The Loaded Bookshelf

Last night my husband and I both sat on our couch, independently reading.  I cracked open lauded fantasy novel The Lies of Locke Lamora, which I've long wanted to read, and which is impressing me so far.  He's started anew The Lord of the Rings, perhaps his favorite novel, for a third reading. 

Not a general fantasy reader, the DH read The Hobbit for the first time shortly before the first LOTR movie came out, and then read LOTR twice in quick succession--first for pleasure, and then for a Tolkien course at his college, the only humanities class he seems to remember with any pleasure, or at all.  He still has his papers and notes, including a convincing paper on the importance of trees in Tolkien's universe (I read it).  He takes this stuff seriously.  He has Tolkien reference books, lists of terms and indices of minor historical incidents.  Maps of Middle Earth.  He genuinely wants the names Samwise, Meriadoc, or Eowyn to be in consideration for our children.  I jokingly offer to call our first boy Helm Hammerhand.

And I was thinking last night, as we peacefully read our separate novels together, that it's a great thing to be married to a nerd.