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Michael Finocchiaro's Reviews > The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings, #1-3)
by J.R.R. Tolkien
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Michael Finocchiaro's review
bookshelves: fantasy, english-20th-c, fiction, novels, classics, favorites
Mar 20, 2017
bookshelves: fantasy, english-20th-c, fiction, novels, classics, favorites
Read from January 01, 1998 to January 01, 1999
,
read count: 1
One of the greatest trilogies of all time and certainly the measuring stick to which all subsequent fantasy-style writing is compared, The Lord of the Rings trilogy still stands at the top of the stack. Its realism, the characters and monsters, the storyline, the epic battles, and the quest motif are all drawn with incredible care by Tolkien in his chef d'oeuvre. My favorite was The Two Towers but all three are absolutely stunning. It has been a few decades since I read them so perhaps this year I will have to journey back to Middle Earth once again.
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Mischenko
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rated it 5 stars
Mar 20, 2017 02:38AM
Great review, Fino!
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Great review, Fino! This trilogy is one of the best fantasy genre can offer. I need to re-read it one day as well :)
I agree with you 100% - the zenith of the genre. Incomparable!
I confess that I reread LOTR ( and the Hobbit) every 2-3 years. Total fantasy immersion...
Something to re-read at least once a decade!
Enjoy your revisit. Will you be able to disentangle the films from your mind?
Probably because I was underwhelmed by the films to be honest
I liked the films, they were so different to the books you could almost see them as a separate entity. I thought Return was the worst butchered, though the Bombadil section missing from 1 and the Barrow Downs was a shame. Also the elves turning up at Helmsdeep - that was pretty off.
I liked the films (with several major reservations, including the omission of Bombadil and downplaying Scouring of the Shire). The problem for me now, is that the actors are too ingrained in my mind to see them as they are written.
It's that age old question isn't it - do you watch first? Or read first? I actually enjoy watching first a lot of the time. I can then read it with a good overview of what's going on and focus on the interesting details and the bits the filmmakers left out.
It is, though if I have a choice, I will always choose to read the book first - even though I may be infuriated by changes and omissions: not in principle (a change of medium necessitates some adaptations), but in the choices made. On the other hand, I've sometimes watched something, loved it, and only later discovered there's a book.
I actually think the final scenes of Chamber of Secrets were much better in the film version. The film version made much more sense I think. I suppose if the author is involved, a film gives them a nice opportunity to retcon any little bits they wrote that didn't actually make sense.
