Oooh, another language. What can it mean?

It’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” in Spanish! And after over a year of slow and sometimes laborious reading, I completed it, thanks be to God! On my trip to Thailand, I had lots of time to read, and I comprehended much more, until finally I didn’t even need to look back at my English translation. It was really cool to read an entire book in another language.

I took Spanish in high school for three years, but then in college I wasn’t required to take it, since I was a nerdy electrical engineering major and had taken 2 years in high school already. Now I wish I had taken it in college. Still, I wanted to learn it better, so I bought a textbook and the Fellowship of the Ring. Since I had read the Lord of the Rings many, many times in my life, it helped a lot because I already knew the gist of many passages.

What to do now? I need the second book in the series, “The Two Towers”! Providentially, a friend of mine in New York (who incidentally is a nice Catholic girl) gave me “Las Dos Torres” as a gift last Christmas when I made a trip to visit her.

Note the Lord of the Nazgul flying on the evil winged beast by the Dark Tower. Soo evil! John Howe is the artist, and he was one of the two main artistic influences on the Lord of the Rings movies.

To put it in perspective, if you tried to fight against a Ringwraith in real life, it would be like a very puny man trying to fight against the Incredible Hulk, or perhaps against a ninja (with a sword or throwing stars). Yeah I know–impossible! And yet a little hobbit and a woman slew this evil lord and his fell beast. Kind of resembles the Woman fighting the Dragon in Revelation, eh? Tolkien was a Catholic after all, may God rest his soul.

Let the Spanish reading continua!