If you know me well and looked through my 25 most influential books, it would be fairly obvious which author is missing from the list.
J.R.R. Tolkien.
I was in junior high school when somebody gave me a paperback edition of The Hobbit
Now obviously I don’t need to retell the storyline of these books. If you haven’t read them you’ve almost certainly seen the movies. And I don’t need to restate the power of these books or their brilliance. Many better writers have done that, and Lord of the Rings usually makes the list of best books from the 20th Century. Hard for me to add much to that kind of praise.
So let me instead share the three ways the books influenced my life.
First, it raised the bar on imagination. Tolkien created an entirely new world that was rich with detail. And yet it was also somehow familiar. My imagination was always strong, but Middle Earth took it to a whole new dimension. Details about geography, culture, language, even the sun and moon patterns all mattered to Tolkien and it showed in his writing. That’s unusual for a book like this. And it taught me an important point that I still value: details matter.
Second, the creative and even restless story felt so Biblical and yet so extraordinarily new. It helped me see the story of sacrifice, redemption and renewal in entirely new ways. It taught character over all other traits. The chapter where Frodo has to make the choice about the ring is perhaps one of the most poignant parts of any book I’ve read. I once heard that when describing his faith to C.S. Lewis, Tolkien said, “Think of it as a myth that really happened.” Indeed, that’s what he was doing with his books.
Finally, Tolkien made it cool to be a reader. Each generation needs an author who can capture the the collective imagination. J.K. Rowling did it most recently with even more success than Tolkien (though Tolkien’s books are, in my humble opinion, infinitely better). Being able to tell my fellow 13-year olds that I read The Hobbit was a badge of honor, a social currency that made me cool. I was never the geek type, but I was studious and tended toward an introvert. Knowing the difference between Rivendell and Mordor let my imagination live in a world that was broadly admired and esteemed. It was a readers form of heaven.
And that’s why the books of J.R.R. Tolkien make the list of the books that most influenced my life. Pretty good reasons, don’t you think?
Want to read more of my top 25? Here is the list thus far:
Celebration of Discipline – #1
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings – #2
The Cost of Discipleship – #3
The Screwtape Letters – #4
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – #5
Only the Paranoid Survive – #6
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – #7
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – #8
Truman – #9
Shantaram – #10
The Maltese Falcon – #11
The Shadow of the Wind – #12
Survey of the New Testament – #13
Calvin & Hobbes – #14
Celtic Daily Prayer – #15
Managing the Nonprofit Organization – #16
A Wrinkle in Time – #17
The Practice of the Presence of God – #18
Catch 22 – #19
The Tortilla Curtain – #20
The Kingdom of God is a Party – #21
Earthkeeping – #22
Reviving Ophelia – #23
The Grapes of Wrath – #24
Peanuts – #25