Shanahan
I've never found another book that moves me as this one does. I've found many many books that I re-read dozens of times; I'm kind of a compulsive re-reader. I dive headfirst into a text, and let it snatch me from RL into its world. I willingly suspend disbelief. But only Tolkien requires no such suspension from me. Only LotR, as many times as I have read it, utterly consumes and convinces me.

I think this is why I am impatient with the D&D-type power points discussions, and the was the Balrog subservient to Sauron or not discussions, etc. etc. etc. For me these discussions trivialize and distance me from Middle Earth. Is this at all what you meant by 'banalize'?

When queried as to why the heck I would read a book over and over (usually by someone who is quietly inching away from me as they speak), they often say "You already know how it turns out!" Mindlessly teleological. I respond by asking them why they listen to certain pieces of music over and over. To me, it is the same thing. One does it, not to find out what happens, but because the work says something important, something that one needs to hear, in a way in which one wants to hear it. And in a work of sufficient complexity, say a great symphony or the Dune series, one can always find something new to "hear".