A wonderful addition to a Tolkien collection

books:


	• The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings (The Lord of the Rings / By J.R.R. ... J. R. R. Tolkien Houghton Mifflin (T), 1967 - 3 pages average customer review:based on 836 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Classic

Everyone knows that the Lord of the Rings is a fantastic fantasy epic and a classic work of literature. It shows that genre writing does not have to be hack writing. Clearly if you want to get into the series you have to start with The Fellowship of the Rings. I do not think you can think of yourself as a true fantasy lover unless you have read or tired to read this book. It is not for everyone as it is very dense, but it is also just a great story with great characters.

Underwhelming

I know this is going to rile the defenders of the novels, but the films were much better. I remember how the "purists" were all up in arms when Peter Jackson changed the plots around, involved characters in certain areas, completely deleated others, etc. Well, I have to say, Jackson did a better job in telling Tolkien's work than Tolkien did.

Tolkien's problem I think is that he created such a complex fantasy world with so much detail that he spent his whole time telling us about every single minor character and the minute details of every scene and completely forgot to move the plot along.

There were times when I was reading this series and I thought, "wait, wasn't that a part that was pretty big in the movie?" Such as the Ringwraith's attack on Weathertop or the battle of Helms Deep. These events were described with as much emotion and excitement as if Tolkien were describing his morning routine.

And I ended up groaning when one of his characters would launch into a long speech about how he ended up somewhere or especially when one of the Hobbits would talk about the Shire. At one point in "The Two Towers," Gandalf actually warns Theodan NOT to bring up such topics...I wonder if Tolkien himself even figured out he was spending too much time on these pointless back stories.

Don't get me wrong, I love reading books that are rich in depth but this is a bit too deep.

Then there are the songs and poems which are nice but...I stopped reading them after a while and went on with the story.

The entire premise of the Lord of the Rings was supposed to be a conflict of good vs. evil and trying to stop evil from obtaining the one ring. Sadly, much of the book is devoted to telling us how these Elves ended up here and what happened at these ruins and who was there...again, all stuff that probably would have been better in a companion piece rather than clumsily put into the story like a concrete roadblock.

The plot itself was also odd. Now I understand that Tolkien wanted to publish his work all in one giant book but was forced to divide it up. The man obviously doesn't know about climax and plot resolution and this is where Peter Jackson came in. The end of the first book just ends...Frodo dissappears and the rest of the fellowship are looking for him. The beginning of the second book starts with Aragorn finding a mortally wounded Boromir; we don't even get to read about the heroic stand of Boromir, just that he fought well but was overpowered. For the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring, we get to learn more than we cared to know about the Shire and the journey to leave the Shire and the surrounding area is just painfully slow with little or no action at all...just a long history lesson about these woods or this hedge or that village....ughh

In The Two Towers, the first half of the book is devoted to Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas while the second half is solely devoted to Sam and Frodo.

I don't know, Tolkien could have worked the plotline better concerning this and made it more enjoyable. Maybe he got lost in his own world as writers sometimes do and they forgot what the reader doesn't know.

As for character development...there is none. The Aragorn you meet halfway through the first book is the same Aragorn that you see crowned as king at the end of the story. Whereas in the film, he is a conflicted man, unsure about his destiny and forced to decide. The characters in the book are one dimensional and you sometimes forget they are even there.

I'll say it again, the films were much better or atleast the story was told better by Jackson than by Tolkien. Had Jackson been totally true to the story, we'd still be watching the movies I write this because every single back story would have to be told and the dozens of minor characters would have to be introduced and so on and so forth. In my mind, the movies are how Tolkien would have wanted his story told. His own books are the companion piece, to give more of a history and back story on the world that he created.

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classic

This is one book to enjoy. Tom Bambadil is the best! Tolkien creates interesting stories with classic creatures that most people have a slight background of information to, thus not wasting time on creating a new world of different names.

A wonderful addition to a Tolkien collection

If you are a fan of The Lord of the Rings, this audio recording is must-have for your collection. I love to read and re-read the trilogy; there is something magical about these books. Sometimes I focus on the poems, sometimes the characters, sometimes I just read them because they are familiar and comforting.

This unabridged audio recording brings the book to life in a new and wonderful way. The narrator's voice is a perfect match for the story. Rob Inglis gives each character an appropriate voice, and his reading of the narrative is excellent. It's wonderful to listen to the story read aloud by such a fine actor!

I've purchased dramatic abridgements of the trilogy, and was disappointed. So much was left out! With an unabridged reading, I can enjoy the whole story. If a poem or passage strikes my fancy, I can listen to it again.

I am very pleased with this version, and highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a good audio version.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien's three-volume epic, is set in the imaginary world of Middle-earth -- home to many strange beings, and most notably hobbits, a peace-loving "little people," cheerful and shy. Since its original British publication in 1954-55, the saga has entranced readers of all ages. It is at once a classic myth and a modern fairy tale. Critic Michael Straight has hailed it as one of the "very few works of genius in recent literature." Middle-earth is a world receptive to poets, scholars, children, and all other people of good will. Donald Barr has described it as "a scrubbed morning world, and a ringing nightmare world...especially sunlit, and shadowed by perils very fundamental, of a peculiarly uncompounded darkness." The story of this world is one of high and heroic adventure. Barr compared it to Beowulf, C.S. Lewis to Orlando Furioso, W.H. Auden to The Thirty-nine Steps. In fact the saga is sui generis -- a triumph of imagination which springs to life within its own framework and on its own terms.

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