The first official Tolkien Reading Day was held on March 25, 2003. A New York journalist was wondering if there was such a thing as Tolkien Reading Day and asked the Tolkien Society about this in 2002. It was decided that there should be a Tolkien Reading day, and then the only debate was ‘when’ should it be held? Please go to the Tolkien Society’s official page for Tolkien Reading Day to find out just how and why March 25th was chosen.
You will also see some very helpful tips on what types of activities can be done to celebrate Tolkien Reading Day, from discussions about common themes or settings, to fun games to engage children with. Tolkien Reading Day can be held at a home, a school, a library or a bookstore or you can even take it outside, maybe at a picnic and add a meal to the event. And while the Middle-earth stories tend to be the more popular at a Tolkien Reading Day event, his other works, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Letters from Father Christmas or Roverandam can be just as enchanting.
The theme for this year is Landscapes, a subject that Tolkien was particularly adept at envisioning and describing in wonderful detail. Middle-earth must have had very successful travel agents, how many times have you wondered what it would be like to visit some of the realms described?
Tolkien Forever, the Tolkien Smial in Southern California, will be hosting an event this Saturday, March 23. True, it is not the correct day, but a Saturday works better for drawing more people to the event in the ever busy Megalopolis that is So Cal. For those in the Los Angeles area, stop by their Facebook event page for details.
If you have a Tolkien Reading Day event happening in your area, please let us know the details so we can post it and let others know where they can go in an area near them. You can drop a line to Spymaster@TheOneRing.net.
David Salo who you may know from his work as a linguist, language constructor and translator for Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit movies has recently started his own language blog called Midgardsmal. Salo intends to blog about his thoughts about his work on the films, as well as the new languages he created for The Hobbit. 
John D. Rateliff, author of The History of the Hobbit, explores the links between The Silmarillion and The Hobbit in this interesting paper that he delivered for the International Congress on Medieval Studies of Kalamazoo (USA) in May 2012.
This piece by Tolkien scholar 
Stephen Colbert boasts some seriously impressive knowledge of Tolkien trivia. In a segment on The Colbert Report last night, actor James Franco challeneged Colbert to name just two of the Valar. Colbert responded by rattling off Varda, Manwë, Aulë, Oromë and a few others — and their domains — without breaking sweat.
Welcome to the latest “Getting to know…” questions that need answering. Based on the old Getting to know you threads that I used to post on the message boards here on TORn, so those familiar with them will know that the questions can be a little crazy and the answers even crazier.