You know an author has become too popular when there start to be discussions over whether he is too popular.

"The 'Deplorable Cultus'" is only one of the sections of this book, and one of the shorter ones, but it gives a taste of the sort of desperate scratching for content you will find here. "The Middle-Earth Gourmet" featuring "Scotch Eggs Strider," anyone?

Fortunately, most of it isn't that irrelevant. But there is little that is very useful, either. The first major section, "The Author," has only two items, and one of those is an interview with Tom Shippey -- whose excellent books on Tolkien will give you far more information than this five-page conversation. Then comes "The Critics," which includes both positive and negative reviews (the infamous "Oo, Those Awful Orcs!" by Edmund Wilson immediately follows an article of great praise by C. S. Lewis), but it seems to me that only Ursula K. LeGuin adds anything substantial to the discussion -- and she has more to say in The Language of the Night. There follow the deplorable "The 'Deplorable Cultus'" and the miscellaneous section "The Reader," which includes a set of discussion questions, two word puzzles (which aren't really very relevant to Tolkien, who, I guarantee you, never paid the slightest attention to either William Howard Taft or Robert A. Taft!), and those recipes.

If you want to learn about Tolkien the Man, read one of the biographies (Humphrey Carpenter's is probably the best). If you want to know about Tolkien's sources, read Tom Shippey. If you want a reference for Middle-Earth, A Companion to Middle-Earth should serve you well. If you want silliness, then -- and only then -- is this book for you. ( )