s written by a master craftsman and poet), so I took three or four days to reach the end. There’s always some sense of loss when you finish a task like that, however pleasurable the journey, the more so when the book is a truly great one—and Tolkien’s epic work is all of that. More than 50 years later I can still remember that feeling of emptiness when the grand saga ended. Strangely enough I’ve never read it again. It’s not because I find the thought of all that reading particularly daunting. No, the length is not the issue, but rather a fear of being disappointed, of somehow marring or cheapening a happy memory: it’s so often a mistake to go back, or …
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