The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
Fantasy Contemporary fictionScience fictionLiterary fiction
A reluctant hobbit, a ring with a will of its own, and a long walk toward a mountain nobody should want to visit. The prose carries an old storytelling voice, slow and lyrical, with wonder and friendship warming the long journey.
Feels like wonder, longing and hope. About adventure, friendship and power.
Who it’s for
You may enjoy this if you like invented languages, songs, and a grave, unhurried quest told with deep affection for its characters. Be ready for a long book with archaic phrasing and stretches of travel and verse that ask for patience.
Why read it
It offers a fully made world and a story about ordinary courage, friendship, and power that lingers after the walking is done.
A page from the book
A story that lets you in, versus one that tells you what to think.
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history, true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author. J.R.R. Tolkien.Tolkien built the languages first and the story second: Elvish existed before any hobbit, and he said the tales grew to give his invented tongues a world to live in.
Books that feel like this
More by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1934
A quiet Hobbit's routine world is shattered when an unexpected visitor introduces him to a quest of impossible stakes.
The Fellowship of the Ring
J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954
A quiet hobbit inherits a ring that is not his to keep, and leaves the Shire with friends who do not yet know the road.
The Silmarillion
J. R. R. Tolkien, 1977
The creation myth and lost legends of Middle-earth: cosmic music, doomed oaths, and the wars that made Frodo's world.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Lord of the Rings for me?
- You may enjoy this if you like invented languages, songs, and a grave, unhurried quest told with deep affection for its characters. Be ready for a long book with archaic phrasing and stretches of travel and verse that ask for patience.
- What is The Lord of the Rings like?
- The prose carries an old storytelling voice, slow and lyrical, with wonder and friendship warming the long journey. Feels like wonder, longing and hope. About adventure, friendship and power.
- What should I read after The Lord of the Rings?
- If you liked The Lord of the Rings, try Eragon (Christopher Paolini), The Great Hunt (Robert Jordan) and A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin).
A taste of the feed
Advice that sounds like freedom and costs almost everything to keep.
Let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered, one may be a free man and yet be bound tighter than a slave. Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don’t follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not. Consider none your superior in life. Treat all fairly or they will seek revenge. Be careful with your money. Hold fast to your beliefs and others will listen. Of the affairs of love, my only advice is to be honest. That’s your most powerful tool to unlock a heart or gain forgiveness.
Eragon · Christopher Paolini
What it costs to be taken seriously by something that wants to kill you.
A young wolfhound must meet his first wolf someday, but if the wolf sees him as a puppy, if he acts the puppy, the wolf will surely kill him. The wolfhound must be a wolfhound in the wolf’s eyes even more than in his own, if he is to survive.
The Great Hunt · Robert Jordan
The oldest rule of magic is a warning about unintended consequences.
You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power. It is most perilous. It must follow knowledge, and serve need. To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
A Wizard of Earthsea · Ursula K. Le Guin
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