Play Book Tag discussion
2022: Other Books
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(WPF) The Fellowship of the Ring, by JRR Tolkein (5 stars)
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Ah Kate, I have read the LOTR three times in my life and each time am transported by Tolkein's magic so completely that after ugly crying at the end of Return of the King, I read every appendix, totally unwilling to let it go. Each read was a unique experience. The last time was 20 years ago, when the movies came out. That time it was Sam's story that captivated me most. The time before that it was Frodo's. Love the storry of reading it to your sons. I am trusting there will be a future sharing with lively little Florence!
BTW, I love the movies!
It’ll be a few years, since she’s only two and a half, but I’m looking forward to that! I love the movies too - I know them by heart 😂 We visited Hobbiton at Easter (it’s very close to where my SIL lives, so we took the opportunity while we were visiting her). They retained the film set from when it was reconstructed for the Hobbit movies and the tours are very well organised and wildly popular. So I drank cider in the Green Dragon and completely geeked out. I think my husband might have been mildly embarrassed at my level of happiness. Mind you, he was responsible for the second of our purchases from the gift shop - the first was my notebook which I use at work, which is emblazoned with the words “One Ring to Rule Them All” with picture of said ring. Highly appropriate, I figured. His purchase was our new doormat which has a wizard silhouette and large capital letters saying ‘YOU SHALL NOT PASS’…
Jealous! My friends and I played the LOTR version of RISK board game, extended version, a lot before they all relocated to other states. We used the YOU SHALL NOT PASS comment a LOT!
It's never possible to entirely recapture the feeling of magic and revelation that reading something like this for the first time generates, but sprawling with the book over the last couple of days took me right back to the experience of reading it to the boys, and their wonder and awe at the story, so that came pretty close. What I loved then, and what I loved again now - quite apart from the story itself, the incredible worldbuilding and scholarship and the unforgettable and genre-setting characters - is the cadence of the language. I read and love a lot of epic fantasy, but I can't think of any other author who writes as if he were a storyteller in an oral tradition, telling stories round a village hearth through long winter nights while the wind batters at the windows, and the dark waits on the doorstep. When I read this aloud, I honestly thought I'd have to skip chunks to keep my young children's interest (Tom Bombadil, anyone? Lengthy battle scenes? Elvish songs?) but that proved entirely unnecessary - they were riveted by every word. I'll never forget their horror at the scene with the Balrog, or the 7 year old bawling his eyes out when a favourite character died on the battlefield ("he can't die - he's my friend!"). The fact the story continues to have such power is a truly remarkable thing. What a legacy.
I was going to read something else before I went on to The Two Towers, but I don't think that's going to happen!