I just finished this book for the 4th or 5th time. I really can't say enough about it. In my opinion this is a masterpiece of fictional literature. J.R.R. Tolkien was a masterful author. His brilliance is manifest throughout the book as each character is portrayed in depth.  Each one feels like they are indeed their own person with their own personality and way of thinking, their own culture and humor and proverbs, and their own fine arts such as music and poetry.  It really is incredible.

The Lord of the Rings doesn’t feel like fiction.  There are, obviously mythical creatures and things of that nature, however, aside from that it feels like, instead of writing about something he was making up, Tolkien was writing about a place and events and people that occupy a portion of actual history somewhere.  From what I understand about Tolkien, that was actually part of his motivation.  He was bothered by the fact that England didn’t have its own mythology, but rather borrowed and adapted mythological accounts from its neighbors.  I’m not sure about the truth of that account, but nonetheless if there was a gap the work that went into Middle Earth certainly filled it.

I highly recommend this book.  There is a lot we can learn from Tolkien’s use of the English language and his wonderfully descriptive writing style.  I feel that the Lord of the Rings is a direct result of talent being governed by discipline to produce excellence.  What a book!

I just finished reading this book for the third or fourth time.  It is a great book.  One of the most valuable aspects of the book is that it causes you to think.  C. S. Lewis attempts to boil Christianity down to its very essential qualities the most important of which would be an understanding that there is indeed a God. 

The book begins with Lewis presenting the existence of God as a very reasonable consideration.  I believe Lewis' past as an atheist and the path to his conversion helped very much in this regard.  He makes a very strong case on behalf of the existence of God, and he does it in such a way that any thinking person reading the book would have to admit that the arguments are pretty convincing.  

As the book continues on, despite his best efforts to avoid it, Lewis' Anglican faith begins to make appearances here and there.  There are also times that, while it is obvious that Lewis' was a brilliant man who I admire greatly, he gets in, seemingly, over his head.  There are many doctrinal issues that are presented and supported by reason and logic when the most reasonable approach would be to simply rely on revealed truth.  I know that in the beginning of the book the purpose seems to be that Lewis' was trying to make a plausible case for God without Scripture so as to cause the skeptic to see that there is sense to the idea.  However, when dealing with particular doctrinal issues later on  in the book, while his approach would retain the skeptic it loses the biblically grounded believer.

Overall this is a very good read and an easy read at that.  The chapters are short, if wordy.  His conversational tone is easy to follow.  And again the book makes you think.