What can you say about a classic like this? Everyone’s read it, and almost everyone loves it. No synopsis or review needed.
Instead, I want to talk about the first time I read Fellowship. I was in middle school and had thoroughly enjoyed reading The Hobbit for class. Now we were onto the more sprawling, more mature story of Lord of the Rings, and I was ready for adventure.
For most of my childhood, I shared a smallish room with my two older brothers, but when they started high school, my parents had renovated the attic of our old stone house for them to share. It was a legitimately cool space with built-in bookshelves and a view of our back yard, but I was too excited to be jealous. For once I had my own room, with twice as much space now that their huge bunk-bed was out of the way.
That same fall that The Fellowship of the Ring was on our assigned reading list, I was inspired to really make that bedroom my own. I didn’t have much in the way of furniture, but I shuffled everything around, moving my bed by the window with the tall chest of drawers next to it, creating a little nook where I could sit up and read. And that’s where I read most of Lord of the Rings, in the evenings with a mug of raspberry tea next to me on the wide windowsill. The window was usually open a bit to let in the breeze, and with it a whiff of adventure that smelled like dry leaves and walnut husks. And if the story sometimes got a bit too harrowing, well, I had the tea, and the blanket around me, and my room — my own space — to keep me company.
It’s still incredible to me the way a good book can seem to bridge the divide between my inner and outer worlds. The right book at the right time, when I’m in the right state of mind, can be pure alchemy. In the Fall, I absolutely crave adventure, and there are few tales of adventure as good as this introduction to The Lord of the Rings. When the leaves are dropping, I know I can crack a window, make a mug of tea, and set off on a journey through Middle Earth the same way I did all those years ago.