This book is a collection of essays and short stories. I read it back in the fall of '05. I remember because the binding of my book has a crack in it after I slammed my fist on it after BYU lost to Boston College after one of the worst offensive performances I've ever witnessed and when Bronco Mendenhall inexplicably decided to punt halfway through the fourth quarter when they were down by three scores. It's true.
I wasn't crazy about most of it. My favorite short story in here was "Leaf by Niggle" which is about this artist who makes this beautiful and perfect painting. But he just can't stop adding to it. He keeps adding more and more trees and individual leaves to the painting. As I read it I couldn't help but think that it was kind of an allegory to his Lord of the Rings stuff and his Middle Earth creation. He writes these amazing books and he is so obsessed that he cannot help but keep adding to it by creating this world with an insane amount of detail. Just look at the Silmarillion with it's extreme amount of detail about the creation of Middle Earth, etc. It was an interesting short story and more happens in it beside him just painting.
This book also contains Tolkien's famous essay, "On Fairy-Stories." It's pretty interesting at times, but I'm just not much of an essay guy.
I recall liking parts of the short story "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son" as well.
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