[Aratlithiel]

Hmmm...why Tolkien? For me it's always been the writing and character development. I must be able to get to know the characters in any work in order for me to have any feeling for them and to care about what happens to them. Just as Tolkien was able to create a world and a history to go along with it, so too was he able to create living beings to populate it. And I say living beings in all sincerity - these characters live for me each time I pick up the books. Tolkien has such a way with a turn-of-phrase that he manages to almost literally reach out and suck me into Middle-earth and keep me there until he's good and done.

And believe it or not, although I've heard many complain that the trilogy is too long, I actually think it's too short. I remember the first time I read it - I had no idea that there were Appendices at the end of the book and I reached the end of The Scouring of the Shire thinking I still had hundreds of pages yet to read. I almost cried when I realized I was done before I was ready. To this day I still preserve hope that somewhere among Tolkien's lost works there are more Frodo stories and that I'll get to see them before I die.

I've read this trilogy (along with several other Tolkien works) dozens of times and never tire of them. In fact, even after I've re-read yet again, I find it difficult to put it back on the shelf until I've flipped through for a couple of days to go over some of my favorite passages. Maybe if I'm good and go to heaven, there will be a never-ending tale of Middle-earth waiting there for me.