I read it. Tolkein obviously didn't go into it without some considerable preparation. It's sad, but that kind of literary education is now going out of style. Maybe that's why people today act as if history began when they were born, they can't step back and look at their times as just a passing episode in a very long pageant. They make the same mistakes other generations made and they act as if the world around them appeared fully formed from nothingness. It is an old cliche, but true nonetheless: without a knowledge of our past, we are incapable of dealing properly with our future. Like adolescents, we seem to live a perpetual present that catches off guard every single time.