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4.46 AVERAGE
4.46 AVERAGE
Love love LOVE these books!
The only problem with them is that they aren't longer.
The only problem with them is that they aren't longer.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
sad
tense
And so it came to pass, I now have reached a place where I am rereading The Lord Of The Rings every few years. Impossible though it may be to recapture the aching longing of the first time, I am at least better able to appreciate the writing and the thematic concerns and the evocation of the world and landscape. Or at least I flatter myself that I am. Strangest of all on this reread was finding myself as an outpatient at a clinic in Limerick's Regional Hospital for a few hours - my very first read of the trilogy coincided with a teenage trip to the Regional to have my appendix removed. Roughly the same time of the year as well.
Oh well. Our youthfulness has sailed on into the West, never to return and we stand now in the Middle Age of Man. It's nice that this thing that excited our childish mind now consoles our more wearied adulthood, on occasion. It's not a bad ambition, to want to turn more hobbity, and enjoy the finer things in life, like food and dink and good friends and family. Teeangers can go off and be Aragorn. The rest of us can take our ease in the Green Dragon for awhile.
Oh well. Our youthfulness has sailed on into the West, never to return and we stand now in the Middle Age of Man. It's nice that this thing that excited our childish mind now consoles our more wearied adulthood, on occasion. It's not a bad ambition, to want to turn more hobbity, and enjoy the finer things in life, like food and dink and good friends and family. Teeangers can go off and be Aragorn. The rest of us can take our ease in the Green Dragon for awhile.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I blame Tolkien and Lord of the Rings for my distaste for the fantasy genre. It's so dang good that any other book that resembles it feels like a cheap counterfeit. My only criticism is the completely unnecessary and long interludes of Elven poetry.
I read this over and over and over again when I was a kid/teen, but hadn't touched it since college. Now that we're mid-pandemic, I've been reverting back to old favorites and I'm so glad I made time for Lord of the Rings. It's exquisitely written and the characters are old friends. I miss them.
The trilogy that started it all for the fantasy genre and paved the way for Game of Thrones. An absolute classic and probably the greatest tale of friendship ever told.
"Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
4.5 stars. After so many fruitless efforts to re-read this didn't seem to take off, I decided at the end of last year that 2021 would be the year. Luckily, I found a Finnish group read where people were enthusiastic, knowledgeable, supportive, and fun, so doing this with them felt less daunting and more rewarding.
The movies have always been my absolute favorites, but at my heart I'm a horror girl. High fantasy isn't the genre I feel most at home in (and if I dabble in it sometimes, it's through movies). I don't know if it's because I'm now 18 years older (wow), because I haven't seen the movies for who knows how many years, or because I read this in English, but this time I was able to tolerate the slow parts much better. There were still moments where I felt defeated, but they managed to simply melt into parts of the journey. All journeys inevitably have them.
So many more things outshined the gratuitous details: the descriptions of a slow and oppressive approach of darkness, the friendships, the depictions of corruption of power, the incredibly extensive world-building (for good and ill), fascinating villains, the heroism of unassuming people... Middle-earth felt more and more like a real world I didn't want to leave. More importantly, even though there's a clear dichotomy between good and evil (often to an uncomfortable degree), there are occasions when characters show glimpses of fallibility or uncertainty.
I may not be a hard-core admirer of The Lord of the Rings to the point that I would read it dozens of times, learn Elvish, or consider Tolkien as a completely unique fantasy author, but for me personally The Lord of the Rings has done to epic fantasy what H. G. Wells did to sci-fi: I'm more open to dive into worlds unknown. And maybe the timing was just right in more ways than one: "But in the end it's only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass".
These books were especially powerful bedtime books for me and my children. The characters and story and beautiful language have stayed alive for us b