Matthew Melton writes: Last weekend at the Curb Event Center at Belmont University, the Nashville Symphony Orchestra presented composer Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings Symphony. It was a great moment for fans like me who have followed the novels since long before the films came into being. I first met Bilbo Baggins in the spring of 1974. British author J.R.R. Tolkien had passed away only a year before that, but the extraordinary little hobbit Bilbo had already made his way into a chapter of a literary anthology in my 6th grade English class. The year was barely over before I had purchased a paperback copy of Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. I spent the next month reading delightedly through a story unlike any other I had ever read. At the time I lived in a home without television, so books were my TV. [More]