My Precioussss

My brother was never much of a shopper. One Christmas Eve, he grabbed the first book he could from a bargain bin as they were closing. He wrapped it and gave it to me with great flourish the next morning.

The book he had so carefully chosen was The Two Towers, the middle book of JRR Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings. Talk about being lost….who the heck is Frodo? Ring? What ring? Gandalf, Saruman, Aragorn…the fudge? Blecch.

Years later in college, a friend recommended the trilogy. I was hooked from the first few pages of the first book, The Fellowship of the Ring. The detail that Tolkien, a professor of English at Oxford, included was remarkable. He invented an Elvish alphabet and language and a map of Middle Earth, where the story unfolds.

It’s a timeless look at good vs evil, of heroism, of self-sacrifice, greed, malice, love. The characters are masterfully developed, the plot superb, and the level of detail and interconnectivity between the three volumes amazing.

I read the books to my kids. I’ve seen the movies several times; Peter Jackson did a wonderful job of distilling the essence into three different movies.

It’s the perfect read for a lazy summer afternoon, a snowy afternoon in front of a fireplace, a camping trip.

Tolkien was close friends with famed Christian author C.S. Lewis. We had a small group from my church use a companion guide as the backdrop for a book study: Hobbit Virtues: Rediscovering J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ethics from The Lord of the Rings

Can’t recommend this trilogy highly enough. Folks who’ve read it will understand the title of my blog. Others will have to read it to find out. 🙂