Hello, everyone, and welcome to Speaking with Joy, a podcast to fill your soul, challenge your mind, and make you brave.

I'm your host, Joy Clarkson, and an evangelist for all things good, true, and beautiful.

So make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere comfortable, and let's dive in to this week's episode. Days are getting short here in St. Andrews in

Scotland, with the sun waking up around 9 a.m. and falling back to sleep at 3.30.

And with the days being short, that means the nights are very long.

And after we've eaten whatever cozy thing we can eat and put on an extra layer of socks,

without being able to go visit friends or go to a pub like we usually would,

the nights seem rather long and we have to find something to fill the hours. So lately, my brother Joel and I have been taking to an old and cozy comfort, reading out loud.

In October, we read Pyrinaezi by Susanna Clark, which if you haven't already read my review over at the

Plow Quarterly, you should go check it out because I think it's my favorite new read of the year.

But more recently, we started an old classic and an old favorite, Lord of the Rings.

Lord of the Rings has been kind of in the wallpaper of my imagination for as long as I can remember.

In our first house in Colorado, I remember spending long afternoons playing on the mountainside

like we were characters in the fellowship taking the ring to Moria.

And then in my teen years, I just associated it with this feeling of coziness and suspense. I think of drinking a cup

of tea and eating a pumpkin muffin and being full of feelings and wondering what would happen.

So there's this real comfort and nostalgia that I feel when I think about Lord of the Rings.

But it's been a long time since I reread

the series. But picking it back up with Joel has made me remember why this series has lasted as long as it

has. There's been something particularly poignant about reading it this time, because really it's a book

in which many good things are being lost and how can we not

kind of feel that way about our world but it's also a book about power ultimately and that power can

...