🧙‍♂️📖 Lord of the Rings year-long reading (Kickoff)

### 🧙‍♂️📖 Could you carry the Ring… or would it carry you? - Lord of the Rings year-long reading (Kickoff)

Short summary
We’re starting a year-long Lord of the Rings reading arc - slow enough to actually enjoy it, serious enough to make it worth doing.
This isn’t “LOTR trivia” and it’s not a debate about which movie scene is best. It’s Tolkien as myth, war story, friendship story, and temptation story.
The magic of doing this over a year is that the book starts as comfort - and gradually turns into something heavier and stranger.
If you’ve never finished LOTR, this is your chance. If you’ve read it three times, you’re still welcome - you’ll notice different things at different ages.

Reading for the kickoff meetup :

• The Fellowship of the Ring - Book I, Chapters 1–3
  (Chapter titles: A Long-Expected Party, The Shadow of the Past, Three Is Company.)
  I’m using Book + chapter titles so every edition matches cleanly.

What we’ll explore :

• Is the Shire real peace… or sheltered denial? What’s charming here, and what’s fragile?
• The Ring as a thing that “wants” you: do you read it like addiction, temptation, trauma, power, or something spiritual?
• Frodo’s first step: does he feel like a hero… or like a person being pushed by history?
• Gandalf - mentor or manipulator? Is he protecting Frodo, or using him because someone has to do it?
• Comfort vs duty: if your life is good and small, what could possibly justify leaving it?
• Modern question: what’s the “Ring” people carry now - status, ambition, outrage, attention, money - and what does it do to them?

How we’ll do it

• Quick hello + one-minute round: “What mood did the Shire give you?”
• A short map of Tolkien’s structure (so the big book feels manageable)
• Discussion anchored to key moments in Chapters 1–3
• Open floor, guided (so it stays sharp, not chaotic)
• At the end: we agree on next month’s chapters together

The year-long plan (simple + flexible)
I’m aiming for one meetup per month. Roughly:

• Feb: Fellowship (Book I)
• Mar–Apr: Fellowship (Book II)
• May–Jun: Two Towers (Book III)
• Jul–Aug: Two Towers (Book IV)
• Sep–Oct: Return of the King (Book V)
• Nov–Dec: Return of the King (Book VI) + optional “Appendices night” if people want

(Exact chapter chunks will be posted each meetup so no one gets confused.)

When and where

• Date: Sunday, February 22, 2026
• Time: 1:30PM - 3:30PM
• Location: Central Library - Meeting Rooms - L4 North

Cap 12–15