In Atlas Shrugged, John Galt has an uncontrollable sharting problem and must keep his speech very short.

No, I only count books I fuck. /s

Reading The Hobbit is far easier than watching it. It’s the rare example of a book I could probably read in less time than the film trilogy covers. So I would recommend starting with that book and ignoring the films until much later.

You can read Lord of the Rings without reading The Hobbit, though The Hobbit is a more accessible introduction to Tolkien’s style and Middle Earth. Tolkien loves lore, songs, and conversation; he also likes battles when they fit the narrative. Anything that feels more descriptive or digressive in The Hobbit is done twofold in LOTR. In any case, you should read Lord of the Rings in order: Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King.

A re-read is never the same, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be good.

I usually forget some things that happened the first time but remember others. So part of the experience involves a kind of re-learning, tracing the same story beats and feeling something similar (not the same). But part of it is also noticing new details I didn’t see the first time, like glints of foreshadowing or a specific character I understand better now. In other words, I exercise my empathy, my understanding, and my ability to reflect.

There is usually something else I can get from a text, if I go through it again. For my favorite texts, reading and rereading sets a mood specific to that text. I know what’s going to happen in Macbeth, but the words themselves are a joy to move through.

The closest I got is reading unabridged classics in high school. Certainly picked out Les Miserables and Don Quixote for that reason, though I came to enjoy them for their own thing.

I think the trilogy is a very good trilogy, and maybe the best fantasy trilogy I have read in a long time.

I have some qualms. I think the second book and moreso the third have a lot of plotting that feels convenient, that feels like it’s for the sake of bringing Essun and Nassun together. I noticed this in Jemisin’s first trilogy too: she sets up beautiful, wondrous worlds and interesting characters, but I also experience a disjunct, the characters starting to make decisions I wouldn’t expect, seemingly in pursuit of a neater resolution. It feels like a nebulous qualm, but it basically amounts to me feeling like I saw the skeleton of the story and where it was going and, consequently, seeing events as in service of the structure rather than an organic consequence of the world.

All that said, it’s still a fun ride. I think Jemisin is one of the great writers of this generation.

That makes me think of the picture of a bookstore in North Korea that had almost nothing but books by or about its leaders. No single leader should form a significant number of library or bookstore holdings.

I do think literature could be taught better, but I’m also skeptical of the claim that lots of young people would love reading if not for being made to read The Scarlet Letter in high school.

The absence of classic reading requirements would likely not somehow be replaced by reading lots of literature. While I do believe that reading lists should have more current literature and cycle many of the “classics” to an optional list, the bigger issue is that many kids don’t do the reading. That’s true in college, high school, and before. In a first year composition class I’m teaching now (so, not even literature, not onerous reading), I have easily half of my students bluffing their way through class discussion and papers. They see no value in assignments or reading if it can’t be done 15 minutes before class.

I don’t have the answer for what needs to happen at the middle and high school level to turn that around. Maybe their behavior comes from in-grained, reflexive responses to readings they didn’t like in the past. Maybe it’s not on the teachers at all but on COVID, building anxiety about our futures, and a sort of information overload. In any case, I think reading selection isn’t as important as either building motivation in reading (which teachers can help with) or addressing the issues that cause anxiety in the first place (which is really on policy-makers).