The Romance of Tristan and Iseult. This is a fairly recent English translation of a French retelling from 1900; it is not what you want to read if you are a medieval lit geek, but it is by far the most readable version of the story I’ve encountered. Lots of fun. I am usually overwhelmed with not-caring about all tragic lovers, these two included, but I enjoyed this a lot. The author takes all of the major source material and uses it to compile a coherent story that reads like a novel.

As I read it I kept trying to remember what version of the Tristan story I read in college. I know it wasn’t the bit that’s in Mallory, because I read that a couple of summers ago and noted how different it was from what I’d read before. I have a copy of the Beroul on my book shelf, but that doesn’t mean I read it: I also have a copy of the Chretien de Troyes Arthurian romances and I am sure I haven’t read those. Every once in a while I get hit with the King Arthur bug and I buy some stuff and then I realize that, wait, I am not a fourteen-year-old geek boy or a medieval scholar and also I don’t care very much. But I guess I probably read the Beroul. Maybe I will reread it the next time this bug hits me.

(That last paragraph brought to you by being halfway through a rereading of The Once and Future King and realizing that I am way too old for that. I think maybe it is time for me to return to contemporary literary fiction. Soon, please.)

The Lord of the Rings. Once upon a time (I believe it was 2001) my then-boyfriend nearly broke up with me over this book. He didn’t understand how I could have gotten to be 30 years old without ever having read it. His mother had read it to him when he was still too young to understand it, and he’d read it several times since then, but I refused to even try to read it. I was sure it was stupid and that I would hate it.

This was my second time through, and I don’t hate it. I think you could fairly say that I love it, although since I never read it as a kid I am probably too distant to love it the way my husband loves it. And I don’t have very much to say about it, I’m afraid, except that it is still much better than the films, and it really is better if you read the appendices. (I read them first this time through.) Everything critical I have to say about Tolkien I already said after watching the third film, and that earned me so much hate mail that I am not about to go there again.

I have still found no good reason to read The Silmarillion. Even Jeremy isn’t that crazy. I read about sixty pages of it before we went to Mexico, and I could have finished it if I had brought it along on vacation, but that felt like punishment so I said screw it and put it back on the shelf, where I expect it will stay for the next ten years.