Lord of the Rings and Southerners You know, I'm not usually into fantasy of this kind at all, but I picked up the Hobbit at the Munich train station and read it straight through on the way to Budapest. Now I'm reading the Lord of the Rings and it's honestly extremely difficult to put down. So skillfully done from a variety of aspects: linguistics, drama, pace, depth, accessibility, scope, creativity, world definition. I am honestly completely in awe. Tolkien knew what he was doing. I had always sort of written off LOTR as sort of a hippy/geek cult classic that wasn't exactly my style, but I am now a true believer in this quote from the London Sunday Times: 'The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them.' I know for a fact that I'm going to read all of this book (Fellowship of the Ring) and the following two, despite the exhaustive length. I feel like a bit of a jerk, actually, for having written these books off as geek stuff, putting myself on some sort of a 'cool' pedestal. It makes me think of other things that I must consciously or subconsciously do that for, and that makes me feel bad. Like southerners. I know for a fact that before I left I was absolutely prejudiced against people from the south of the US. In travelling, though, many of these prejudices have fallen through. I've met a lot of extremely cool and interesting southerners, and now I'm forced to step back and honestly reevaluate. A challenged reality is a more enlightened one.