What made you love the books so much?

[Birdland]

I love the books because of ... everything. I just believe in it. - Melephelwen

That seems to be the key theme for everyone here. Since I was a little girl my favorite reading, besides fantasy and science fiction, was histories and legends, from the mythologies of the Greeks to Robin Hood.

When I first found LoTR, I thought I would be reading a fantasy, and instead found I was reading a legend! And this legend recorded not only the great deeds and words, but the very heart and souls of the heroes. It was something I had never experienced before in any book.

Now we have other authors who try to show us what was "under the skin" of the heroes of our own mythologies, but Tolkien did it first, and he did it best.