I’ve decided to forgo posting my goals for this year, since so many of them are really just a continuation of past year’s goals with the added caveat: No Excuses.

Instead, I’m sending out a happy birthday note to a man who has been my friend these many long years, J. R. R. Tolkien.  Many of my warmest memories from childhood come from sitting in a patch of sunshine while my mom read aloud from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.  As a young teen as my family structure began to unravel and my world tipped sideways, I read the books on my own and found reason and hope in the reading.  I came back to the trilogy again during my pregnancy with our son, and was able to escape the discomforts of a body fighting preeclampsia.  I took our daughter to see the first of the movies release just one week before she was born, and have read the books with my kids as they’ve grown.  When my brother was killed in a car accident a couple years ago, I once again immersed myself in Tolkien’s world.  There have been many other books I’ve loved through the years, but none so well as these.

My thanks to the man who created them!

I know how Tolkien felt about biographies, but I’m thinking of picking one up.  I’ve read On Fairy Stories and his other essays, and would enjoy learning about the particulars of his life I haven’t yet heard.  I’m thinking of Carpenter’s ‘authorized’ biography.  Anybody read it, and can you recommend?