Lord of the rings

[FlorenceFierce]

I read 2 of the trilogy when I was 11, decades ago 😂
I thought then that it was the best book ever. Never got around reading the third.

How did you find the trilogy? Did you read it recently? I haven't yet been able to convince my book mad 14 year old to have a god even though she devours any and all books.

Is it as good as I remember? Or too slow for modern tastes and attention spans?

Being given The Hobbit as a ninth birthday present (in 1962) was a (if not the) high point of my childhood. I read LOTR when I found all three volumes in the school library when I was 11 (they were in the adult section at the town library, so I hadn’t seen them). I was pretty much obsessed in my early teens. Because I lived in a part of the Midlands strongly associated with Tolkien, and my best friend lived near Sarehole Mill, it was easy to embed his landscapes in my imagination.
I didn’t welcome the idea of films of the books, but I thought Peter Jackson did a magnificent job.
I have no idea how a modern child would feel about the books. By the time I read LOTR, I had read much Dickens and other Victorian and Edwardian novels, as well as poetry, including earlier poetry. I had read little, if any, sci-fi or fantasy. That came later. The cultural landscape has, if anything, changed more than the actual landscape. The Malvern Hills and Black Mountains still look much the same to me now from the summit of Bredon, with its “watchtower”, as they did when I was 13 and they were the Misty Mountains. On a quiet day, you can’t hear the motorway in between…

I read it in my early twenties and then again with DS when he was 11.

I devoured them the first time but remember the Tom Bombadil bits being a bit tiresome second time round.

Must have watched the films about 20 times now so not sure if go back and reread them again as they are ingrained in my mind haha.

Agree. I skip the songs.
Read the hobbit and the lord of the rings books first aged 11/12 then again as a teenager and yet again early twenties but not since. I still think they are fantastic but not my reading of choice now am in my fifties.

Well I guess if your first experience was the films then it's no surprise. The character is absolutely irritating in the films, I can't bear him. If you read the book after seeing the films and didn't have a strong image of the book character o can see it. But I also find Elijah Wood a very annoying Frodo.

LoTr is infinitely superior in my imagination.

ive read it every year for decades, I have this bible paper copy of it which could be worth £1k and I'd not sell it 😂 www.abebooks.co.uk/9780261103689/Lord-Rings-Tolkien-0261103687/plp

Ohh, fair point: I wasn't thinking about the movies. I did not like Wood's Frodo at all!

Read it and reread it multiple times from the age of 11. Was somewhat obsessed. I was thinking the other day that it's probably time for an another read!

On another note is anyone watching The Rings of Power? I'm enjoying it but I'm struggling to reconcile Galadriel with her older LOTR version. I lloved the elves so much in the books but find them somewhat annoying in the series. They're just a bit too lofty and Shakespearian. Celebrrrrimbooooor!

I didnt read them until I was past my teens got the set for my 21st birthday. I took 9 months to finish them and cried when I did. I've never reread them but they're very dear to me.
Love the films as do my kids can't see them ever reading them unfortunately my 12 year old struggled through the hobbit which is a much easier read

No. Peter Jackson ruined my mental image of it all and I learnt from that, I don't watch any screen versions of books I have strong image of any more

Yeah, but The Hobbit is crap. Or so 11/12 year old me thought, after coming to it after TLotR.

Peter Jackson's Elves were monumentally annoying, I thought -- all eyeshadow and po-faced. The bit (in The Fellowship of the Rings?) where Celeborn says 'Tell me where is Gandalf, for I much desire to speak with him' in the most unbelievably mannered drawl cracks me up every time. I always imagine a blooper reel in which Cate Blanchett falls around the place laughing.

I have listened to the unabridged audiobooks over the last year - each one takes about 11.5 hours. I loved it, so much richer and more engaging than the films which obviously have to lose so much.

I loved it when young and I'm sure that I would love reading it again now except for the fact that I won't be able to dismiss the film actors from my mind's-eye images of the characters. I delayed seeing the films for precisely this reason but eventually I cracked, having read good reviews and having LOTR-devouring children who were the right age for the films when they came out.

The landscapes of the films were amazingly like my mind's-eye images, which is a powerful testimony to Tolkien's writing of the geographical aspects of his stories. But the portraits - the people - were an imposition. Especially the mimsy Frodo and the comic-relief versions of Merry and Pippin

I wonder what reading disciplines I could use to eradicate them?

I don't mind cutting bits.
what I really mind is taking liberties with the plot and characters. For example the travesty of Sam and Frodo at Shelob's lair went contrary to their entire relationship in the book. And I absolutely hated Liv Tyler as Arwen. And Saruman dying, they could have put that in the Scouring of the Shire at the end rather than wasting time making up scenes and mincing about with Arwen who was a minor character in the trilogy and was padded out very unnecessarily.

nobody watched that movie to see how they dealt with the female characters, they didn't need to be give extra parts, we all know Tolkien wrote barely any female characters and that's fine.

Honestly, I think Sam's nasty shirts bothered me more than any single other thing in the Peter Jackson trilogy. The one he's wearing when he appears in the doorway just after Frodo wakes up back at Rivendell after he's destroyed the Ring makes me want to say 'Did Sean Astin do something bad in a past life to merit this costume, when his character has just pretty much saved the world?'

Well, that and the hobbits' comedy frightwigs.

I've always loved LoTR books but understand they're quite a mouthful for someone raised in this current "everything happens fast" age. They're ponderous, and slow and descriptive and absolutely intended to be an epic tale of grand proportions like those of ancient Greece mythology.

Like others, I found the hobbits intensely annoying in the movies. Frodo is too pretty boy, too delicate and big-eyed. Sam is much smarter than the movie Sam, and as a PP said, Merry and Pippin were gentlemen born, meant to be future leaders of the Shire, which was interrupted by their going off to war. Like Tolkein's friends.

I felt it a shame that the movie didn't show a bit more about how war came to the Shire whilst they were away fighting in foreign lands. I think that's important. The movie made it seem like life had gone on, oblivious to the outside world and the danger. I thought the movies did a great disservice to the hobbits, making out that only those 4 were brave enough to go find the fight. War came to those who stayed at home, they didn't need to go looking for it.

Lord of the Rings is my happy space when times are tough and I have escaped to Middle Earth countless times through the books for decades.

I can't remember which I read first Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. Was definitely pre secondary school as I remember the junior school library so maybe it was the Hobbit first.

Always skip Bombadil and a lot of the poetry

Re the films, I always think Jackson un-hobbited the hobbits. An important part to me was the Barrow-wights but if you cut Bombadil which you really have to you can't keep this in. There are many other things but the main was the Scouring of the Shire omission. To me it was such an important part - the fact that home wasn't what it used to be and Saruman's part in all that. Not going to bore you any more as there are plenty of LOTR forums out there

edited for typo

I'm reading the hobbit to my 11 year old at bedtime and I wholeheartedly agree with this 😂😂

I like the Tom Bombadil part. I enjoyed the theme of an earlier and more potent kind of magic, displaced by a newer magic that is clearly a proxy for the industrial age in our own world.

But it is a very self-contained part of the larger story and I can see that it made sense to excise it.

The thing I remember most about the Tom Bombadil part of LOTR is the aggressive tree. It was so clearly the source of JKR's whomping willow that I couldn't quite forgive her magpie ways.

Re The Hobbit, I made the mistake of reading it after Lotr. I had hunger for more Middle Earth but boy was I disappointed. The Hobbit is much more squarely a children's story and it felt extremely slight. Fun, though, of course.

Bombadil is really interesting, and the ambiguity as to what he is - Maiar, Valar even - is fun to speculate on, but his songs and skippiness diminish that.

This is an old thread, but I’m reading the trilogy right now. I’ve read The Hobbit many times and loved it as a child. Enjoying the trilogy so far. It’s relaxing and far removed from today’s frenetic publishing woes.

Yes, 'relaxing' is a good word. It is so comprehensively escapist. Thought provoking, too, of course -- such a richly real otherworld that you can check out of our own world without having to settle for something sentimental or slight.

Escapist but rooted in real experiences. The Rest is History podcast had 2 episodes on Tolkien (in August 2022) and discussed many things, but one that really struck me is that the description of the Dead Marshes, that horrifies every time I read it, was probably a direct description of something Tolkien had experienced in France, walking across the bodies of dead comrades. Fantasy writing as therapy for PTSD.

I'd never linked the tree in Bombadil's part of the tale with the whomping willow. I've always assumed it's a last remnant of the Great Wood, where the Ents tended their flocks of trees. The Ents retreated to Fangorn in the dark days, after the Entwives went missing, and I presume some of their flocks had settled too strongly to follow the rest, so stayed put.

Now I have a real hunger to read it again!! I’m off to buy myself a paperback. My last fell apart and my hardback is in storage.

I love Tom Bombadil. I understand his erasure for film but he was the one being that could withstand the power of the ring. That makes him really special. His presence was something I found especially calming when reading very young and actually even as an adult he was a remedy to some of the really dark stuff!