Now, I think it’s coming around to that time when I need to pick this nice little story up and read it again. And yes, by nice little story I do of course mean massively long epic!
I remember my teacher reading The Hobbit to me in primary school, and I just loved the story of Bilbo, Golem and the dragon. It was one of my first experiences with fantasy, and it was great. When I was about 12, I found an old copy of LOTR on my parent’s bookshelf. It was a battered old copy of my mum’s from her hippy days in the 70’s, and when I realised it was the ’sequel’ to The Hobbit, I thought I’d give it a go.
Now, for those of you who’ve read it, you’ll realise that it is a bit of a heavy book for a 12 year old to read, but I did quite well… until I got about half way through book 2, and realised that about 70 pages were missing!
That was the end of that reading, and it wasn’t until the movies came out that I thought about the story again. Once I saw the first one, and loved it immensely, I decided that I’d wait until I saw all of the movies before I read the book. Which I did.
And oh, was I looking forward to reading it! I bought myself a copy and settled down… and it didn’t disappoint. Now, I will admit that it drags at times, but overall it really is a massive achievement in fiction. In fact, I pretty much avoid fantasy novels, as they mostly seem terribly derivative of this.
My favourite part of the book, I have to say, was the appendix the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”. A lot of the book seemed quite emotionally dry, but this added a lovely element to all that went on. After seeing the movies, where a lot of this was integrated into the main story, I felt like I was missing out - but once I got to it I was satisfied. I have to say, as well, that this is one time that I felt that the movie was worthy of the book - and that is a rare thing indeed!
To me, LOTR is like an old friend that I catch up with every few years, just to re-acquaint myself with them and remind myself why I liked them so much in the first place. I think I’ll find my copy and put it into my reading queue once again!
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