Relatively early in the Pandemic -- though at the time I'd foolishly hoped we were at its midpoint, more or less -- I decided to revisit one of my lifelong favorite books, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. I have read this novel countless times, and so this time I thought I ought to do something a bit different: I decided to chronicle my reactions as a reader, one chapter a day, in little Facebook posts for friends and family. Well, as anyone who knows me could have predicted, my "little Facebook posts" became quite long, detailed reflections on each chapter, tying in background material from Tolkien's broader legendarium, musing on how the books informed the famous film trilogy (and how the films, in turn, have shaped me as a reader), and generally going much harder than I probably should have. I had a small number of very faithful readers, and the experience of composing these posts and then engaging in some conversation afterwards had been a really lovely one. In the end, looking back at them, I realized I'd created a pretty massive document, fragmented across dozens of Facebook posts (which were not easy to navigate or browse between).
So, this site is the collection of those posts -- lightly edited to remove some elements that make less sense here, although you'll still see references to my "posting the next one tomorrow", etc. -- that have been organized in a way to make them much easier to explore. I think it's possible that folks beyond my little circle of Facebook friends may enjoy them, too, and at the very least that it will be nice for me to revisit this in years to come when I (inevitably) return to the book, since this reading of the story is a very particular one. It draws on my knowledge of Tolkien, certainly, but I think my interpretations are undeniably influenced by the context I was in -- very isolated from most of my community during the prolonged quarantine of a global pandemic, over a series of weeks that spanned massive protests demanding racial justice, as the interminable 2020 election cycle started to reach a fever pitch. There are explicit references to this context at times, but I think it won't be hard for you as a reader to see more subtle influences here: regardless, I'm glad I have a record of my Pandemic reading of The Lord of the Rings and I'm pleased to share it with you -- I hope you enjoy it.
My name is James Rosenzweig, and I have a long history with Tolkien and the broader field of speculative fiction -- I grew up reading Tolkien's novels, and spent much of my teens and twenties diving more deeply into the rest of his work, from posthumous works like The Silmarillion to biographical material (including his collected letters) to the interpretation of his work by noted authors like Shippey and Garth. Meanwhile, I pursued a degree in English literature, I ended up working as a language arts teacher for some time in public secondary schools, and ultimately earned a graduate degree in librarianship and became an academic librarian. In that capacity, I certainly deal with books all the time (including Tolkien's work, at times), and I've had the opportunity to teach courses for first-year students in both science fiction and folklore (though never yet the work of Tolkien -- there's a faculty member who already does so with greater skill than I could manage). Anyway, the sum of all this experience is that I'm someone used to reading deeply and thoughtfully and then talking about what I've read at length, and I'm someone who's spent decades thinking about The Lord of the Rings, and as a result, while you could find plenty of more erudite thoughts about Tolkien elsewhere I'm sure, I feel like I've got something to say, and I hope you enjoy reading it. If you have thoughts to share in reply, you can use the contact form below, or find me on Twitter as https://twitter.com/notthathelpful