★★★★☆ I only remember that I loved it/Virtue is time management

Leaf by Niggle

J.R.R. Tolkien

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

For me it, was the one with the orcs.

I was still in elementary school when I read The Lord of the Rings. I was completely blown away by it -- I read it so many times that I almost had it memorized. And after that I read everything I could find by J.R.R. Tolkien. At that time there wasn't much. Aside from The Hobbit, which I include as part of LOTR, there were only two things I could find, Leaf by Niggle and Farmer Giles of Ham. The Silmarillion would not be published for many years. There was also eventually a collection called The Tolkien Reader that included these two stories and a bunch of little Tom Bombadil stories.

I remember very little of Leaf by Niggle -- only that it was about a painter called Niggle who painted a leaf (more than that, but...) I also remember that I thought it was a very beautiful little story. I should probably read it again.

Goodreads review

Audiobook review:

I was recently yesterday of reminded of J.R.R. Tolkien's Leaf by Niggle and wrote a review, the burden of which was that I barely rememberd it, but that I remembered I loved it. Since it is so short, I decided to reread it. It's not available on kindle or easily available on paper, but there is an audiobook, so I got that.

I have just listened to it. It is 49 min. I was a little surprised at the extent to which it is about time management. When we first meet Niggle, his biggest problem is that he has poor time management skills. He goes to a kind of purgatory where he learns to manage his time, and, being now a person of perfect virtue, goes on to a heaven of his own making.

Stranger than I remembered.

Goodreads review

Amazon review

Comments

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