: In order to not be misunderstood I am not claiming that the book is unenjoyable without the mytholgy. I only feel that without the accompanying appendixes one can easily get lost in the multitude of names and history. Without the surrounding mythology would this chat room exist? Tolkien does not spend the time within his story to fully develop his charectors he depends once again on his mythology to do that for us. It is as a previous contributer wrote, Tolkien is an wonderful storyteller with an amazing ability to evoke an emotiónal response in the reader through the use of colorful adjectives and a perfect mastery of the written language. Tolkien does not attempt to change the way we think, or the way we see the world, these are what reviewers look for when judging if a book is the best ever written. Furthermore one day I would like to read all of the contributing mythology such as the Lost tales, or Sil. Till now I havent most of the mythology which I have wondered about I have learned in theis chat room. Tolkien makes many of his readers actively search for it, without the appendixes, I would have finished the book with the feeling that something was missing.

Again I have to disagree. This board has at the most some one-hundred participants (including lurkers) at any given time. Over the course of this boards life there may have been as many as five hundred different people. There are probably ten more sites as equally vast (or more so) which would account for some five-thousand fans (rough estimate here). Of that, the majority have only read The Hobbit and LOTR. Which means that the majority of readers ARE casual readers who were only after the story. IMHO Tolkien does take the time to "fully develop his charectors". I'm not certain how you can assert that Aragorn, Frodo, Gandalf et.al. are not deep and complex characters.

For a moment, let's review Aragorn. Keep in mind that he is of an age with Denethor who is some eighty years old. Yet where Denethor has taken a wife and sired two sons, Aragorn has done neither of these things. Why? Because the love of his life, Arwen, is forbidden him by Elrond until he has re-established his line in Gondor and sits on the throne there. That's no tall order, and yet Aragorn remains faithful to his love, faithful to his bloodline, and attempts to re-establish that line. Further, when called upon by Gandalf, an old friend and sometimes teacher, to journey to a land he has not travelled extensively, meet and great a group of bumbling hobbits and escort them safely to Rivendell, he does it with very little question. He puts up with the four hobbits placed into his care by Gandalf, and takes every precaution (which included getting lost for a time) to bring them safely to Rivendell. These are just a few of the many nuances that Tolkien wove into each of his characters, and we could disect by measure, each of the Fellowship, and all the characters they encounter and find a depth that is amazingly surprising.

As to the assertion that "many of his readers actively search for [the mythology]" I would again state that the majority of readers have only troubled to enjoy The Hobbit and LOTR. Otherwise the sales of such titles as Lost Tales, Sil, HoME etc ad nauseum, would rival that of The Hobbit and LOTR.

Finally, as to the assertion that "without the appendixes, [readers] would have finished the book with the feeling that something was missing" I humbly beg you to provide an example. I myself did not read the apendixes until many years after my first reading of LOTR. I felt that the entire story was nicely wrapped up, despite that Tolkien had stated otherwise. It was a nice rounding out that echoed of Bilbo's first tale when Sam says, "Well, I’m back" and concludes the entire epic.

-RR