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One Reader to Rule Them All
How can I read The Lord of the Rings once every year? I get that question more often than I get birthday wishes. It’s always the same baffled tone-half concern, half admiration -as if I’ve confessed to running a marathon uphill while reciting Elvish poetry. But for me, it’s not madness. It’s tradition. Every Christmas Eve, while people are clinking glasses and watching holiday rom-coms, I open Tolkien’s world. By the time New Year’s arrives, everyone else is counting down seconds to midnight, and I’m counting the last steps toward Mount Doom. They’re watching fireworks-I’m watching the fall of Sauron. Somehow, both feel like celebrations.
People often ask, “But how do you do it? How do you reread all those pages or sit through three movies, each over three hours long?” as if it’s an act of endurance. But The Lord of the Rings isn’t something you endure -it’s something you live through. It’s not long; it’s vast. It’s the kind of story that doesn’t just fill time but creates it. You don’t measure it in chapters or hours, you measure it in heartbeats -from the moment Bilbo vanishes at his eleventy-first birthday to the quiet heartbreak of Frodo’s final farewell.
And yes, I’ve read The Hobbit. It’s lovely, really -warm, witty, full of adventure and second breakfasts. But The Hobbit is a road trip. The Lord of the Rings is a pilgrimage. It’s the difference between wandering…
