Friday, June 1, 2007

2. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

I did it! I laboured through this tome and now I am done!

This has been one of those books (or set of three really) that I always thought I *should* read but never really cared enough to. I'm not a massive fan of the fantasy genre and having the Hobbit read to me when I was in Year 7 scarred me a bit.

I did enjoy the movies when they came out, and I think they actually helped my enjoyment of the books too. I think I may have struggled to keep all the characters straight otherwise, though I almost wish I hadn't seen them on the other hand, so that I could have given my imagination a workout. 

I had to work hard to get through this - I think I've been "reading" these for about six months now and was definitely counting down the page numbers at the end. R offered me a reference guide so I could research along the way but I think not. I did enjoy the last maybe 80 pages with the re-taking of the Shire - a nice "surprise ending" that I either didn't remember or that wasn't in the movie.

Won't ever do it again, but kinda glad to have conquered it. Like running a marathon or climbing a mountain - it was a little too much like hard work for a pastime that's supposed to be enjoyable!!

1 comment:

Jason B. Standing said...

Did you skip over all the bits where people started singing?

I don't think I know anyone who actually read any of that.