not to be a nerd but my favorite tolkien text tbh, on faerie stories is a banger!

Last year I totally skipped my annual tradition and didn’t read a single Tolkien book during the winter months, even though I have two full boxes of them lingering in my TBR. And I didn’t even have the excuse that I didn’t know which boxes they were in; I packed my TBR smart (lol) with way too easy identification to claim accidental ignorance. So this year we’re going to try to do a Tolkien book every month for the winter, starting with November because we had a decent snow and the vibes just felt right to get into some Middle Earth fantasy! Unfortunately, the Tolkien reader was pretty horrible… It should have been an easy reintroduction, with four short works making up the volume and a range of writing styles to mix things up. And yet, not a single one of these pieces was a decent read… Farmer Giles of Ham felt like a silly undeveloped pseudo-mediaeval legend, Tolkien’s “classic” essay on fairy tales was a bore and failed to impart anything fascinating about the genre, the set of poems about Tom Bombadill were dull as dirt (not suitable representation at all for this fascinating character), and the “play” based on mediaeval lore was inscrutable and nonsensical. No wonder this little volume isn’t particularly popular with fans of Tolkien’s work and I rarely hear anyone gush about it. Dull, and dull again. I don’t think I’ll even keep a copy in my library for the collector’s aspect; it’s just not worth the shelf space!

I want to read these to my kids

I was more interested in the short stories and poems in this book. The essay goes into detail about what is a fairy story and the different elements that make up a fairy story. I’ll be honest, some of it went over my head. The short stories and poems are incredible! He has such a mastery over creative writing it’s insane. I highly recommend, and I won’t judge if you skip the essay.