I’ve been done with The Fellowship of the Ring for half a week, but haven’t got around to posting about it until now. This isn’t my first time through the whole Lord of the Rings thing, but what may surprise some fans of fantasy fiction is that this is only my second time reading it.
I’ve always had problems with Lord of the Rings and that may come from the fact that I had read a lot of fantasy before coming back to the source, as it were. The first time around I found it very hard to get into and at times just downright boring. The pace of it was and is very slow. There are patches where Tolkien wanders off into his own little history lesson or gets lost in the description of what he obviously loved. I’ve always said that he was a good writer… for a linguist. But I think I’ve been a bit harsh in the past. He’s a decent storyteller whose greatest gift is to layer his world with the patina of legend and the gravitas of its own history. And these he does magnificently.
I’ve often in the past said that I didn’t like The Lord of The Rings, but in this second reading I can appreciate it a bit more. The films have helped as they cut out a lot of the more boring/extraneous bits. *coughtombombadilcough*
I won’t be and am not reading The Two Towers next. I couldn’t really bear it. My wife is reading it now and says it drags. I’ll have to work myself up to that one.
Score: 62/100
Book I am Reading Now: The Silver Pigs by Lindsey Davis
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: book, challenge, fellowship, read, reading, tolkien
