Tolkien disapproved of using writer's biographies as a way to interpret their work. I coincide, but reading writer's biographies is the closest we can come to understanding the mysterious spark that inspired their amazing worlds and characters. So, even though right now I'm reading LotR, I promise I only read this biography to try and get a glance behind the "curtains": to get a glimpse at what inspired him and all the work it took him.
Tolkien's life proved to be the opposite of the stereotypical writer we usually have in mind; it was ordinary by most standards. There were no scandals or controversies. And still, Carpenter managed to write a gripping biography that made me misty-eyed at times and hold my breath at others. In my mind, and Carpenter's, too, it's impossible to see Tolkien as just a boring, stuffy academic. His life was threaded and colored by the same fantastical vividity we find in his work. He managed to bring magic and mythological beings back to the foreground of the collective consciousness at a time when the world seemed to be losing its romance, and with it, all wonder and hope.