The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings #1)

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Away high in the East swung Remmirath, the Netted Stars, and slowly above the mists red Borgil rose, glowing like a jewel of fire. Then by some shift of airs all the mist was drawn away like a veil, and there leaned up, as he climbed over the rim of the world, the Swordsman of the Sky, Menelvagor with his shining belt. The Elves burst into song. Suddenly, under teh trees a fire sprang with light. 'Come!' the Elves called to the hobbits. 'Come! Now is the time for speech and merriment!'...At the south end of the greensward there was an opening. There the greenfloor ran on into the wood, and formed a wide space like a hall, roofed by the boughs of trees. Their great trunks ran like pillars down each side. In the middle there was a wood-fire blazing, and upon the tree-pillars torches with lights of gold and silver were burning steadily. The Elves sat round the fire upon the grass or upon the sawn rings of old trunks. Some went to and fro bearing cups and pouring drink; others brought food on heaped plates and dishes.

JRR Tolkein is an artist. He takes his paints and spread them all over the canvas, expecting the viewer in the museum to understand it, as if this is the simplest thing in the world. Only the explanation at the sidebar beside the picture, let the viewer understand what the artist wanted to say by painting the picture. Watching such picture is a dangerous dive into the artist's soul.

Suddenly, while you dive into the picture, slowly but steadily, you notice something. It starts small, and turn

JRR Tolkein is an artist. He takes his paints and spread them all over the canvas, expecting the viewer in the museum to understand it, as if this is the simplest thing in the world. Only the explanation at the sidebar beside the picture, let the viewer understand what the artist wanted to say by painting the picture. Watching such picture is a dangerous dive into the artist's soul.

Suddenly, while you dive into the picture, slowly but steadily, you notice something. It starts small, and turns into something beautiful. Only then, do you finally relaize how to recognize a genius: if you do not understand at the first time, look again and a whole new world will be there, as if a magic happened right under your nose.

This is how I felt reading the first book of the century's trilogy - confused at once, ready to get rid of the book and rent the movie from the near videostore. But I kept reading, searching for the great adventure in the middle earth I have heard so much about.

Only at the last half of the book I understood what it was about. Until then, I could only barely remember wierd names of people and places, so confusing. I did not understand a thing, sadly. But I kept on pushing myself, maybe I would finally understand.

The truth is, the writing in the book is very strange. The writing is so different from everything else I have read my whole life. I truly tried to understand it, but after the fourth chapter I could not stand it. It was very bad!

I do not think I disliked the writing due to the fact the book was written in a different time period than ours. Anyhow, I did read some classics before so I don't think this is the reason I disliked the book. Then again, I guess this is simply Tolkein's fault - his writing was just unattractive and not gripping at all.

But, the wierdest thing is, that when I have finally finished the fourth chapter, I understood how wrong I was about it: yes, everything was still in my head --- every detail, every name, every place - and I understood the plot more or less --- But only then did I relaize Tulkien's real intention: to make me imagine. This is something I wouldn't think of, regulary.

I went like: Me? Imagine? I mean, yeah - sure I have quite an imagination - but I never thought I had to imagine so many characters, without the shortest of description of them. The issue here is that everyone imagine a completely different character.

I must say: before finally coming to understand this concept - I was sure it was the author's job to imagine, Not the reader's. Well, I was so wrong!

Do you know the kind of book, where everything goes so slowly and nothing actually developes? Well, this is not one of those books. Because everything developes every second, but the writing just made such a blur in my head I could not make one thing straight out of it.

When I finally got to understand the plot, I re-read the book. This time it was far batter.

Usually, I am not the kind of perosn to re-read a books, I do not like it very much because it is fairly boring. But this time I finally saw everything in my imgination: the creepy views Frodo sees when he puts the ring on, and the mission, that blew my mind away: to destroy the ring, destory the ring. Destroy. Ring. I sort of got into it. But not the way I expected, because I still didn't understand a thing.

Finally, let me just simply rate everything in this book. Since I am pretty sure you did not understand one thing I claimed in here, did you?

Okay, so it is very simple, in fact. I have a scale from 1 to 5. 1 is the worst, 5 is the best. No 10+, like other people do. Because I found only rare, rare books which desserve 10+!

See? I just can't make up my mind about this book!. I certainly wish I could enjoy the book, but I did not !!!