I can't really review The Lord of the Rings anymore. I have read the books (and many of the other volumes dealing with Middle Earth) so many times over the past 40 years, and the world was such a big part of my younger self's thinking, that I no longer know whether these books are good or not. They are by no means perfect and do have some problematic issues, but I cannot think of them as anything other than fundamental - almost a separate class of book.

I started re-reading Fellowship about a year ago (20th reread? 30th reread? I have no idea anymore), just taking my time, reading it when I wanted. By mid-May I was about 1/4 through Return and got distracted by other reading. I did not pick it up again seriously for 7 months, and when I did, it took about a paragraph and I knew exactly where I was, what the story was up to that point, and what was coming up - just as if I had put it down earlier in the day.

I will be rereading this until I die, probably. ( )

I found this pretty ordinary, but at least I made it through, unlike the Lord of the Rings trilogy!