This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Caity and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Caity M.’s responses:

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How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

I was introduced to Tolkien’s work because of the production of the Peter Jackson films. I was 11 in December, 2001 when the first film was released, and my best friend/neighbor’s older brother was excited for the films, because he was a book reader. He was a few years older than us, and because I was 11 and he was a cool teenager, I got interested too. I remember vaguely having conversations with him about Tolkien after seeing the first film; he told me that the Lord of the Rings barely scratched the surface of all there was to know about Middle-earth. I remember him saying something about the relationship between Sauron and Morgoth, for example. I was immediately intrigued; I had read and loved Harry Potter around the same time in my life, but that sense of depth hinted at when he told me about Morgoth was different than what Rowling seemed (at the time – I suppose she has tried more myth building since then) to be doing, and was exciting. I began the first book before I watched the first film, and had finished them all by the time the second film was released. I have since read Hobbit, Silmarillion, some of his scholarship, some other stories like Wootton Major and Roverandom, a few Lost Tales (although I’m saving up for History of Middle Earth), and dipped my toe into his languages.

What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

I think its his writing about nature, and his recommendations for how to enter into right relationship with the parts of earth over which humanity has dominion, if I’m gonna get Christian about it. I’ve been doing a lot of rereading in the Tolkien world recently, since the Fall of Gondolin came out this summer, and his writing about animals and landscape does make me feel religious, if I’m being honest with myself, especially in the context of that recent report on climate change. The passages where Gandalf describes his relationship with Shadowfax are really sticking in my mind as of late.

What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

I worked for many summers at an all girls sleepaway summer camp in North Carolina. It’s tucked away in the Blue Ridge mountains, a few thousand feet up, on a lake at the foot of a bald rock mountain we call Old Bald. The camp itself caters to the children of serious, generational southern money. Country Club families from Buckhead in Atlanta and Mountainbrook in Birmingham etc. send their daughters there, because their mothers and grandmothers and aunts all went there too. The campers all go to the same private schools, and rush the same sororities when they go to college. Its an extremely white and privileged place. By no means did I grow up in want, and I am also white, but that camp introduced me to a rung on the tax bracket that I had never seen before, and it was an integral step down the rabbit hole of left wing politics I have fallen into, but I digress. I tended to seek out and try to support the outcast girls, the nerdy ones, because camp could be a brutally lonely place for those more bookish or introverted campers. I absolutely saw my younger self in them, and I myself wasn’t exactly embraced with open arms by the other staff; I had never been a camper there. There was a camper once with very serious ADHD, who many counselors got easily annoyed with, myself included. But one day, after a few summers of getting to know her, I realized she was a fledgling Tolkien reader. We would chat about the books often, which we both really enjoyed. She found my address in the camp bulletin and sent me a drawing she had done of the Durin’s Door illustration from Fellowship. I feel so lucky she sent me that.

Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

Without a doubt. I find something new to love with each rereading. I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for Tolkien’s work, and have a much more difficult time with the racism and sexism of the world he created. I was young when I entered Middle-earth, but I ended up getting a Master’s in Medieval Studies, and as you can imagine, that is a context in which I got to talk a lot of Tolkien very often, with people who have become very good friends. It was a treat! It has also deepened my understanding of the scholastic context from which Tolkien wrote, for better and for worse. As I’ve been rereading recently, and as my own politics have moved towards the centrality of redressing systemic, historical patterns of racism and sexism, all of Tolkien’s imagery depicting the dark eyed, dark skinned hordes make me shudder, especially as the tide of global fascism rises around us. Colonization seems to be given a pass at times in Tolkien, and even his cardinal directions seem racist! North and West, good! East and South? Bad. I struggle a lot with how much of a pass I want to give Tolkien, and men like him more generally. Lets call it the problematic fave conundrum. Is Tolkien a product of his time? Absolutely, and maybe even better than most of that time. Is he worth reading? For me, still of course, yes. Do I understand that his project was inherently focused on a mythology of the British Isles? Sure, ok, fine. However Tolkien’s integral place among the racist and xenophobic history of medieval scholarship and fantasy literature is a stumbling block for me, and the adoption of the Tolkien Legendarium by the worst elements of online racists both breaks my heart, and is something for which I struggle to find a working defense. Of course they love him! Its painfully easy to see why.

Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

With reservations, yes, because of how foundational they have been in my life. I can’t imagine my life without loving Tolkien, but it gets harder every day, honestly, due to the context I lay out in my previous answer.

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You can follow Caity M. on Twitter for more of her excellent thoughts on Tolkien and other topics!

This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Paul and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Paul Mitchener’s responses:

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1. How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

There were two, maybe three stages. The first stage was The Hobbit being read to me when I was 8 or so at school, back in the early 1980s. About a year later, my grandfather recommended him to me, and I read The Hobbit on my own and The Fellowship of the Ring. For some reason, he only had the first volume of Lord of the Rings, though I reread Fellowship several times. When I was first at a new school when I was 11, almost the very first thing I did was go to the library, and notice they had the rest of the Lord of the Rings. I devoured them over the next few evenings.

2. What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

Who’s your favourite child? More seriously, this is one of those answers which changes over time, and with each reading. I love Bilbo’s growth in The Hobbit from bumbling fish out of water to being a crafty hero, the way the world is revealed to the readers at the same time it is to the hobbits in Lord of the Rings, and the tragic grandeur of The Silmarillon.

And there are so many good individual moments. In Lord of the Rings for example, the charge of the Rohirrim on the Pelennor Fields, and Treebeard’s interactions with Merry and Pippin stannd out for me at the moment. If I’m going to answer just one thing, I’ll choose the sheer depth of Tolkein’s work, the way every piece of the landscape has character and history. There’s nothing else like it in fiction.

3. What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

I moved a little away from Tolkien in my early twenties, but seriously reconnected later. There were the movies, but in the wake of the movies I listened to the BBC radio play of Lord of the Rings for the first time, and of course reread the books. And I was struck anew by the great depths, and the sheer mythic reality of Middle-earth. In particular, I seriously appreciated The Silmarillion more than I ever had when I was younger, but it was not only The Silmarillion which felt new to me again.

And there have been other periods of rediscovery. In particular, I recently really enjoyed a group slow read of Lord of the Rings, with a mix of people very familiar with Tolkien and those with less experience.

4. Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

Definitely. Even after the first reading, on subsequent rereads I tended to rush through everything, enjoying the technicolour movie playing out in my brain. Later I started to dwell on the imagined world, drawing out connections between different parts of Middle-earth, and pondering questions such as “what happened to Radagast?” and “where did the Entwives go?” looking for clues in the text.

Most lately, I’m trying to go more slowly, dwelling on each part of the narrative as it comes, not rushing ahead to what comes next, and trying not to use my knowledge of what comes next to inform the present. I’m also engaging more with some of the thematic elements. Tolkien warned us against allegory, but also emphasised that applicability is something different.

5. Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

Certainly! Tolkien’s work is the deepest work of fantasy out there, and there’s nothing else like it.

It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t have biases about what Tolkien is and is not, informed by popular culture. I’d urge them to forget their biases, especially when it comes to what they think of as “Tolkienesque fantasy”, a term which misleads us about Tolkien’s depth, and engage with the original. It’s fun and something to lose oneself in. One can go as deep as one desires, or just enjoy the world, the story, and the characters.

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If you want more thoughts from Paul Mitchener, you can find him on G+!

This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Marie and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Marie Prosser’s responses:

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1. How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

Honestly, my first introduction to Tolkien’s work was the Rankin/Bass Hobbit and Return of the King films, which my family had copies of on VHS, and I did read The Hobbit as a middle school student. None of this was particularly memorable, though, and I have to say that the Rankin/Bass Return of the King barely spoiled the books at all ;). I read The Lord of the Rings when I was 12, and that was what began a lifelong love of Tolkien’s work.

How it happened was like this: The summer before seventh grade, I wanted to read Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, but for whatever reason, could not find a copy of it at the library. So, I was going through the bookshelf in my parent’s office (the one that had their old college textbooks on it), and was quite pleased to find a selection of novels that included the Jules Verne book. Next to it was the Ballantine paperback copies of Lord of the Rings, which I was not overly excited about at the time. But after I finished the book I wanted, I did eventually pick them up. The covers were…not encouraging, to say the least, but I remembered liking The Hobbit, so. I of course enjoyed them immensely. I had reached Return of the King by Christmas break, and I remember I was supposed to be finishing an art project (a grid drawing of a bird). I sat at the bookshelf in my bedroom, and I would read a chapter, then work on the drawing, read a chapter…. I still have that drawing, and it reminds me of the first time I read the books. My mother got it framed for me, because she knew I liked it so much. I re-read the books for the first time in 9th grade, and then again in 10th grade. I don’t really re-read them any more, but that’s mostly because at this point I know them so well I don’t need to; I just look up passages when I want to.

2. What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

I am most partial to The Silmarillion. I love that story, and what he did with creating such a poignant story where everyone fails but there’s still a hopeful ending. The Silmarillion hurts sometimes, but it is so beautiful and I love it.

The part of Tolkien’s writing I love the most is his love of trees and stars. I too love trees and stars, and at this point, it’s difficult for me to say whether I love these things because I read Tolkien, or if I love Tolkien because he shares my love of these things. It is not unusual for me to greet Orion (I mean Menelmacar) when I go outside at night, just as the elves Frodo met in the Shire do.

3. What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

Oh, that’s an easy one! ALEP. A Long Expected Party is a Tolkien-themed event in the Shaker Village outside Lexington, Kentucky every three years. It is AMAZING and I love it very much. The people I’ve met there have become good friends. What kinds of friends? Well, I live with one of them; that’s where I met my roommate. I went on vacation with a bunch of them in June. And I’ve visited Banff and Calgary’s Stampede because one of them invited me to her place. I dated someone who also attends the event, which involved explaining to immigration how we met. So, yeah. It is dear to my heart and important to me and just amazing from so many points of view – hiking in the woods in costume, hanging out at a bonfire, recreating Bilbo’s birthday party, music and dancing, singing ‘Rolling Down the Hole’ at the top of my voice at 2 AM – you know, a good time! Oh, and I teach a Tengwar class there.

Second choice would be visiting Tolkien’s grave in Oxford. I sat next to it and had a nice long conversation, and then left a green stone that I’d brought with me.

4. Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

Certainly. When I first read the book, I mostly just thought about it. I would close my eyes and picture the forests of Middle-earth, and my teacher would ask me if I was meditating. I did make some sketches, I suppose, but I didn’t really know how to engage with a book yet.

When I was in high school, I tackled the Appendices more seriously. I taught myself how to write in runes, and I would often doodle on my schoolwork in them. I would make copies of the runic alphabet for my friends, so they could read the messages I wrote. My boyfriend even wrote a font program so I could type in runes; the first thing I typed was ‘bright blue my jacket is and my boots are yellow.’ I wrote ‘A Elbereth Gilthoniel’ on the wall in the set room during the school musical. I checked Humphrey Carpenter’s biography out of the school library, and was saddened to learn that Tolkien died before I was born – I called a friend and told her that we weren’t even alive at the same time! [The Balantine books I’d read were printed in 1972 and had the ‘respect for living authors’ disclaimer on the back, so it was news to me.] I read The Silmarillion and disliked it. I told my sister about it, though, and she said she wanted to marry Finrod (or Ulmo). A friend lent me Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings after we’d wandered around talking about Tolkien’s work for hours. I also came across the artwork of the Brothers Hildebrandt; I liked Galadriel’s Mirror the best.

When I was in college, I took a slightly more academic approach. My geography class required me to go to the library every week to view videos, and while I was there, I would go up to the Tolkien section and check out a different book of literary criticism on him each week. I was largely disappointed. Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth was the only one that actually taught me something new. I also read Letters and discovered what Tolkien’s opinion of a young American engineer was (that’s what I was at the time, so.) Luckily for me, I went on to take a few medieval history classes, so I likely wouldn’t have made the faux pas about feudalism. Whew! My college roommate (and best friend) learned Tengwar with me, and we wrote on each other’s notes during the classes we took together.

Then, the summer of ’99 was consumed by ‘So, did you hear they’re making a movie of Lord of the Rings?’ and I discovered online messageboards (my home was TORc, TheOneRing.com) Conveniently, Tolkien’s books were on my bookshelf, within reach of my computer, so I learned the ‘look it up!’ rule of answering questions in online discussions. My time there discussing Tolkien’s books in detail with other fans is most of the reason why I know Tolkien’s writing so well. I also decided to read the books aloud to my brothers in 2000. My youngest brother had requested The Hobbit when he was five, mostly because he liked Rankin/Bass’ Gollum, but now he was ten, so I thought he was ready for it. Each evening that summer, I would come home from work, swordfight with my brothers in the backyard using sticks, and then read Lord of the Rings to them after dinner. I drew them a sketch of Helm’s Deep (with labels!) so they could understand the battle and answered their questions as we went. It was a lot of fun, for me and them! I went on to recount most of the stories in The Silmarillion to my youngest brother while I was painting our parents’ living room. He would ask me questions, and I would tell him about First Age elves. I should not be terribly surprised that his middle school reading included Hamlet and The Silmarillion. He is still an avid reader to this day and loves fantasy; he’s currently trying to get me to read The Name of the Wind.

After college, my best friend made me a fleece cloak. It was a revelation to me that if the clothes you wanted to wear didn’t exist in the store to buy, you could make them yourself! I learned how to sew with my mother’s help, and made a dress with lacing on the back and a bodice. The bodice became part of my Hobbit costume and I still wear it. In 2004, I wrote my first fanfiction. It was about hobbits, and mostly nothing happened :P. I went on to write about Maedhros trapped in the Halls of Mandos and a young Elrond at the end of the First Age. I also read a lot of other people’s fanfiction and discovered another way to engage with Tolkien’s work. In fanfic, the whole point was to expand the story, to make your own choices and decisions about what these characters would do, what these places were like, how events unfold. Tolkien’s ‘unexplored vistas’ call out for that! I also discovered the artists Anke Eissmann, Jenny Dolfen, and Catherine Karina Chmiel who imagined Tolkien’s world visually in a way I found very appealing. Their love for The Silmarillion (and certain Sons of Fëanor!) likely keep me coming back to them as my favorite Tolkien artists.

As a teacher, I had opportunities to work Tolkien into my classroom. Did you know that there are examples of all the various types of erosion in The Hobbit? My earth science students found that out when they had to match the passage to the vocab word. Did you know that blond hair travels in hobbit families the same way it does in human families? My biology students got to study inheritance patterns in hobbit family trees. And of course I could always write what was happening in Middle-earth under the date. On October 6th, it was dark in the dell under Weathertop….

I discovered conventions and costuming, starting in 2006 at the Gathering of the Fellowship in Toronto. (Oh, I also had the opportunity to see the Lord of the Rings musical in both Toronto and London; it was very interesting, but not necessarily good. I liked it!) I’ve already mentioned ALEP, so you know where this goes, and I’ve also attended DragonCon three times. My costumes include: an orc, an ent, Varda, Elwing, Curufin, random wood elves and hobbits. Oh, and I made a costume for Finduilas of Dol Amroth specifically so I could make the starry mantle but not wear a blond wig for Eowyn 😛 The costumes from Peter Jackson’s film are very lovely, but I’ve never made a recreation of one. I did get to see them up close at the exhibit in Boston, which was fun.

Most recently, my efforts have been directed towards the Silmarillion Film Project, contributing to a collaborative group effort to adapt The Silmarillion to a television series, spearheaded by Corey Olsen with the help of Trish Lambert and Dave Kale. I mostly help with script outlining, but it’s been great to work with artists – we have maps, we have costumes, we have location scouting, we have artwork…everything you would need to create for this adaptation is fair game to tackle. So there’s been all sorts of fun conversations, like how do the Light of the Trees influence the architecture of Tirion (do all the windows face west?) and what visual changes does Melkor undergo when he is transitioning from fair-seeming to tyrant of Angband, and how do you handle first contact between the elves and the dwarves?

The short answer: I have transitioned from being a passive reader to engaging the text academically, and then later creatively, and I feel that this last is the most fruitful and rewarding, so I intend to keep doing it. I also very much enjoy reading Tolkien’s work aloud.

5. Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

Yes, of course. It’s very good. I would say that The Lord of the Rings is one of the best books ever written, and that it has surprisingly few flaws. People love it for a reason. But I take a strict ‘no pushing’ policy. I have friends and family members who have never read Tolkien’s work, and I do not push them to do so. I recognize that it is not to everyone’s taste, so if someone tells me that they prefer nonfiction to fiction, I’m not going to say, “You know what you should read? Lord of the Rings!” But at the same time, everyone knows I love it. It’s one of the first five things you learn about me, typically – you either find out that I’ve lived in Ethiopia, I’m Catholic, I used to teach high school, I grew up as the oldest of five kids on an apple orchard…or that I love Tolkien.

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If you want to hear more from Marie Prosser, check out his great SFF blog: https://domnardireviews.wordpress.com or follow him on twitter: @Nardiviews

This is one in a series of posts where the content is provided by a guest who has graciously answered five questions about their experience as a Tolkien reader. I am very humbled that anyone volunteers to spend time in this busy world to answer questions for my blog, and so I give my sincerest thanks to Marcel and the other participants for this.

To see the idea behind this project, check out this page

I want to thank Donato Giancola for allowing me to use his stunning portrait of J.R.R Tolkien as the featured image for this project. If you would like to purchase a print of this painting, they are available on his website!

If you would like to contribute your own experience, you can do so by using the form on the contact page, or by emailing me directly.

Now, on to Marcel Aubron-Bülles’s responses:

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How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?

A really bad sunburn on the first day of our family’s holidays beside the Adriatic Sea in then Yugoslavia confined me to our quarters – and there was that horribly green German three volume edition of The Lord of the Rings.

For the next two days and nights I barely slept and only rarely left the room I was reading the books in. Returning home to Cologne I became one of the youngest members ever of a British Council library and found The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, Pictures, Journeys of Frodo by Barbara Strachey and The Book of Lost Tales I + II and The Lays of Beleriand.

When I had finished those I started reading historical fiction, introductions into Welsh and Old English, and asked the local English bookshop whether they had “something like Tolkien.”

They gave me The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett.

The rest is, as they say, history.

What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?

I have to say that in the course of years with different interests shaping and/ or changing my imagination (including the study of British and American History as well as English Literature and Linguistics) I have come to appreciate different things at different times. The Lord of the Rings is, of course, to this day the single most important book in my life; however, I have come to adore and appreciate and respect other titles not generally considered ‘Middle-earth’, that is, his scholarly or Non-Middle-earth works.

Finn and Hengest, for example, I have reasons to assume to be a manuscript for a modern ‘CSI: Linguistics’ TV series; On Fairy-Stories is to me – even if the wording or the argument itself may not sound as polished as one might wish – on the same level as E.M. Forster expounding qualities of the novel as such; Letters from Father Christmas is such a whimsical, lovingly illustrated quasi-autobiography of the writer and father that you can either simply read them out to a rapt audience or mine them for background information on the development of the ‘Legendarium’; and the list continues …

What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?

The fact I had the privilege and honour to found a literary society promoting interest in the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien which in its twenty year existence has grown to an incredible source of community activities, scholarly publications and events, and the fellowship such societies offer around the world.

Plus: I met my wife Sauronita thanks to the Professor.
Nota bene: The nickname was given by Melkor. No pun intended.

Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?

Yes, certainly – in the sense of a wider range of approaches to Tolkien’s life and works. It is obvious that theology, medievalist studies and any linguistic efforts are at the forefront of scholarly work in terms of JRRT. However, there are many other fields of interest which can shed light on many still undiscovered aspects of Tolkien’s imagination.

I am particularly interested in the reception of Tolkien’s works in the public eye and the fandom they have spawned, its past, present and future. As I have been a Tolkien activist and volunteer for 25+ years now (and a ‘fan’ myself for more than thirty) I am very much looking forward to be part of this outstanding group of people everywhere in the world, whatever the individual focus may be.

Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

Yes, I would.

As the long-time chairman to a Tolkien society it was, of course, my job to convince people to become members of our society and I am very proud to this day that at one fantasy festival of about 150 people which took place in an old medieval castle I managed to convince five people to join us in one evening – the last one demanding I would offer my back so he could sign the application form on it – as it happened in Schwarzenegger’s rendition of “Running Man.” And no, I was spared the pain … he simply signed 😉

But aside from such anecdotes of which there are many I would always ask the person in question first what they do like – is it drama, is it tragedy, is it light-hearted comedy, is it high epic fantasy? – and then I would chose from the wide range of options available a title that person will probably never have heard of as many do not know about Tolkien’s ‘minor works.’ They offer such different approaches there’s always something out there to suggest.

If I needed to supply catch words they would possibly be: heroic romance, epic fantasy, fellowship, literary classics, fandom (always depending on the individual sales pitch!) But again, I would work from what I was being offered by the person asking me for suggestions and then decide what needed to be said or suggested.

I incidentally coined the slogan “Literature. Fantasy. Fandom” for the German Tolkien Society to quickly explain at fairs and conventions what we do as a society – and it has helped people to better understand how we see ourselves and what we do provide as a community of Arda Activists [another term I coined just now. It’s a term-in-development but I think there is potential in this.]

And that is how I would recommend Tolkien to anyone appreciative of (fantasy) literature – there is so much to explore on so many different levels you’ll have quite a few books to read.

There is nobody like him. You might as well read books.

Why not?

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For more Tolkien- related material from Marcel Aubron-Bülles, you can find him on Twitter or Instagram, or follow his blog: The Tolkienist.