Why is LOTR the best fantasy novel of our time?

[QuickSlash]

Hmm. I'm going to draw on a post that I read by Child of the 7th Age once, but I have no idea where it was.

She'd said that one big reason that The Lord of the Rings series got so big was that it came at the *perfect* time. People were starving for fantasy right then, and paperback books had just become commonplace. tLotR was able to come in and fill a large niche in the world.

But, of course, not anything could've done that. It had to be something huge, it had to be something powerful. And that is what Tolkien's works are. They have everything a book needs, and they cover the bases well. They're books that will stand the test of time because you can always relate to them. You can always relate to temptation, you can always relate to some supposedly too-great evil. You can easily get caught up in the plight of Middle Earth. The only trouble is remembering that it's just a book. ~_^