Reading “The Lord of the Rings”: “Prologue”

Every year, I settle in for a re-read of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and, no matter how many times I’ve read it before (it’s in the dozens of times, by this point), I manage to find new depths and complexities that eluded me before. Given that I’ve started to make a bit of a living here on Medium by sharing my thoughts and reflections about all sorts of things, including fantasy, I thought to myself: why…