Din from F-105 on why he loves The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

Canadian musician Din is the frontman of the rock band F-105. They recently released two singles — Rebel Girl and Desert Planet — from their upcoming debut album. Din says if you're a fan of fantasy, you'll love reading The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien.

"I would say The Lord of the Rings is the bible of modern fantasy, so I've been reading The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien for months. It's a huge book. I'm about halfway through and J.R.R. Tolkien is such a character. He's so fascinating. What an insight this book is into what he was going through in his creative journey in making his mythology, which really started when he was a teenager with a group of friends that wanted to write an English-toned mythology that they felt was lacking in England. Most of his friends died in the First World War, which he fought in too, and then he sort of took it upon himself. He said, 'I'm creating the kind of thing that I love' — and I'm paraphrasing — 'but which there's too little of in the world.' Tolkien does go into a lot of depth in terms of character and plot and influences on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. The Silmarillion he speaks a lot about too, which was the cosmological and anthropological history of the world of Middle Earth. That's one of the things that I loved about the books — that attention to detail makes it feel so real."