[Soz]

Much like the Harry Potter Books Thread, here is a place to discuss the LOTR books since the LOTR board is mostly about the movies.

I read The Hobbit years ago and liked it, but The Fellowship of the Ring was a bit too heavy for me at the time. I just re-read FOTR last week though and this time I absolutely loved it. I haven't read the other books yet though, so I probably won't be posting much here until I finish them. I hope to read The Two Towers in the next week or two.

[Baranlothiel]

I first read the books in sixth grade and absolutely loved them. Then once I heard that the movies were coming out I made the horrible mistake of rereading them before going to the corresponding film [img]smilies/lol.gif[/img]

[aldebaran]

I read all six books of The Lord of the Rings after seeing the first movie. I think I read them all within two weeks. I know that, from reading various threads, some people just couldn't get through those books, but I was so captivated by the story and the characters. I just had to know what the heck was going to happen!

The first time I tried to read it, I think I got too concerned with following the descriptions of the races (of the characters) and just got overwhelmed. After I saw the first movie and then started the books again, it all made sense and I raced through them. Long story short - I loved them!

[AlexEvans]

I love the books!

I first read them in grade seven I think, read them all over four or five days. I took them to school and read straight through. (Not sure it made the teachers happy, but I'm sure I don't care.)

I reread them a lot after that... a great escape.

I love the movies too. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[img]smilies/read.gif[/img]

[Crossbow]

My mom read them to me and my sister when I was about 9. Then I read them again in my 30s and again after I saw the movies. FotR is definitely my favorite. I still find it kind of hard to follow after the fellowship breaks up.

[*Maxi*]

I first read LOTR roughly 17 years ago, I can't recall exactly. And I've reread Tolkien a bunch of times since. After having read LOTR, I dived into The Hobbit and loved that book too.

It's pretty recently though that I've managed to read some of his other works. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I adore the world he has created! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[jjt]

http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/...11-rings_x.htm

[StellaSlight]

the Lord of the Ring was probably the book I had the hardest time beginning. That looked so boring, and I couldn't understand the whole concept of the Hobbits. But once I got into Tolkien's world, I couldn't get out of it.
What blew me away, is the way Tolkien started a story with heavy details, separated his characters as pieces of puzzle, and finally, at the end set it up the right way, and we're all like 'wow, that's masterfully done'. We have the impression that every detail has been carefully wrote, so it would have its importance for the end, but we can't know until the very end.
I think LOTR gave a new meaning of the world 'masterpiece'.

[Smaug]

Thank Eru there is now a discussion thread for this masterpiece!

I read The Hobbit as a book in my last year of primary school...part of this funny assesment thingy. Loved it to bits!
As for the trilogy it is very hard going for people if they haven't read The Hobbit or don't know what on earth a Hobbit is. I can remember a friend of mine pointing to Smaug on the front cover of my version of The Hobbit and asking "Is that a Hobbit?". When I read the trilogy I skip the massive prologue and get stuck right into the story it's self. I must say that book 5 is my favourite which is the first section of ROTK if I remember correctly!

One thing I would like to ask is do you think Tolkien was writing a Fantasy Story so far from our own world he actually meant it to show us some thing of our world? Middle-earth is meant to be Europe and Tolkien was a luddite (hated industrialisation) and the Evil did industrialise Middle-earth.

Was that thought too deep?? [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]

[StellaSlight]

Originally posted by Firithorewen: <STRONG> One thing I would like to ask is do you think Tolkien was writing a Fantasy Story so far from our own world he actually meant it to show us some thing of our world? Middle-earth is meant to be Europe and Tolkien was a luddite (hated industrialisation) and the Evil did industrialise Middle-earth. Was that thought too deep?? [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img]</STRONG>

That's what I thought too. We all know that Tolkien hated industrialisation. I think he personified it by the evil spreading through Middle-Earth, destroying trees and plants, burning prairies, putting humans in the status of slave. It's totally explicit when you look at both sides fighting in the final war. On one side stood the Ents who are the closest being to nature, the Elves who love nature and live in connection with it (tree, river etc...), the Dwarves who don't like forest but like the earth with its rocks and mines. On the other side, you have orcs, gobelins and every other nature-destroying creatures standing next to Sauron. Humans are in the middle, some are fighting for Sauron/allied to Sauron (Saruman and Grima), and the other against him (Hobbits, Rohan, Gondor). I think Tolkien wanted to say that humans have to make a choice between power (evil) and nature (good). So it kinda seemed to me that the author wanted to say that we should fight against modernity and industrialisation, like the humans in his book did.

[Soz]

For a while, I thought I was just putting my own thoughts into the book, so I was getting an interpretation of it that was close to my own feelings about the modern dependence on technology, but then I saw some of the documentaries on the FOTR DVDs and realized that's what Tolkien's point was. I'm not totally anti-technology, BTW, but I'm one of those people who wants to use technology and leave the least impact on the planet at the same time. I'd absolutely love to live in a Hobbit-hole inspired house! [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

There are so many themes evident in just FOTR: good versus evil, technology versus nature, the idea of a group of disparate races coming together and eventually becoming friends (or actually even more like family), etc. I love books that have many themes, some of which are not obvious at first, so I can delve deep and figure them out.

[Calenhiril]

I have to admit I didn't start reading LotR until my junior year of college, the year after the buzz started about the movies. It just didn't look like something I could get into. And indeed, I had a really hard time starting both the Hobbit and the trilogy; which for me is odd because I read so much. But once I saw the FotR, it all sort of made sense...and I had to read them again. Unfortunately I'd left my copy at school by mistake and since the dorms were closed for the break, I just went out and bought the whole set again, lol. I have to say it was much better the second time around. And the third [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] I like having a visual to go along with the characters, because for some reason I had a hard time seeing a picture of them in my mind. Thankfully now I can daydream about Legolas while I read [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]

~Cal

[Crossbow]

For me the big difference in reading them after seeing the movie was my image of Frodo. I was never really able to get a grip on him in the books.

[supergirlhero]

Thanks for starting the thread [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I first read the Trilogy during my freshman year in college, saw the books on my cousin's bookshelves. It interested me, but not as much as it does now. Then I read one of his books on the Tales of Middle Earth. When the FOTR movie got out, I bought my own paperback copies of the Trilogy, and I also got a copy of the Silmarillion. Among the trilogy, ROTK was my favorite.

[-anna-]

The Silmarillion is my favourite LotR related book. Followed closely by RotK.

Well, the thing that most called my attention while reading the books was the similarity to christianism. I'm not a religious person, but the christian concept was cristal clear to me.

- Galadriel - Mary
- Melkor - Lucifer
- Fëanor - Cain (I have no idea what is the english version of 'Cain' ... well, Cain was that guy who killed his brother [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] )

Then I read a book about Tolkien's life and found out he was indeed a devoted catholic. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

[ 06-18-2003: Message edited will_witch ]