Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
   Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
   One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
   One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
   One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

This always has, and always will, give me chills. And just the sight of the word Nazgûl makes me want to run and cower underneath under my blanket. Whatever you call them — the Nazgûl, the Black Riders, the Ringwraiths — they’ve always been the most terrifying beings I’ve ever read about.

I first read The Hobbit back in third grade. Soon after that, I began reading part one of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, but I never finished it. In fifth grade I started over, and this time I got halfway through part two, The Two Towers, but again I never got around to finishing it. Finally, ten years ago, during the summer after my high school graduation, I read the whole thing, all the way through the end of Return of the King, even though I’d seen the animated film and pretty much already knew how the trilogy turned out. Wonderful, wonderful. (Except for the last hundred pages or so, which seem so excruciatingly boring and anticlimactic.)

Last night, after reading the first part of Andrew O’Hehir’s exegesis of the trilogy in Salon yesterday, I picked up my copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and began reading it again. (These are the versions I have.) I don’t know if I want to trudge all the way through Middle-Earth all over again, but it’s nice just to delve back into it and look at the wonderful names of characters and places. Who knows — maybe I’ll get sucked back in. The first half of Fellowship is a frightening masterpiece of tension and suspense. I can say that I eagerly await the release of the film version of the first book in December.

The road goes ever on and on…