Y me zúa loh cohone. Qué ganas tenía de esta reseña.
Por donde empezar... porque el principio no hay muchas ganas. 500 páginas de la más absoluta nada. No vemos ni a los personajes. Ir del punto A, al B, al C y así hasta dar 70 vueltas al abecedario. Me la suda que el libro se escribiera en 1950, la imaginación de Tolkien, o la gastó en El Hobbit (que ni he leído ni tengo intención) o es un invento de la agenda 2030.
Vladimir Propp escribió en 1928 laMorfología del cuento, pero no fue hasta que TOLKIEN J R R se sentó delante de una máquina de escribir que los clichés y los estereotipos fueron ejemplificados como era debido. Historia genérica como no podría hacerse ni queriendo, en la que no pasa nada nunca, pero por alguna razón todo el mundo está siempre diciendo que han pasado cosas.
Los primeros dos libros (la primera peli) se siente como que estén hablando todo el rato de una fiesta a la que no te invitaron. Es más, se siente como entrar en el Tivoli en 2025, imaginas (o quieres hacerlo) que en algún momento estuvo chulo, pero solo quedan señales gastadas y actores mal pagados que están por hacer bulto.
Hablemos de la lucha entre el bien y el mal. Los buenos son buenos porque van de blanco y los malos, porque van de negro. Esto es literalmente así durante todo el libro. Sauron, el principal villano, que amenaza todo el continente, NO APARECE. Literalmente solo se le menciona, pero termina la obra y resulta que todo este tiempo estuvo de vacaciones o algo. Que también me podéis decir cómo tirar un Anillo que él no tenía a una raja en la tierra le hace perder todo el poder que sí tenía. ¿Por qué los orcos le seguían? Bueno, si tienen dudas de algo, lo hizo un mago. ¿Qué poderes tenía? Pues malos, supongo. Porque vivía en una torre negra. O eso dicen, tampoco se llega a entrar.
Y eso por no hablar de Frodo, el protagonista que menos puntos de vista tiene para él. Y tambi´ne el que menos sangre. Los personajes son malos de cojones, pero lo de Frodo es otro nivel. Este intento de embajador de la ONU nepobaby pjipi me pone negro. No hace absolutamente nada y a veces da la sensación de que un escritor normal insertaría en algún pasaje un capítulo suyo. Pero no.
Ah bueno, y siempre cuenta las cosas a posteriori. Tolkien ve mucho mejor contarme en capítulos sueltos, cuando ya ha pasado y no tiene nada que ver, los background de los peresonajes que podrían aportarle un mínimo de carisma. La historia de amor de Aragorn siendo un MILF hunter habría estado bien en algún punto de las 1050 páginas en las que aparece, no en un epílogo al final del libro donde me cuentas 200 años en 3 páginas.
Porque bueno. Hablemos de los tiempos, de las batallas y los puntos de inflexión. El crítico que dijo por primera vez que esto era fantasía épica, que me digan donde está enterrao porque voy a cagarle en la lápida. Las "grandes batallas" duran 2 páginas, tirando a lo mucho, eso si no las omite para que luego las cuente un personaje en un parrafito de diálogo. Que no pasa nada si estabas traumatizado por la guerra y no querías escribir violencia, pero en ese caso habértelo pensado antes de escribir una historia de guerra del fin del mundo, vamos, digo yo. El final del anillo NO LLEGA A LA PÁGINA. Y sin embargo la charla intrascendente de los personajes indiferenciables, fotocopias unos de los otros, se extiende páginas y páginas. La llegada de Aragorn (épica en teoría porque nadie lo esperaba) fueron 2 párrafos, la retahíla de príncipes del chichinabo hablando con sirvientes irrelevantes diciendo LO MISMO se extendió por QUINCE PÁGINAS.
Si no me aprendí la lista de los reyes visigodos, qué te hace creer que me voy a poner a memorizar los reyes con todos sus putos muertos (literalmente, lo llaman por su nombre y el de sus ancestros), para que encima, tanto sus países como su comportamiento sea... el mismo. Literalmente el mismo, son el mismo personaje pero con un nombre fruto de aporrear el teclado con un objeto diferente.
No voy a hablar de las mujeres. Me reservo el tema para el vídeo y el 8M. Pero vamos, que me has enseñado decenas de criaturas mitológicas, pero parece que la más rara de encontrar son las hembras. Sólo aparecen Galadriel, cuyo cometido es ser mona y dar souvenirs, y Eowyn, cuyo cometido es hacer la de Mulan pero mal y hacer que un hombre se conforme con ser el segundo plato.
Decepción absoluta, no entiendo la veneración a este sujetapuertas. No dudo que en el cine sea mejor, sólo vi 1 peli y no me pareció aburrida, pero creo que si alguien dice que El Señor de los Anillos es su saga preferida está a la altura de que venga un alparnawi a decirme que sólo lee libros de desarrollo personal. Las dos estrellas se las puse porque me hace gracia que sea un libro de boyslove donde yo personalmente creo que 6 de 9 de los de la Compañía del anillo se detonaban entre ellos cuando acampaban y eso los hacía más chulos.

This book changed my life. Before it I was a spotty 14 year old hooked on my science studies. Then I read LOTR, and, at the same time, discovered women existed and.....but thats enough of that. You want to hear about the book.

By now there are few people who haven't at least heard of LOTR, and most of them have an opinion. There are the fans, almost fanatics, and there are the people who have read fifty pages or so, sometimes five or six times, but just can't get it, and don't understand what the fuss is about. I might have been one of them, if it hadn't been for an accident.

I asked my local librarian to recommend a book for me as I had read all the Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov works they had. She pointed me at LOTR, and handed me what she said was book 1 of 3. It was only when I got home I found I had book 2: The Two Towers.

I arrived in the story just at the point where the first film ends - The Fellowship is broken and Frodo and Sam are heading for Mordor.

I think that is what made me keep reading -I had started at a point of crisis and I needed to know what happened next. Of course I had a lot of blanks to fill in, but I managed to pick up most of them as I went along , and I caught up with the first book as soon as I'd finished the third. (I bought the big all-in-one paperback, the one with the yellow cover. If you were a student in the seventies it was obligatory to have one lying about, all battered and torn to show that it had been read several times. You used to see backpackers in their hundreds on the trains going south through Europe, all with this version of LOTR falling apart in their hands.)

As for starting at the begining, I believe the reason a lot of people give up is that they are expecting heroes, wizards and high magic. What they get is, in great detail, the rural goings-on of a bunch of small hairy creatures who eat and drink a lot and seem to live in an idealised version of the Home Counties.

Anyone who has read "The Hobbit" will know that there is more to the Hobbits than that, but newcomers often feel cheated and give up.

They don't know what they're missing.

The story only picks up AFTER Bilbo's birthday party, and after the passing of his ring of invisibility to Frodo. Gandalf, a wizard, discovers the true nature of the ring. It is a magic item of great power, belonging to Sauron himself, a dark god intent on taking dominion over the world.

Gandalf tells Frodo that the ring must be taken to a place of safety, to Rivendell, where the high-elves hold out against Sauron.

And so the great journey starts, with Frodo and his friends, Sam, Merry and Pippin, taking the road to Rivendell. On the way they have many adventures, and the mood begins to darken with the appearance of the dark riders, servants of Sauron intent on finding the ring.

The travelling band is befriended by Strider, a ranger of the north, and he helps them get to Rivendell, but not before Frodo is wounded by the dark riders, and starts to understand the power of the ring.

At Rivendell, many things are revealed; the history of the ring is told, Strider is shown to be Aragon, the rightful heir to the kingdom of Middle-Earth, and a fellowship is forged, of wizards, elves, dwarves, men and hobbits. They form a band of nine who will try to take the ring to Mount Doom, a volcano where the ring was forged, and which is the only place where it can be destroyed.

And so the adventure truly begins. From here on we have battles in deep mountain mines, the loss of one of the Fellowship, encounters with elves in enchanted forests, treachery and betrayal leading to the breaking of the fellowship - and we're still in Book 1!

Books 2 and 3 deal with the fight for middle-Earth, with Aragon and his allies taking the battle to Sauron and his minions and Frodo and Sam trying to reach Mount Doom to destroy the ring. There are huge, stirring, battle scenes, moments of humour (especially when the younger hobbits meet the Ents), spectacular feats of high magic when the White Rider enters the battle scenes, and moments of great friendship and tenderness - I defy anyone to have a dry eye when Sam and Frodo are parted at Shelob's lair.

It all builds up to a terrific climax, and the story comes full circle back at Hobbitton where we see the effect the war has had on the rural life of the Hobbits.

And that is why the beginning is important - you might not see it till right at the end, but it is teaching us a lesson about the value of the simpler things in life - respect them or lose them.

Tolkein's genius lies in melding these simple aspects with world-shattering events, showing how even the "little people" have their part to play in the fight against the darkness.

And he also knows that the best villain is a mysterious one....Sauron hardly appears at all in the books, but his dark presence stretches over everything, and he's always there, his evil eye seeing everything.

I used to have nightmares about that large, red-rimmed eye, but that was before I discovered women, grew my hair, developed a liking for Hawkwind and Led Zeppelin, and started to write fantasy fiction. I've never been the same since...... but that's another long story.

Watch this review read by me on YouTube

Il Capolavoro del genere Fantasy… siamo sicuri?

Il Signore degli Anelli è stato il primo romanzo fantasy che ho letto. Da allora parecchi anni sono passati e molte sono state le mie letture fantasy, ma nessuna di livello paragonabile alle avventure di Frodo; ciclicamente torno a leggere l'opera di Tolkien, ed ogni volta mi convinco sempre più che la definizione di "romanzo fantasy" gli calzi stretta, troppo stretta in effetti. Il fantasy moderno è sicuramente in tutto o in larga parte nato come emulazione di Tolkien (o come presa di distanza da lui, a seconda dei casi), ma può la matrice originaria essere ontologicamente considerata parte integrante del genere a cui ha dato vita? Quale altro fantasy successivo al Signore degli Anelli presenta la stessa complessità, la stessa stratificazione, la stessa grandiosità creatrice, la stessa influenza culturale, la stessa natura costitutiva?

La mia opinione è che Il Signore degli Anelli non possa essere considerato un fantasy, ma piuttosto un poema epico in prosa; l'ultimo (per ora) esponente di una lunghissima tradizione letteraria che, da Gilgameš in poi, ha solcato le ere della Storia dell'Umanità.
Tolkien riscopre, ricalca e reinventa gli archetipi dell'epos adattandoli al gusto novecentesco, dove ormai la forma letteraria del romanzo signoreggia, senza tuttavia rinunciare interamente al testo poetico (il libro è ricolmo di canti, poesie, ballate), ed è perciò nell'epos, non nel fantasy, che dobbiamo ricercare i suoi pari, fra i poemi epici del passato, Omero, l'Edda, le Chansons de geste, i cicli arturiano e carolingio, i Nibelunghi…

***(Avvertenza: da qui in poi ci sono degli spoiler)***

Allora sì, confronti, paragoni e parallelismi diventano non solo possibili, ma doverosi. A partire dal tema del viaggio, che è sia svolgimento di una missione (la ricerca del Vello d'Oro degli Argonauti, la cerca del Graal dei Cavalieri della Tavola Rotonda) sia scoperta della propria individualità (Gilgameš, Odisseo).
Il viaggio nell'Oltretomba che compiono Aragorn e compagni è una riedizione di quelli fatti da Odisseo ed Enea; la combattiva Éowyn ricalca l’eroina ariostesca Bradamante, entrambe destinate a sconfiggere uno stregone invincibile e la sua cavalcatura alata; l'enigmatico Gandalf, col suo apparire al momento del bisogno, rievoca il mago Merlino e, con l’accrescimento del suo potere attraverso la morte, riecheggia la leggenda di Odino; le visioni notturne di terre e avvenimenti lontani che giungono a Frodo, custode del Potere, non sono poi dissimili dai molti sogni rivelatori che gli dèi inviano agli eroi e alle eroine dell'Iliade e dell'Odissea; il ritorno alla Contea devastata degli Hobbit è una versione aggiornata del ritorno ad Itaca, da Tolkien inteso, però, come ultimo atto dell'autodeterminazione dei veri protagonisti del romanzo (fateci caso, tutte le vicende sono narrate dalla prospettiva hobbit, i quattro amici sono gli unici personaggi di cui Tolkien svela i più reconditi pensieri); e la similitudine omerica ritorna prepotente con l'abbandono della patria riconquistata: il lungo viaggio di conoscenza ha trasformato irrimediabilmente l'eroe che, non potendo più trarre gioia dal suo meritato riposo nella ritrovata pace, deve partire di nuovo verso un'ultima avventura senza ritorno, oltre i confini del Mondo.

Poi c’è il tema del Destino, che sovrasta e avvolge tutte le vicende narrate, cessando però di essere l'ineluttabile e crudele Fato greco e norreno a cui tutti, uomini e divinità, sono condannati; da buon cattolico, Tolkien lo trasforma in Speranza, cioè nella fede che esista un piano divino più grande, una Provvidenza imperscrutabile ai mortali, volto a far trionfare il Bene; è un concetto ribadito quasi in continuazione nel romanzo, le cose capitano perché devono capitare; significativo come la Speranza trovi il suo compimento proprio in un luogo che porta il sinistro nome di Monte Fato, già solo da questa contrapposizione semantica di Speranza e Dannazione si potrebbero intraprendere strade interpretative quasi illimitate.

Tuttavia non siamo di fronte alla mera riproduzione manierista; oltre agli archetipi dell'epica, Tolkien si ispira e infonde nuova vita anche a tópoi mutuati da altre epoche e altri movimenti letterari, come l'elegia del passato, visto sempre come la perduta Età dell'Oro in contrapposizione ad un mondo ormai stanco ed esausto, una visione pessimistica della contemporaneità che appartiene a molti personaggi del romanzo (Legolas, Gimli, Théoden, Denethor), già tema assai caro ai Romantici, ma che nel finale Tolkien rinnega e sovverte con il ritorno del re e l'avvento di una nuova età dorata per il solo genere umano, da cui sono esclusi Elfi, Nani, Orchi e Stregoni; o l'altrettanto romantica Sehnsucht, riscontrabile nel desideroso, infinito e impossibile bramare che l'Anello genera negli animi, facendoli struggere e disperare.
Mentre nella grazia ultraterrena di Dama Arwen, nei suoi occhi luminosi, nella sua gentilezza, rivivono tutte le donne angelicate del Dolce Stil Novo.

Infine, non bisogna scordarsi che uno dei proponimenti perseguiti dal Tolkien glottologo era dare un'esistenza, una consistenza autentica, alle lingue che aveva inventato, e una Lingua esiste solo se ha una Storia da raccontare; per fare ciò Tolkien esplorò e reinventò i tre generi costituitivi del racconto antico: la Fiaba con Lo Hobbit, l'Epos con Il Signore degli Anelli e il Mito con Il Silmarillion. Quale altro scrittore fantasy ha mai avuto la volontà e la capacità di fare altrettanto?
Ecco perché, a mio avviso, Tolkien non può e non deve più essere accomunato al genere fantasy.


t"Alcuni di quelli che hanno letto il libro, o almeno che lo hanno recensito, lo hanno trovato noioso, assurdo o disprezzabile; e io non ho alcun motivo per lamentarmi, dal momento che ho opinioni simili sulle loro opere, o sul tipo di opere che loro evidentemente preferiscono."

J.R.R. Tolkien, dalla Prefazione alla seconda edizione inglese del libro.

I know I read this series at the tender age of eight, when I was very impressionable and very eager to get obsessed with anything. But I think these are better than we give them credit for.

Not to show up and act like J.R.R. Tolkein was some misunderstood genius. But it’s fascinating to me that this book was foundational to modern high fantasy, a genre which I think plays a lot with cruelty: the brutal world, the betrayal of friends. Tolkein’s novels do not revolve around complex moral codes; they do not question whether there is good and evil, or who is who. The fundamental hero of this story is love.

It's no accident that the hero of this series is the most underestimated of all people: a Hobbit. There are the godly elves, but this series focuses on men's capacity to fail and triumph. The outsiders save the world.

I think, all the time, about the fact that were it not for one moment of pity Frodo takes, on someone who he knows will try to hurt him, this entire story would have been different—would have ended on a far, far darker note.

(On weekends, I also take time to think very deeply about Sam’s role in the series, and the fact that his love and loyalty saves Frodo and, by extent, the world. Within this narrative love saves the world.)

The biggest flaw is that Tolkein could not edit to save his life. I will not elaborate on that beyond to say he would dedicate at least five pages to explaining the concept. I’m going to keep it very, very real: my love for this comes partially from just how much I adore the movie adaptations. This is genuinely the #1 series in the world where I think the movie adaptation is superior in quality to the books. I’ve watched them so many times. I think every time I watch them I end up adding a few sentences to this review because I’m full of Thoughts and Tenderness. The movies are my favorite and always worth a watch.

also, if you’ve gotten this far, feel free to go watch this video series on why the Hobbit movies didn't work. it sparks the reviewer inside me

n  Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I clutched at books…

-Richard Wright, Black Boyn

If you want a purely enraptured detailing all of and only of love provoked by these pages, look elsewhere. If you desire an analysis of the fundamental roots of fantasy and how this book fits in within the wider scope of the literary genre, it is not here. If you crave a complete and utter breakdown of all the faults this novel begets on the larger realm of reality, you will be unsatisfied. I have nothing that goes fully one way, or the other, or even some objective mixture of the three. Instead, I have a story. Perhaps you wish to read it.

For better or for worse, I never found a home within the house and its mortal constituents that I was brought up in. Mind you, every sort of physical sustenance was assured, and there was never a lack for the more mercantile requirements of a modern upbringing. However, financial stability is no substitute for emotional well being, and my younger self found the latter only through those curiously tied together stacks of paper, often very weighty and filled with all manner of tiny squiggles and the occasional picture. The most powerful of these objects, the ones that granted the sort of comforting balance of the familiar and the novel, were the three battered and yellowing paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings. I have faint memories of my first devouring, but can still clearly recall my feeling of surprised gratification upon watching the 2001 live-action of The Fellowship of the Ring and finding it worthy of the book it sought to portray.

I was ten years old at the time, and still had much to learn.

For this book of my childhood, this book that formulated my love for literature that has only increased as the years go by, is not perfect. This book spoke as easily as it did to my younger self for reasons of both personal upbringing and dominant culture, the kind of English values and European sensibilities that I am descended from and sways the world in an obstinately oppressive manner to this day. It is not surprising, then, that this novel has proved to be so popular and so overwhelmingly powerful in is influence, to the point of it being credited with spawning the fantasy genre by the more fanatic of its upholders. An unlawful accreditation, to be sure, and a dangerously attractive one, to swallow wholesale the attributes utilized and commended by this one piece of work. A work that, through a combination of its monumental following and easy moralizing, promotes upon the world today a view of life that is vicious in its intolerance of all of those who did not fit within Tolkien's privileged sensibilities.

Slowly but surely, I matured from a young child enamored with this single literary achievement into an adult for whom this one work, no matter how lengthy or detailed, is not enough. And somewhere along the way, I had to make a choice. Whether to hold fast to this one work in an everlasting fit of idolatrous sentiment, or to strike out on my own past this one set of pages in search of something more. Whether to reconcile to the work, or to reconcile the work to myself. For as much as the work is treacherous and blind to the wider realities, it was also the origin of my passion for the written word in all its esoteric and long winded forms. To deny that would be to not only deny the history of my self, but also to deny the history of the world entire, a world whose beginnings were not just, were not kind, were not welcoming to each and every soul brought into its plains of varied existence.

And so, I love The Lord of the Rings. I love its valuing of the good and the righteous in the larger scheme of things, as well as its caring for the happy and peaceful lives of the small. I love the winding descriptions through hill and dale, over crag and cranny, the swift sailing across the mighty rivers and the painful treks across barren slag, a delighting in the natural world and all its tangible glory that I feel today's modern sense should not do without. I love the page after page of sights, and sounds, and most of all the strains of knowledge threading and shaping their way through every rock and field, the sheer amount of history that this world has seen, the ancient events that have trickled their way down and lead the insatiably wondrous journey for further erudition ever on. I love the fearful superstitions that give way to enlightened respect, the long bred enmities that slowly but surely are broken down into new-found bonds of mutual understanding, the persistent and rarely rewarded effort to restrain from killing when there is a chance of further life leading to something more.

What I hate is when those who have read the book seek to impose the letter of the matter onto the experience of every reader, using the book as bigoted shield against the natural progression of time. What I hate is when those who profess to love the work have made such a mockery of loving it that the only humane response to such an outburst is to hate the work wholesale. What I loathe and utterly despise is the poisonous formation of sides when it comes this book and indeed any work of literature, a refusal to consider a book as a mix of both good and bad that can never be fully or easily reconciled in the mind of those insistent on thinking in terms of black and white. Indeed, much of what I hate in relation to this book can be applied to the world at large, still trenchant in fumbling antagonism when those who oppress wonder at the violence of the oppressed, again and again choosing shoddy half measures of solutions cloaked in lies and, worst of all, complete lack of interest in seeing past the lies.

I can no longer go back home, to the first opening of these pages that birthed my confidence in finding a place in terms of literature and, indeed, the world at large. If I truly wish to say I love this book, I must reconcile this love to all of that I have learned, and lived, and measure by measure acknowledge the influence of my younger years and the wisdom I will gain in the future that has yet to come. I must come to terms with the fact that Tolkien, this author to whom I owe so much, would likely despise me, a member of that so called fairer sex that throughout these pages was constantly placed on a domestic and debilitated pedestal, a member who has the engraving of the One Ring tattooed upon her back. For he hated to see the image appropriated for wider use, and saw it as a symbol of evil that did not deserve to be venerated for the intricacy of its design or the connotations of its formation.

To that I say, too bad. The author created this world out of a passionate love for language and all its myriad veins of influence in the cultures it births and the land it names, and its lengthy prose and detailed care set the stage for my confident desire to discover further works of literature, no matter how long in script or difficult in absorption. The author also created a seductive illusion of black and white, insidious eugenics and obstinate tradition, a full embracing of which would indeed grant much power in the realm where those who love the work congregate in great numbers and often in great ignorance. When Tolkien created the One Ring, and carved out its fiery script on the pages of his monumental tome, he created the true symbol of his beloved Middle Earth, one that may have been destroyed within the pages but lives on in the hearts who prefer a complex web of blindly formulaic undertakings to the true demands of creating a fair and just reality. However, he also called for applicability when it came to the reading of the work, preferring that readers find their own way through the pages in context with their own lives. And, finally, the book ends with the passing of the Age that fueled the pages, and the ending is coupled with the knowledge that the days of this story have ended, and for better or for worse will never come again.

And so, I chose a more permanent reminder of the influence that this book has had on me, and do not claim that my interpretation has sway over any others. I simply ask that when reading this work, keep in mind all that has gone into it, as well what has yet to come. Most importantly, acknowledge the differing views and the inherent validity of each and every one, the admirable attributes that are worthy of conservation and the atrocious remnants that must be transformed but whose history of occurrence must never, ever, be forgotten. In short, use well the days.

I cannot change the first steps I took in this world of written word that has shaped my life in so many ways, nor would I want to. This love of mine in no way resembles the clean cut symbol of a heart used in so many cards and printed doings, but the incontrovertible yet fragile pulsing of my heart that, for all its bloody ugliness, is my one and only source of living. And, in the effort of living on through many days of hope, and change, reconciliation upon transformation upon ever constant growing, I wouldn't give it up for the world.

n  The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.n

Home is where the heart is. And, here, I shall ever return.

2.5

And so begins my avoidance of epic fantasy.

I like the story of LotR - I like the idea of it. I appreciate it's role in history, and the breadth and depth of Tolkien's world-building and involvement. (Though considering that it really is a take on Norse myth and all that, I sometimes wonder if we don't give Tolkien a little bit too much credit for creating the world.)

But, anyway - while I like the idea of the story, and the gist of it, my problem comes with the telling.

There are tangents and back-histories of people's father's fathers that aren't really relevant. And the poems - my gods, the poems. Written in another language that then had to be translated, taking up another 5 pages.

And with Tolkien begins the overly-descriptiveness of minutae that many writers of epic fantasy seem to think is necessary for world-building, but is really just odious.

Oh, I know I'm in a minority - a fan of fantasy who thinks Tolkien is not a god. Like I said, I give him credit for what he did, but I think he could've used some serious editing. Also, aside from the above, I *hated* the way the telling was broken up, where we went through a whole section of time from Sam and Frodo's perspective, and then went back and went through the same thing from everyone elses perspective. It wouldn't flowed so much better if the stories were more intertwined.

I can't fathom the people who love this book so much they reread it every year, but to each their own. I can respect that. But I found it a struggle to get through it just once - and that was with a prodigous use of skimming the find the plotline when he went off on one of his tangents.

Note for modern writers - just because you have some backstory, or some detail, that you have in your mind, doesn't mean it has to be written into the story. If it's not directly relevant to the plot, then let it go. Seriously. It's ok.

Even some fans of the book admit that characterization is a bit thin, and perhaps that's my biggest problem. Some people get lost in the details. They become enraptured in the world via these details, so that they feel like they can see and breath the world.

For me, I'm all about character. I need to empathize and care. This is my ticket into any book or movie. I ate up a book many didn't like - Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - precisely because I was enthralled and intrigued by the characters from the start.

But the characters in this book are, by and large, role-playing pieces in order to fit the raid, erm, story.


By the way, the only reason I came back to write a review on this is because I'm so tired of reading about how you have to read Tolkien because he's sooo wonderful.

I mean, great, if you love the books then I'm happy for you and I can see why people do like them - I really do, even though I struggled with them. But to act like it's some sort of blasphemy to not like them really irritates me. Which is why this is more of a half-coherent rant than a review. My apologies - but I don't think anyone is an idiot for liking the book, and I'm tired of hearing the implication that I'm some kind of idiot because I found it less than enthralling.

I wish I liked it more - I really do.

Anyway, it's really a shame, though, because if Tolkien had built the world and the ideas and given them to a better story-teller, then this could've been so much better. All the elements are there - it's just the telling is a drag. And, in some ways, that's exactly what Tolkien did - and perhaps that is his true legacy.

That said, I liked The Hobbit. Maybe it's because he wrote it for his children, or because he didn't feel the need to cram in so much academia and minutae, but The Hobbit just reads as a better story.

First Read 1978

Second Reading 1999

Third Reading 2023

I have reviewed the three volumes that comprise The Lord of the Rings — The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King — each separately. This review of the work entire is to share my thoughts on where and how this work fits into our literary culture.

Tolkien’s cultural impact is undeniable. The Lord of the Rings became a touchstone to the Flower Power generation, when many a hippie scrawled the graffiti “Frodo Lives!” as a tribute to their obsession. In the 1970s, Tolkien’s work was behind the boom of heroic fantasy as a genre publishing phenomenon, as publishers rushed to find Tolkien clones to feed an insatiable market. Ralph Bakshi’s animated 1978 film, The Lord of the Rings, though it made a profit, disappointed fans, who had to wait for Peter Jackson’s trilogy of live action films a generation later before Hollywood elevated Tolkien’s work into a fully realized and lasting pop culture megalith.

What is often overlook about The Lord of the Rings, rather, is its literary impact. Tolkien was an officer in The Great War, and was clearly affected by that dramatic conflict. Yet he is rarely mentioned alongside the generation of writers who were shaped by that war and went on to shape 20th century literature. Hemingway, Cummings, Dos Passos, are all widely seen as being shaped by their experiences in the First World War, and their breaking away from the old romantic forms of literature is viewed as pivotal in shaping what literature would become in the 20th century. Tolkien’s war experience sent him on another path. He reinvented the romantic forms rather than abandoning them. The mythological epic that he created reimagined the old forms, keeping the romantic tradition alive and refreshed in a generation that had largely turned away from it in favor of Modernism. Though rarely acknowledged in academia, Tolkien rescued the romantic tradition and passed it on for the enjoyment of the children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren of the generation who abandoned it.

So good, I’m tempted to read it again.

Tolkien is my favorite author. I am not sure what else to express as I need time, the materials, and characters.

I know 2020 is far from over - sigh - but I guess jokes's on me...
----
I don't care about my Goodreads Reading Challenge 2020. My challenge this year is to read this whole trilogy, mark my words!

n  "Tre Anelli ai Re degli Elfi sotto il cielo che risplende,
Sette ai Principi dei Nani nelle lor rocche di pietra,
Nove agli Uomini Mortali che la triste morte attende,
Uno per l'Oscuro Sire chiuso nella reggia tetra,
Nella Terra di Mordor, dove l'Ombra nera scende.
Un Anello per domarli, un Anello per trovarli,
Un Anello per ghermirli e nel buio incatenarli,
Nella Terra di Mordor, dove l'Ombra cupa scende."n

Magistrale!

For some reason I only marked, 'The fellowship of the ring' as read, when I actually devoured the whole of 'The Lord Of The Rings' in one go!

I read this a loong time ago, when the films came out but I remember loving it. A lot.
Amazing book, amazing films, a wonderful distraction from my finals at uni back in the day