Without the works of Tolkien, would you remain unchanged?

[firncristwen]

I do believe I would be a very different person without Middle-earth in my bookshelves and simultaneously in my thoughts.

When reading "The Hobbit" or the trilogy, I am no longer the child everyone expects me and knows me to be. And what a feeling! For sometimes I am nothing at all as I follow Frodo and Sam over the Cracks of Doom or Legolas rapturous amongst the trees he loves. I am leaning against JRR Tolkien's side and his arm is around my shoulder as he takes me through the strange paths of his imagination, possibly in the same allure of a young child between wake and sleep as the father she never had reads her the loveliest fairy tales ever created.

Tolkienites are a strange race. We muster great love towards another, and to those outside we remain demented; but we are not even mildly insane. We live, as I said, between wake and sleep. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]