Like many of you our household has latched on to Netflix and other streaming services.
Especially during the pandemic and the cold spells, binge watching series has become a thing around here.
In some ways for me, watching a series on Netflix takes on the similarities to my home TV viewing habits over the past several decades.
I’ve always loved history, science fiction and some fantasy.
Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, for example, are big favorites of mine.
Almost any time I’ve watched either of those classics, I’ve invariably wanted to read for more background information.
I read all of the George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones books before the HBO series began.
As for Lord of the Rings, many of us who attended college in the 1960s or 1970s had read J. R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy of Middle Earth – decades before Peter Jackson’s outstanding LOTR films.
I’ve accumulated quite the small library of Tolkien’s world.
And, as I watched those movies, I refer to the many reference books I have tied to the books.
An acquaintance who visited our house years ago noted the LOTR books, including those telling about the ages of Middle Earth before the trilogy.
Later, he called to tell me about Martin’s Game of Thrones books.
He insisted GOT was more exciting than Lord of the Rings.
I certainly found the GOT books fascinating and, yes, the story lines more riveting than LOTR.
Martin is a great writer.
But his writing production is glacial – the series ended up eclipsing the books that made his readers think future books were unlikely to lead where GOT started.
Now that GOT is over, I’ve found that Middle Earth still draws my interest.
The reason is Tolkien’s devotion to his books’ deep history and to humanity’s own history.
It was his created world of time beyond mind that first captivated me.
Tolkien wrote of distant civilizations – the very reason I find Earth’s antiquity so interesting.
We watched and enjoyed the sci-fi series The Expanse.
Spaceships fighting centuries in the future with the backdrop of long-passed civilizations that held deep secrets.
You know, like GOT and LOTR, with star cruisers.
