You beat me to the
Bored of the Rings reference,
Inziladun!
I've been thinking back to when I first read
LotR, and who or what I thought Tom Bombadil and Goldberry were. Trying to recollect, I wasn't sure then who or what they were, and didn't mind at the time, having met in that book all kinds of strange beings.
Soon after, I read Robert Foster's
Complete Guide to Middle Earth, with its suggestion that Bombadil was a Maia 'gone native', like Radagast. While I thought it interesting, I didn't accept it, on the grounds that while Gandalf, a Maia, was terrified of having anything to do with the One Ring due to the temptations it would offer him, that ring appeared to have no power over Bombadil.