Today is The Tolkien Society’s international Tolkien Reading Day! The theme this year is Home and Hearth: the many ways of being a Hobbit.
Share a video, or let us know what you’re reading in the comments below or by using #TolkienReadingDay on Twitter.
What’s going on?
Tolkien Reading Day is held on the 25th of March each year. The date of the 25th of March was chosen as the date on which the Ring was destroyed, completing Frodo’s quest and vanquishing Sauron.
It has been organised by the Tolkien Society since 2003 to encourage fans to celebrate and promote the life and works of J.R.R. Tolkien by reading favourite passages. We particularly encourage schools, museums and libraries to host their own Tolkien Reading Day events. To celebrate this year’s Tolkien Reading Day, the Society hosted a day of events at the Discover Children’s Story Centre in London.
What can you read
The theme for this year’s Tolkien Reading Day is Home and Hearth: the many ways of being a Hobbit. You can, of course, read any works by Tolkien – fiction or non-fiction – that you personally enjoy. But some suggestions for what you might like to read as part of this year’s theme:
- The Hobbit, with most of the book being applicable to this theme;
- The Lord of the Rings, particularly the beginning and the ending of the book;
- Bilbo’s Last Song, Bilbo’s song as he leaves Middle-earth at the end of the Third Age;
- The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, particularly, “Bombadil Goes Boating”; and
- The Road Goes Ever On, which includes Bilbo’s poem, and others, set to music.
How else you can participate
Share you stories and photos either below, on our Facebook page, or by following us on Twitter and using the hashtag #TolkienReadingDay. But, most of all, we’d love to see videos of you reading!
You can also view a selection of scholars reading Tolkien’s works, which we produced for our Tolkien Reading Day three years ago, on the theme of friendship.
Whatever you’re doing, take the opportunity to enjoy Tolkien’s works.
