30-day Middle-earth Challenge—Day One: Favorite Book

Linking up with Miss Melody Muffin and Kiri Liz’s 30-day Middle-earth Challenge! Don’t know if I’ll be able to do all thirty days (in fact, I seriously doubt I’ll be able to do more than a few days), but I’ll do what I can as time allows.

Today’s challenge is to pick a favorite book from among Tolkien’s works. Not having read all of them, my choices are a bit limited to the books I have read—namely, The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, The Silmarilion, The Book of Lost Tales (Parts 1 & 2)…and I think that’s it. Can’t remember if I read any of Tolkien’s Unfinished Tales or not. Anyhoo….

It’s kind of a toss-up between The Hobbit and The Two Towers. I love the lighter, more cheerful narrative style of The Hobbit, with its subtle humor and clever way of putting things. The dark parts aren’t quite so scary; the sad bits are soft-peddled for the most part, rather like a father telling the story to his children (unlike the movie—but I’m not going to open that can o’ Wyrms* right now).

As for The Two Towers, it’s always been my favorite of the trilogy (apart from the first few chapters of Fellowship). Don’t know why, exactly, although perhaps it’s because we get to know the characters a little more. Ones who were pretty much just *there* (like Merry and Pippin) in Fellowship are promoted to Main Characters—almost—and we get inside their heads more.

So I guess I kinda cheated and did two, but like I said, it was a toss-up. :-P

Until next time, Gentle Readers,

God bless,

~“Tom”~

*Can o’ Wyrms = A potentially volatile or controversial topic. A twist on the old saying, “open a can of worms,” meaning the subject, if broached, may bring trouble to the one who broached it. The addition of the archaic term “Wyrms” (dragons) indicates the aforementioned trouble to be several times more intense if stirred up.

~Tom’s Dictionary of Whacked-out Terms and Old Family Sayings