Lord of the Rings still amazes me

I re-read the whole book for the fifth time, after ten years, and I just still cannot believe how good it is. I mean, it was my favourite book already, and re-reading had not changed that. But I think I had forgotten how enthralling it is, and especially how huge it is. I arrived to the ending fully feeling the weight of the journey, the increasing complexity of the worldbuilding and the increasing epicness of the plot, and it was almost alienating to think back to the first chapters once I had seen how much had changed in just 1100 pages (I guess that is another thing I had forgotten: it is a relatively short book for all it contains, but it manages to be utterly epic without bloating the pages).

I still think that what makes it so amazing is not only the story, characters, worldbuilding or even how influential it is, but the message. Despite how many times I'd read it, I was still a child when I last read it fully. Now that I am an adult I feel the theme of "hope beyond endurance" all too well and it went straight through my heart. It was exactly the read I needed in a time when I felt close to go back to a despair that I had hoped to leave behind, and it gave me the catharsis my heart needed. I think I will read it again in five years, and I will still find it as beautiful.