I recently completed my "20th anniversary" read through of The Lord of the Rings (save for the appendices which won't take long) that I began back on the 20th anniversary of receiving The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit for Christmas (commemorated in this post).
I do not recall when I finished my very first read through of The Lord of the Rings as I don't remember whether or not I received The Return of the King for Easter or my birthday. If it was for my birthday (as seems most likely since I do recall that I got The Two Towers for Easter) then I probably wasn't too far off my original finishing date either, but that's just guesswork on my part.
Obviously, I took my time reading, but I've had other distractions along the way such as course projects and also read Tolkien's take on a couple of old Norse legends (in "The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun") somewhere in there.
Still, I enjoyed The Lord of the Rings as much as I always do. Certain things always seem to affect me in some way - like the Ride of the Rohirrim, Eowyn facing down the lord of the Nazgul and Frodo slowly having his mind eaten away by the ring as they approach Mount Doom, just to name a few.
I often also seem to pick up on something new each time I read the book. This time, it was from the final chapter "The Grey Havens" when Sam is agonizing over what to name his first child (a daughter), Frodo suggests naming her Elanor, after the flowers in Lothlorien, meaning "sun-star" as he says. That made me go "Huh! That is actually what that means..." If my readers will allow some linguistics, in Tolkien's elvish, "el" is "star", found in such names as "Elbereth" (star queen) or "Elrond" (star dome - if memory serves) and "anor" is "sun" as in "Minas Anor" (tower of the sun), the original name of Minas Tirith.
Anywho, as always I have enjoyed my latest journey through Middle-Earth, one which I shall no doubt undertake again in the future.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
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