{"id":4669,"date":"2017-01-26T04:28:17","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T12:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=4669"},"modified":"2017-01-26T06:10:52","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T14:10:52","slug":"roads-go-ever-on-a-hobbit-and-lord-of-the-rings-readalong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/roads-go-ever-on-a-hobbit-and-lord-of-the-rings-readalong","title":{"rendered":"Roads Go Ever On: A Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Readalong"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gandalf and Treebeard pose by the Millennium Edition of The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

This year as I enter the world of reading challenges, I’ve also jumped into my first readalong: Brona’s The Hobbit<\/em> and The Lord of the Rings<\/em> Readalong 2017<\/a>. It didn’t take much deliberation to decide to join.\u00a0Since first reading The Hobbit <\/em>and\u00a0The Lord of the Rings\u00a0<\/em>in 1979, I’ve probably reread them a good ten times or more. I think it’s pretty safe to say that\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>and J.R.R. Tolkien have had a profound influence on my life. In fact, my\u00a0very first blog post ever<\/a>,\u00a0way back in 2006, was about Tolkien’s influence in my life.<\/p>\n

I still have the books I bought with my paper route money in that magical summer of 1978 when I devoured them back to back to back to back on my dad’s brown leather La-Z-Boy:<\/p>\n

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My original copies of The Hobbit<\/em> and The Lord of the Rings<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

After my initial reading in 1978, I reread them in high school, again in college, and twice more after getting married. I taught The Hobbit<\/em> to eighth graders for seven years, starting in 2001, just before Peter Jackson’s movies came out, so I read them again at that time.\u00a0I started keeping formal track of my books read in January of 2003, and since then I’ve read Tolkien’s Middle-earth books twice: in 2007 I listened to the excellent unabridged audio recording by Rob Inglis<\/a>, and in 2011 I read them on a Kindle for the first time. I’ve also read and loved\u00a0The Silmarillion, Children of Hurin,\u00a0<\/em>and many other books by and about Tolkien and his works.<\/p>\n

So I’m definitely all in on a Tolkien readalong.<\/p>\n

What makes this readalong special for me is that I’ve just acquired a set of the Millennium Edition of\u00a0The Lord of the Rings.\u00a0<\/em>The Millennium Edition was a one-time set published in 1999 by Houghton Mifflin that divides the books into seven volumes with Tolkien’s original titles:<\/p>\n