The Fellowship of the Ring – Tolkein

I decided since I read the Hobbit, I’d go forward and read the series. I read quite a bit about all of the erroneous edits and how the texts changed with each publication. I found that quite interesting. The Lord of the Rings: The Tale of a Text has some good information about Tolkein’s challenges with the editors and publishers.

The thing about someone who is that concerned with the difference between “elvish” and “elfish” is that they are INCREDIBLY detail oriented…and describe every stinking snowflake in precise detail. For me, that got to be a little much. Once I started skimming over the detail that was bogging me down, I was able to enjoy the story more. I think that “artistically” this is a wonderful text (if you are in to that kind of thing), but I really just wanted to get to the story.

I was surprised to learn from my background reading, and then to understand from actually reading, that this is NOT a trilogy, but is a series of six books. To me it is almost like one super long book and another, shorter book that is kind of a prequel (The Hobbit). I don’t feel like the individual “books” give full stories but are just large groupings of chapters…but that is just my opinion. I’m sure many would disagree. Either way, I have now completed the first “book” and am left with no closure. I am interested to continue my journey through Middle-Earth.

The Hobbit – Tolkien

I read this one because the movie came out and I wanted to read the book first. Once I got past the descriptions of the hobbit hole, I rather enjoyed the book. I did find that since I use a larger font on my Kindle, the songs and poems were difficult to read. It doesn’t  change the content but it is more difficult to follow the story and rhythm of the songs and poems when the line breaks aren’t positioned properly.

As far as questions and answers for studying purposes, I’m sure there are 1000 other sites that provide that for free. A summary doesn’t seem necessary what with an awesome movie in theaters now. I’m glad I got through it. The descriptions of nature, fantasy plants, people, and animals were sometimes difficult to trudge through and thus difficult to remember from time to time. It isn’t one of my favorite books and I’m no sure why it has a cult following…but then I’m sure other people don’t understand my love of Harry Potter. To each his (or her) own.