There's a lot more to this than you'd think -- it's an unapologetic hagiography of Tolkien (the subtitle is "How J.R.R. Tolkien created a new mythology"), with unedifying moments where he says outright that Tolkien's critics are just wrong (although in fairness, some of them are, and very few of them can be accused of arguing in good faith), but there's a *lot* in here about the development of linguistics (formerly known as philology), and about the northern barbarians -- the Goths, the Huns, the Saxons, in addition to the obvious subject of the later Norse. And if you thought they were a boring, monotonous collection of Conan types (or worse, Beowulfs), read this book; they mostly were, though they had a fair sight more dignity, but the history of such peoples is fascinating nonetheless. (Particularly the fragment of an impossibly ancient text that points to Proto-Indo-Europeans, or some culture they interacted with, living near the Carpathians, which the Germanic peoples never came meaningfully close to. I don't know -- it felt poignant to me...) ( )

http://allbookedup-elena.blogspot.com... ( )

This is an extraordinarily interesting book. I liked the Tolkien books as a teenager, and enjoyed the movies when they came out. but somehow I never really appreciated the extent to which Tolkien not only created an imaginary world that readers could lose themselves in, but created an entire genre that has become one of the most widespread forms of literature in the modern world, and in effect, created a modern mythology that many people find as attractive and comforting as religion. Pretty amazing, when you think about it.

A well-written and intelligent critical look at myth making and Middle earth, but sometimes you can know too much about something that might otherwise be better off mysterious or magical. Very behind the scenes kinda stuff but interesting and thought provoking nonetheless. Shippey knew Tolkien personally. Read this only after you've read LotR about 10 times. Some of the references are obscure (to me anyway)and layered on multiple other references and it's easy to get lost in the trees and forget you're still in a forest.