I started reading Lord of the Rings. Somehow I got so caught up in this story. Seeing that I read The Hobbit back in the days and was charmed by it, I just recently found out that it was prelude to the Lord of the Rings. And the whole story - it's more than just science fiction. Part of it was taken out of old myths by Tolkien, the other part was born in his imagination. It doesn't really matter, seeing how I loved it anyways. I appreciate long books, much longer than trilogies. Where the hobbits - made-up characters, have long and detailed history, where each detail is thought out and accurate. The book is quite charming, and as I got up to Chapter VI last night I was completely caught up in this old story. As I found out talking to my mom, who read the books and was very interested in Tolkien before I was born, LotR is just the end to a long period of time, which Tolkien made up. There are books that go before that, even before The Hobbit. Books that go centuries into the history of Mordor and in particularly the detailed history of the ring, the one that Frodo is struggling to destroy.

I've never been caught up in anything this way. Science fiction is not my thing, because I think that if it never happened, there's no point in me studying maps and researching the background. But this seems different. Last night I printed out maps of places from LotR and studied them. It was so interesting, and also scary. Was Tolkien a normal human being or did he go crazy over that? To write in such details, to write with such knowledge is not possible about made up world. Did he think he was a god who watched all of the happening? Or might that be that he took most of his details from the old myths? We will never know. But I know one thing, this book is not going to disappear from my life when I finish reading it. I can find younger books, I can do research on the countries that never existed. It not only gives me something to do with my time, but finally something to be obsessed with. I will never see the landscapes of Gondor, but I might go to New Zealand, where the movie was made. It's as far as I will get, but it's definitely better than getting nowhere.

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