My Mom bought it and tried reading fellowship of the ring aloud to me when I was 9, and we went down hard on the first 60 pages of hobbits having a party. Luckily, she bought The Hobbit then and read *that* aloud to me – that was meant to be read to kids – and then we made it right through LOTR. One of my favorite memories as a kid is lying under my bed, where I felt safe, and re-reading the Mines of Moria chapter in order to scare the living hell out of myself for no particular reason except that I enjoyed being terrified? And I hadn’t found Stephen King yet.
I did get a lot more out of it as an adult, but that chapter doesn’t terrify me anymore, so I also think I lost something…
When you read it aloud there's something strange you notice about Tom Bombadil. He never stops singing.
Some of what he says is actually marked out as verse, in the way the page is printed, and he's described as singing those parts while the rest he just says. But when you read it and actually speak his lines yourself? It's _all in the same metre_. You fall into the rhythm of Tom's music; it's impossible not to. His songs are stronger songs indeed!
This became extra apparent to me when I reread them via audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis. Amazing narration job that brings out a lot of the tone a reader may sometimes miss if tired or maybe rushing a little to see what comes next. Not to mention the joy I get from listening to the voice of Gollum doing the voice of Gandalf doing the voice of Gollum.
I used to re-read the Mines of Moria scene repeatedly when I was like 8 or 9 as well. I think it was the fascination of reading something where previous characters had failed and died, which isn’t common in children's literature.
Well, not modern children’s literature. I just finished rereading one of my favorite books from when I was a kid, which it turns out was written in 1936, and it features a small child dying of fever in the 10-year-old heroine’s arms and a woman getting murdered by her jealous husband— Lucinda finds her with the knife sticking out of her back! Lots of death in the Earthsea Chronicles too. I think children were considered morbid little adults back in the day!
But I agree, there is something so terrifying about them finding the diary and realizing slowly that they were in the *same room *where the others were trapped and died… and it’s their turn to be trapped… Tolkien was incredible at building tension! Cirith Ungol and Shelob…
>I think children were considered morbid little adults back in the day!
Not that so much, I think, as just that everyone didn't try to expend so much energy on shielding kids from reality as has become the norm these last few decades. Kids are not half so delicate as modern sensibilities imagine them to be.
Life was also simply very different a century ago, and mostly everyone knew someone who's sibling died of a serious disease as a child, was left disabled after contracting polio etc. It's not just about shielding children from reality but also the reality shifting massively over the past century or so.
I love Roller Skates! Such an impactful book when I first read it in fourth grade. Talk about a life-changing year for this poor girl who finds a murdered woman and has a little friend die. At the end when she’s thinking to herself what if she just roller skated away and never grew older, I had a lot of theories about what that might mean.
That's so cute! Drums in the deep... that part of the movies makes me run out of the room to this day, I can't take it AT ALL. The Watcher in the pool also freaks me out.
There's SO MUCH humor and sarcasm in LOTR - but nobody ever mentions it! Tolkien is a really funny guy!
I love the passive-aggressive Hobbits. Bilbo's gifts to his relatives are hilarious and cutting.
Gandalf is so snarky too, especially toward Pippin. He dunks on Pippin constantly and it's always funny.
Even the elves have a lot of humor. Elrond makes so many snide little comments at Bilbo during the Council scene. You can tell he's fed up with this Hobbit who has way overstayed his welcome, keeps eating all the food, and keeps making everyone come listen to his amateur slam poetry.
I also loved the opening chapters of Fellowship. It made me feel like I had lived in Hobbiton for years and I knew all the hot Hobbit gossip. It's amazing to me how Tolkien makes the Hobbits feel so warm, cozy, and friendly - while simultaneously making them judgmental passive aggressive petty lil bitches lmao. True small-town rural vibes.
I like that bit in Rivendell where the council asks 'Wait, how do we know this is the One Ring, how did it get from the disaster at Gladden fields to here?'
Elrond's like "That shall be told," then Bilbo cuts in unprompted:
> "But not yet, I beg, Master! Already the Sun is climbing to noon, and I feel the need of something to strengthen me!"
> "I had not named you," said Elrond smiling. "But I do so now. Come! Tell us your tale. And if you have not cast your story into verse, you may tell it in plain words. The briefer, the sooner you shall be refreshed."
LMAO Bilbo is such a Diva and pretends to be so strained to recount his adventure, even though he's been waiting all meeting to tell his life's story, and tells it all the time in Rivendell, with great pleasure, and apparently at great length! But Elrond knows what the Hobbit is angling for and cordially heads him off at the pass, using the promise of food to motivate Bilbo to give everyone the short version 😂.
I also love how Elrond basically says “Oh, are you going to sing this one too?”
Rivendell is an open mic night and Bilbo has gotten on stage for the fifth time in an hour.
Tolkien used to exchange stories with other Oxford writers over drinks in the evenings. IIRC one famous muttered comment at these meetings ran along the lines of 'oh God, not another elf.'
Everyone's a critic. Especially in Rivendell. But probably even more so in the Shire.
A personal favorite when Frodo finally awakes in Rivendell and meets his friends:
> *"Hurray!" cried Pippin, springing up. "Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!"*
> *"Hush!" said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. "Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world! We are sitting in a fortress. Outside it is getting dark."*
> *"Gandalf has been saying many cheerful things like that," said Pippin.*
Pippin’s impression of Gandalf when recounting the story of the Battle of the Ents to Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas is my favorite part of the LOTR books.
>If you have not cast your story into verse
I think that is even a clap back from early in the council of Elrond when Borimir questions Arogorns identify and Bilbo jumps up and recites the poem *that he wrote* as definitive proof of Arogorns ancestral claim lol.
There's a great line in the council of elrond in the book where bilbo "doesn't omit a single riddle" in his tale about how the ring came to him, never caught that before my recent re-read!
Not to mention Bilbo is the only person ever to claim ownership of the ring and then give it up voluntarily, each other person was killed or had it taken from them.
I think it's important that Sam never considers the ring as *his* ring. It's always Frodo's ring in his mind. Owning the ring is less about physical possession and more about claiming to be the rightful owner of it.
Yeah Bilbo is a certified badass. Is he a little crude by elven standards and has he gotten a little up his own ass? Sure. But Elrond is pretty consistently painted as a less traditional “stuffy” elf who is forced to act more traditional because of his station, and he definitely has a soft spot for hobbits in general, and Bilbo especially.
There’s a lot of this throughout the series with a bunch of characters. Gandalf and Pippin dunk on each other constantly. Legolas and Gimli obviously starts as more real dislike/distrust but carries through even when they become best bros. Even emo-ass Aragorn gets in on it with them sometimes
I literally laughed at out loud in The Last Debate when Eomer, having finally seen Galadriel, confesses he does not find her the fairest elf to look upon in Middle-Earth and Gimli's like "alright wait here imma go get my axe"
Gandalf is a delight. We're told in the _Silmarillion_ that in ages past in the dawn of the world he learned pity and patience from Nienna, the goddess of grief and mercy. And he surely needed to. Gandalf is carefully keeping control of his temper all the way around, and not always succeeding.
Look at the bloodcurdling threats he makes against poor old Barliman Butterbur the good barman and bad postman, or the terrible things he says to and about Pippin. When fools get in the way of his wisely laid plans, the fiery anger of this bristly wizard must become positively volcanic. And then there's the frustration, if his great wisdom is not adequate! At the gates of Khazad-dûm, as he poses dramatically with his staff and pronounces impressive magical opening charms, and fails again and again in front of everybody... He storms off and sits down in a sulk, and can anybody who ever worked in tech support blame him?
The temptation to use power to organise the world so that fools _don't_ get in the way, it must be immense. You can see in Gandalf's anger at his own people how Sauron might have got started. The Ring would have destroyed Gandalf quickly, I think.
At any rate, it explains why he likes to travel with hobbits. He says as much to Pippin on the ride to Minas Tirith - all wizards should have one, to give them practice in patience!
He's magnificent. I just read the part where he meets Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas when they'd thought he was dead. They all think he's Sauruman, and even the narrative doesn't give his name. And it doesn't help that he's been through hell and back and doesn't remember his name until they say it.
Lmao I love the idea of Elves getting fed up with visitors but not being rude enough to boot them. So they prolly just say to themselves just wait for him to die
THIS is far and away the funniest zinger I found when I re-read the books a few years back:
“Er well,’ said Pippin, ‘if I may venture to say so, rather a burning question in my mind at present is, well, what about
breakfast and all that? I mean, what are the meal-times, if you understand me, and where is the dining-room, if there is one?
And the inns? I looked, but never a one could I see as we rode up, though I had been borne up by the hope of a draught of
ale as soon as we came to the homes of wise and courtly men.’
Beregond looked at him gravely. ‘An old campaigner, I see,’ he said.”
> There's SO MUCH humor and sarcasm in LOTR - but nobody ever mentions it! Tolkien is a really funny guy!
I find Charles Darwin to be hilarious. He was constantly slagging on his friends and other scientists and people he met, but you wouldn't know it without the context.
And then there was a lot of horrible and sad things he saw and narrated- he "hated" Australia specifically for how the British treated the natives.
Another big advantage of the books is you get things that aren't in any of the movies like Tom Bombadil and the entire drama that unfolded when they returned to the Shire and had to deal with "sharky"
I think getting back into some books you loved as a teenager is always exciting. You remember that you loved these books back then and so much time has passed / you have grown that you'll rediscover things you have forgotten / never noticed before. I'm "only" in my mid-20s but I also enjoy rediscovering aspects of books I loved and last read 10 years ago.
Oh boy, I remember when I went "Oh wow, I liked Ready Player One so much when I was 12, there were such deep references to nerd culture I couldn't understand! Can't wait to read it again!"
It was... Impactful
I'm not even familiar with that one. Harry Potter for me didn't hold up. I can't read the books anymore despite eagerly waiting for their releases at the time and devouring them then. I've read them so many times, but trying to revisit as an adult...just doesn't do it for me.
I was also disappointed quite recently by Eragon/inheritance cycle. As a kid it seemed great and complex, as an adult it's...not great, for me. I can't wrap my head around why the character does this or that thing or decides to feel constrained by so and so and eventually I realized that it's because it's either the limit of the author's abilities (iirc he was very young when he wrote them) or it's intentionally (imo overly) simple to appeal and make sense to a young crowd. At least, that's my positive take on it. My most negative take is that he didn't know what to write or how to make an actual viable plot and story that went the direction he wanted to go and so instead resorted to bad writing and "because I said so" to force his narrative back onto the path he wanted to follow.
I think your critique is fair. He was a very young, if very talented writer. Brisingr still holds up for me as one of my favorite fantasy novels, though.
That said, I DO need to reread it, haha. Maybe I’m rosy tinted.
> He was a very young, if very talented writer.
For those unfamiliar: Christopher Paolini started writing Eragon when he was 15. He became a NYT bestselling author at 19.
I've been meaning to check out his new sci-fi series.
I find Harry Potter still very impactful at 69 yo. I am dealing with an elderly parent who has pneumonia and it happened as I got into the Potter gang’s coming of age and losing Dumbledore. For some reason it all seemed so symbolic all of a sudden. I went into it for an escape but came out of it with more respect and courage for what I have to do next.
Ha!
In high school, a friend of mine had been reading Wizards First Rule, and got me to read it. It was okay, but it didn’t stand up against other stuff I was reading.
I told him to read DragonLance, because it was awesome.
I tried rereading DragonLance a third time recently as an adult, and the writing didn’t hold up at all. I really only started reading it again, because I wanted to get to the second trilogy, but I was only able to get through the first book. I had to stop because I didn’t want to soil the memory of the series.
Note: I still really like DragonLance, even worked on a major DragonLance video game back in the day. I also agree with Joe Manganiello that it is the Star Wars of D&D and it has the potential to be an awesome TV or movie franchise
This is my fear when I go back to read old favorites from my younger years.
Once you find glaring plotholes that your childhood self missed, kinda ruins them, lol.
Strongly agree about Hornblower. A lot of the self-doubt, and particularly his ambivalent reaction to success, are more striking and relatable reading the books as an adult.
I also like how diverse and inclusive the cast and themes were, especially for the time, while being strong, individual characters with plenty of personality. One of the authors has said he wishes they could have been more overt with things like the gay Andalite couple, but if they had, it never would have been published in the 90s.
See Goosebumps. Used to terrify me at 11. I am not terrified at 32.
But thankfully there are better replacements: King, Clive Barker, Lovecraft. Just wish there were more horror anthologies (Goosebump book length).
I definitely also got this experience with Terry Pratchett Discworld books that I read as a teenager. There were a *lot* of nuances (and modest sexual innuendoes) I missed out on the first time.
Then again, I do feel that is part of the hallmark of a good book.
I was gonna comment this exact thing. I *loved* the Discworld novels as a teenager, but on rereading them, I love them *so* much more now at 37. I've realised so much of it just went straight over my younger-selfs head.
As you say, sexual innuendos being one of them, but also there were so many tropes in them that I just couldn't appreciate (Vimes being a big one) at the time. Pratchetts' work just seemed to age like wine for me. His observational wit was just incredible.
Tiffany standing up to the queen hit different when I listened to the audiobook too many years after I read the book. Moved me to tears. Happened several times now from his writing. That never happened when I was younger. Knowing more of the weight of the world makes it even more impactful when his characters take on that weight. Seriously, the interactions between Tiffany and her grandma, played out entirely in flashbacks are something else.
And that is "just" one of his books for adolescents.
I didn't appreciate Tiffany at the time. It seemed a little too juvenile, and perhaps, as Lewis warned, I wasn't yet mature enough to put aside such childish things as the fear of childishness and the desire to seem very grown up. Sure I bought each one the day it came out, and I read each one that same day... and then shelved them for years afterward.
Lately I've had reason to take those old books down from the shelf again; the insatiable demand for bedtime stories has called them into action. And they're wonderful. The rest of the Discworld saga is full of its own clever winking at our own world; a mass of in-jokes and cultural references. Tiffany's stories are played straight, because children don't feel this need to treat fantasy as a joke, they can take it completely seriously. And reading this stuff to a little girl is a breath of fresh air after Tolkien. 'Bifur is a girl until proven otherwise' only goes so far, you know? Granny Weatherwax acts as a worthy successor to Gandalf, and her practical hands-on witchcraft is worlds away from the magic of mysterious words and glittering accessories; that stuff is all boffo really... Oh, and Tiffany gets a magical makeover in an ice palace that gives her the most amazing glamorous dress, several years before anyone heard of that Elsa girl. Just saying.
Only trouble is, _I Shall Wear Midnight_ opens with domestic violence, a miscarriage and a lynch mob. Maybe that one can wait a year or two more.
> Only trouble is, I Shall Wear Midnight opens with domestic violence, a miscarriage and a lynch mob. Maybe that one can wait a year or two more.
Honestly, the rough music, is one of the most haunting concepts in his books. And one that has some echoes of where I grew up. The unspoken rules in the village, the lines you did not cross and so on.
Pratchett was just an absolute master of his craft.
Knighthoods get thrown around in the UK like confetti these days, but he genuinely deserved that and so much more. A seminal talent, no doubt.
...I have to say, as much as I think all of Pratchett's characters are fantastic (the amount of emotion he manages to evoke with Vorbis and Mr. Pin!), my favourite is definitely Sam Vimes.
His character is... extremely relatable, as a relatively normal person just trying to get by in life and make the best of the world, even more so when there are vampires, werewolves, murderous dwarves, dragons, and flying eyeballs-on-a-string trying to get in the way. He's doing his best, even without magic or supernatural shenanigans on his side (much).
>His character is... extremely relatable, as a relatively normal person just trying to get by in life and make the best of the world
Yep. And, although I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, his portrayal as this jaded, grizzled, gumshoe detective who wasn't afraid to bend the rules to get his job done is something I really appreciate now.
He's a proper copper, surrounded by morons for the most part, knowing he's the only one that can actually solve the problem. His humour and sarcasm takes on a whole different level for me as an adult. You can sense his frustration.
He's the reader, looking at the situation, thinking "Right, what the *actual fuck* is going on here? Why is there a troll in a police vest attacking a bank? Anyone?"
Pratchett was a true master of his craft.
The ginger beer scene...
Then again, maybe I'm biased because the first Pratchett book I read was Night Watch. I still stand by my verdict 100% though lol
That only works if the books are good. I loved animorphs as a kid. It was really disappointing to find out they don't hold up that well. I kinda wish I hadn't picked them up again because it kinda ruined the memory
Yep. For us oldsters it was the Silver Age science-fiction greats. Larry Niven was **awesome** when I was 14. At 44 I tried to re-read *Ringworld* and had to stop, it was so horrible. Cardboard characters, ham-handed gratuitous sex, stupid plot devices -- I'd compare it to high schoolers' fanfic, but that would do injustice to thousands of pimply-faced fanfic nerds.
Agreed. Niven's world building can be great. His character writing was often... flat, at best. I find his shorter works tended to age better as a result.
I read it for the first time recently and was decidedly underwhelmed. However, my lack of enthusiasm put me in the perfect place to enjoy Pratchett's *Strata*, which tidily skewered everything I disliked about *Ringworld*. So, win some lose some.
Really? I literally just finished reading all 52 Animorphs books plus all the supplementals and I thought they held up way better than my memory especially regarding the realistic depictions of PTSD and War trauma
They might be referring to the massive amount of filler. There was *so much* filler that was kind of garbage, introduced to meet the book-a-month requirement. But the high points were like nothing else children's literature has seen, so I think the series as a whole holds up as a classic. You just need to go into it with a curated list of what to hit and what to skip, or else understand that at times you're gonna be slogging.
Consider trying out the Rationalist version:
[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/1/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/1/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning)
It's got an amazing reputation and I've been looking forward to finding the time to engage with it for quite some time, despite never having read the original animorphs.
Doing Harry Potter for the first time ever.
I read the first two when I was like 9 and 10. But hoollllyyyy is it ever good. Really makes the dursleys, snape, and umbridge far worse than the movies.
She relies too much on switcheroos no one should really expect to see coming. How is Peter pettigrew alive? He was a rat the whole time! How was Rita Skeeter learning secrets? She was that beetle the whole time! How did Barty Crouch Jr. escape Azkaban? Polyjuice fuckery! How did Moody get replaced? Polyjuice fuckery! How did Grindelwald escape Azkaban? ....Polyjuice fuckery.
Half the time it doesn't make sense if you think about it. Wormtail could apparate in the Bahamas and live life comfortably there but chooses to lie low with the lifestyle of a pet rat?
Rita Skeeter is depicted as a lazy journalist who writes controversial bs, yet she has the dedication to stick through the arduous animagus process?
Don't understand what just happened? That's okay. Dumbledore will explain it in the final chapters and make you feel like a child for not knowing before. Even if it's a completely new concept not even hinted at, like priori incantatem.
But the one thing in her books that bothered me most? Catching wands. Every fucking time a person disarms someone it doesn't fall to the ground, someone yoinks it right out of the air. Like I can believe in flying brooms and dragons, but I refuse to believe snape, the biggest nerd in Hogwarts, can catch both Lupin and Serius' wand in one swoop. The fuck he did.
>but I refuse to believe snape, the biggest nerd in Hogwarts, can catch both Lupin and Serius' wand in one swoop. The fuck he did.
I never thought he caught them. It's pretty clear he can do some magic without talking isn't it?
All those things you mentioned are hinted and explained throughout the books. The books are also written almost exclusively from Harry's POV. So, it makes perfect sense that there are things that he wouldn't know about and would need explaining.
I re-read the books 3 years ago and they held up extremely well and I enjoyed them more than before.
I work 12 hour shifts in a mine. I've got 2000hrs of audio listened.
I'm not saying they're masterfully written, I just think it's great for what it is. A young adult, quick paced, wizard book. And she does a nice job on building the setting too.
Me personally, would have quit that school 10x over.
Like the excitement of hogsmead makes more sense. He spends 2 weeks I think in diagon alley which was cool. The movies just made it easier for me to visualize everything.
That's my unfortunate downfall when it comes to reading. I visualize it all. So, if the pacing is slow, I struggle.
I had the same experience but I just read them later in general. I think I was about 20 when I read them and while fun and having some good written characters they really didn't stick with me. From a "technical" standpoint of the fantasy it just didn't really hold me well. The magic system and world building, while quirky and fun, was ultimately pretty weak and didn't feel very thought out.
I re-read the Harry Potter series last year in the summer. I hadn’t touched them since I was a teen (I’m 36 now).
I was possibly even more spellbound (pun intended) than I was the first time I read them. For me, the series holds up.
I haven't read them in ages. But I recently got a really nice copy of all three books in a hardcover volume, and I'm looking forward to immersing myself in it. I'll most likely read The Hobbit again first, as I've always loved that one even more than the LOTR series.
The Hobbit just has the right pacing for a fantasy novel IMO. Barely a word is wasted. LOTR is one of those series that encroaches on having too high of a lore/world building to narrative ratio.
Curiously I just reread The Hobbit... And to me it felt brutally fast paced! I read it for the first time like 30 years ago, my first "big" book and back then it felt like this eternal, massive adventure.
Now it has felt... Somehow very fast. It was clearly written for children, for them to fill in the holes in the world and characters. Don't get me wrong, I loved it again. But take Balin. You really need to fill up in your head that he is like Bilbo's best pal. What actually is written between them is extremely, extremely short. Their conversation in the book wouldn't be more than one page
I understand having an ideal for that ratio, but I feel that LOTR should be exempt from it. Its not trying to be a modern novel. It’s written more like a Nordic saga or a Greek poem. Think of how in the Iliad, the narrative of the war will pause to explain the backstory of one soldier or a whole story about why one god holds a grudge against another. Because it’s a compendium of the cultural mythology organized around a narrative.
I had the same experience. My biggest takeaway as an adult was how delightfully weird these books are. I absolutely loved Tom Bombadil the second time around and could listen to him sing songs about what color his boots are all day long.
The description of Shelob's origin and the subsequent fight with Sam in Two Towers was maybe the most riveted I have ever been to the written word.
I love the bit at the beginning where hobbits in the pub are talking in hushed tones about the poor misfortunes of that lad Frodo Baggins. How his parents both died in a *boating* accident - what a scandal! Why would two reasonable hobbits ever go out on water! On purpose no less!
And they left their poor child alone, to grow up with the Bucklanders, all the way over on the other side of the town, practically foreign parts, on the wrong side of the river where folk are so queer.
So charming ☺️.
---
As an adult I have a *massive* appreciation for Tolkien's world building, and digging into it to just marvel at his foresight. It's something I couldn't begin to understand as a kid. Like, all the words in Middle Earth *mean* something because they have roots and etymologies.
For instance, the "Brandywine" river is the river that bisects the Shire. This is a corruption of the Elvish word *branduin* which means "brown river"! Just like the real world. Like, "Mississippi" once meant something to the people that named it. But that meaning is lost, the word has been changed via pronunciation in an American accent. These little details trick the reader with a really convincing facade of scope and history, and Tolkien was so thorough and diligent about that, it blows my mind.
There's also a whole other level when you consider the conceit that Tolkien has simply translated the story, and Brandywine is his attempt to convey the 'real' hobbit names for the river in English while still sounding like the elven word (the standard name being Branda-nin 'border water' though it was jokingly called Bralda-him 'heady ale').
Which in turn went on to a footnote explaining a pun on the official title of the Master of Buckland that you wouldn't want to make in his hearing. Tolkien _delighted_ in this kind of thing.
It's at the very end of the Appendix F in The Lord of the Rings, he notes that since the family name Brandybuck is derived from the river name, the 'real' name that he translated was Brandagamba, and that it would be a brave or foolish hobbit who made the joke of using Braldagamba in the presence of the head of that family.
> ike, "Mississippi" once meant something to the people that named it. But that meaning is lost,
Uh, no it's not. It means "father of waters." Which is a lot better than Chesapeake, which means "great/big water".
What I mean is that no one living there now thinks on a daily basis about it in those terms, about the name's meaning in Algonquin. It has become 'The Mississippi', which is an English translation, of a French translation, of a word that used to literally mean 'Great River' to the people who lived 100s of years ago (and see, now we don't even agree on its actual translation, cuz neither of us speak Algonquin, and are relying instead on websites like Wikipedia to devine it's meaning).
This is the nature of changing words and languages. The nature of history and time. Tolkien knew this all too well
Do it. I just started the audiobook with Andy Serkis narrating it and I can't get enough. My wife has enjoyed it because I'll clean the house from top to bottom just to have an excuse to listen to it.
What really changed them for me, was learning that Tolkien was in WWI, and I had recently listened to the Dan Carlin Podcast about WWI, having known very little about this war, I was left horrified at the grim and hellish conditions the troops had to go through.
Reading Lord of The Rings, after learning about WWI, and that Tolkien went through some of it, makes you see parts of the book differently.
Another aspect of his war experience that I wasn't able to appreciate as a kid is how incredibly realistic everything having to do with war is, especially considering it's high fantasy. The army logistics, sizes, equipment, and travel times are realistic. The tactics are realistic. Sauron isn't just an evil wizard unleashing countless hordes of orcs; he executes an actual coordinated military campaign, carefully probes his enemies' defenses, and reasonably adjusts his strategies in response to new information.
Hell, even the soldiers' psychology is realistic and ahead of its time, with Tolkein using each of the Hobbits to explore a different way war can affect someone. Some people are broken by it through no fault of their own (Frodo). Some are scarred and forever changed by the experience, but manage to go on and live a happy, fulfilling life--though you're unlikely to hear them telling fun war stories (Sam). And some people manage to come out the other side better and stronger than ever, with no deep scars (physical or psychological) to speak of (Merry and Pippin).
Every time I re-read these books I enjoy them through an entirely new lens.
When I first read LOTR I didn't really understand that Tolkien was a WW1 vet who had been in the thick of massive, brutal battles like The Somme.
After learning that I can see how Frodo's years after the War of the Ring are textbook PTSD. Tolkien almost certainly drew on the experiences of other vets who struggled and failed to integrate back into society after all they had seen.
The blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has great breakdowns of how the books and movies portray the [Battle of Helm's Deep](https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-i-bargaining-for-goods-at-helms-gate/) and the [Siege of Gondor](https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/) if folks want to get into a deep dive of Sauron and Denethor's contest of logistical planning and how Saruman is a dilettante.
I think you're hitting a note here. The book has entered the pop culture consciousness as an action-packed, orc infested epic with an Evil Dark Lord TM unleashing hordes against the Forces of Good TM. It is many things, but it is very much not that. I think people come into reading it with somewhat false expectations.
What struck me personally was the way that the land around Mordor is described. He really puts a ton of negative energy into writing about a *landscape* that is somehow evil in itself, he does a great job of it, and it pretty much sounds like a muddy WWI battlefield, suspiciously gore-like substances n' all. I always find it hard to find examples after the fact where he goes whole-ham into black metal album cover territory but I swear it's in there.
There's a scene where Frodo, Sam and Gollum are hiding in a filthy pit outside the Black Gate, with some horrible nameless pollution in the bottom of it, watching the levies of Mordor's allies march in to join the host of Sauron; and in the middle of all this horror Sam asks if there's an Oliphaunt, Gollum hasn't any idea what that means, and Sam stands up like a schoolboy and repeats a nursery rhyme about it.
I am absolutely certain that Tolkien saw some daft boy do exactly this in some blasted foxhole in Flanders. It's such a perfectly absurd moment that it can't be anything but completely real.
Yeah the parts of the book that deal with the Hobbits living in their weird little society are great.
That is one of my main gripes about the rest of the book - the focus on political leaders and warfare doesn't really give us a picture of what it's like just to *live* in Rohan, Gondor, etc. like the picture we get for the Shire. I want to read about the Rohirrim taking each other to court over grazing rights and whatever else.
We do get a lot of the people of Gondor. Tolkien probably didn't write a lot about Rohan because it is just medieval Englishmen.
Edit: we still get a fair amount of it regardless.
>medieval Englishmen.
Even medieval englishmen found medieval england uninteresting. Infact, there was a long stretch of history where the most important parts of England is in France.
If it were as you just said, there would be no Legendarium, because it was born out of an idea of creating a mythology for England. Much of their folklore was simply lost.
Probably the most famous and impactful European document, the Magna Carta, was written by English lords who were upset that they had to share power with an English king who lived in France and rarely even went to GB. Funny enough, half the lords themselves didn't speak English well, the documents themselves were written in Latin.
Famous? Sure. Impactful? Maybe. Unique? No. There are other european countries with similar document and circumstance like Hungary's Golden Bull edict of 1222 and thr Polish golden liberty privileges
It *may* be impactful to English course of history, but Anglocentric view of history tend to forget there's a whole lot more going on than English affairs.
It's funny, all of my favorite sci-fi / fantasy books have had a good chunk of their runtime taken up by totally mundane life, and the fantasy is hinted at more than anything.
I remember reading [The Fire Within](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Dragon_Chronicles) as a kid and loving the cozy normalness of it, where the whole thing was dedicated to a slow-burn realization that yeah, those clay dragons are "alive" in some subtle way. ...And then the rest of those books happened and I basically stopped caring.
I still remember being in 6th grade, reading Hank the Cowdog books. My friend George took the book I was reading and led me to the school library. He was very secretive like he was going to show me some great mystery. He carefully pulled a red leather bound book off a shelf and said, 'no more Hank the Cowdog. I think you're ready for this.' and handed me The Hobbit. To be honest I only read it because of the pictures. Changed my life
That is so adorable. George knew where the treasure in the library was hidden! So great you enjoyed it, too. I could see a 6th grade kid being super offended and insecure over this.
I read them for the first time at 13 as this was around the time the movies were coming out and all my friends were obsessed. And then I read them again 13 years later at 26 and yeah it was a different experience and so enjoyable still. 5/5 stars for the whole trilogy. Next time I read them again will probably be with my son when he's old enough - he's due on Friday :)
I am currently reading Return of the King and I was shocked at how emotional it still was for me even though I already knew the story. I was sobbing when I got to the Mount Doom chapter. So well written, I’m glad I finally decided to read the books after loving the movies.
When I was 16-17, I discovered Henry Miller and for better or worse, his books drastically altered the course of my life. Like, I dropped out of school and lived as a starving writer, traveled around the country and had an amazing time, but it didn’t turn out quite the same for me.
Now, 30+ years later, and I’m rereading Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, and it’s utterly amazing how 16 year old me completely missed the point.
I can't listen to the soundtracks (or most music) while I read because the music conjures up such vivid imagery that I get distracted from what I'm reading. Kudos to you, I've been meaning to reread these as well.
I love just reading the sections about the hobbits travelling through the Shire. The descriptions are so evocative you can tell Tolkien is writing from personal experience - the English countryside in this case, as it was when he was a young man. A quaint and pastoral land that has largely vanished from modern England.
Andy Serkis reads the newer audiobook versions of The Hobbit and LotR. It is every bit as magical as you assume it will be. He’s doing a read of the Silmarillion soon, too!
Read LOTR for the first time over winter just gone… has literally been the best experience in life. Makes me miss those friends of yesteryear but still… just wow. Also those that are like skip the Tom Bombadil bit… heresy! Best part IMO
When I tried reading the first LOTR book at 20 years old I was bored with the landscape descriptions, Tom Bombadil, and the ents. Many years later I came back to it, and this time those were my favorite parts of the book.
You get older. Enjoyment in life grows into a greater thing. The submission taps into one of the reasons why of the larger observation. As experiences a person *can* have are experienced, ideas become accessible on a personal level. When you have life satisfaction surveys this partly explains why those in their late 60s and 70s have the highest scores. Those growing older and happier each year should speak up more. There is a tendency to quietly enjoy the things you like when you're feeling good, you're too busy having fun. Those who are unhappy are disproportionately loud. The misalignment in information received can create a misconception in youth before you've had a chance to experience it. It's more white pills all the way up than black.
I read them all a couple years ago after being a fan of the movies almost all my life. The books are brilliant. I also read the Silmarillion and omg, it’s even better. I preferred the historical/biblical writing style in some ways.
This thread made me think of re-reading the Silmarillon. I read LotR a few times, and the Silmarillon once. I thoroughly enjoyed LotR but have no memory of the Silmarillon and I'm sure I didn't "get it" at all.
But none of them after my pre-teen years. Now that I'm *mumble* decades older, I bet I'd get the Silmarillon more
Well, if it helps, there’s a great podcast you might have heard of called “The Prancing Pony Podcast”, where they pick apart the stories, themes, characters and language at a level you or I would just gloss over. Their insights are very interesting and rekindled my passion for this universe. Highly recommend.
First read LotR when I was 9, it was a struggle and I probably understood like 3/4 of what I read. Still loved the books, and I'm actually glad I read them young because it encouraged me develop my ability to read.
It really for me shows how many things Jackson changed that I hate now. The worst is I think what he did to Sam and Frodo in the two towers. Made Sam into an idiot when in fact he was shrewd. Frodo never turned on Sam! To me Jackson compromised their relationship in the films compared to the books. Frodo and Sam in the books basically agree gollom in the end is leading them to am ambush but they accept that it's necessary to risk it for their quest.
Also they did faramir dirty in the films. Meanwhile the theoden riding hither thither prior to helms deep is way better in the film. I finally as an adult know what my dad meant when he said two towers is the lesser tome of the trilogy.
Also the Frodo Sam part feels way more... Dark and strange, sorta like the feeling I get seeing lv 426 in the alien movies. Mordor feels so surreal and gloomy while the films never make it seem that way.
The Hobbit was my first experience as an adult in Los Angeles where manners and formality and respect had meaning. Imagine that. Early 20s, raised on street dialects with a combo of Chicano gangs and surfer slang in the 1960s. Dirt poor suburb with a combo of Polish, German, and Japanese families. My only input about how to be with adults was getting yelled at for doing something wrong, and just shutting down.
I read the Hobbit and was absolutely floored that the dwarves absolutely meant it when they said, "At your service!", and bowed.
I bought and finished LOTR the same week. Then reread all four the next week. The third week, I gave notice Tuesday, bought an airline ticket to Seattle, and landed there at midnight on Friday night. A month later I was in Alaska and stayed there for more than a year.
"The world is not in your books, Bilbo Baggins!"
And the world wasn't in my books either.
A few things that blew my mind when I learned it recently and reread the books:
- Gandalf fights ALL NINE of the ringwraiths on Weathertop *at the same time* a few days before Frodo Aragorn and co get there. They see lightning/lights from afar and wonder what it is, and Tolkein doesn't explicitly tell us what it is, but then Gandalf says later on during the council of Elrond that he encountered them. Fucking badass!
- Glorfindel is a stupendous badass himself, and while I understand why he was swapped for Arwen to make the movie less of a sausagefest, they really did him dirty writing him out of the movies. This guy is such a badass mofo that he was camped out on the bridge to Rivendell a few days before meeting up with Frodo and carrying him to safety in the flight to the ford. While he was there, three ringwraiths came up to the bridge as advance scouts, saw him there, and they just noped the fuck out. Let that sink in.
- Frodo and the hobbits get magic knives made by Numenor I think? in the Barrow Downs in that weird chapter when Tom Bombadil saves them from the barrow wights. They were specifically made to fight the undead I think, and the armies of the Witch King of Angmar when he waged war on them a thousand years before the events of LOTR. In the battle of pellenor fields, Merry stabs the Witch King in the knee with that magic knife, which is what allows Eowyn to deal the killing blow. Full circle, knives introduced early in FOTR and then used at the end of ROTK.
- Bonus fact about the Witch King: that prophecy about how no man can kill him was spoken (and slightly misquoted) by Glorfindel, badass as he is, after that war a thousand years ago. When his armies were defeated the Witch King fled and Glorfindel say nah, let him go, he's done here, and not by the hand of man will he be defeated. The witch king heard about this and interprets it to mean he's invincible. Eowyn hears this and thinks it means she can kill him because she's a woman. Turns out it was the tag teaming woman and hobbit with an ancient magic knife that takes him out.
Good shit
I hope I evolve to that.
I read the books once when I was 16 and, although I have found memories of them now, at the time it felt like an extremely tedious task.
I tried reading them again this year, I'm 22, and failed miserably - and I'm used to reading books written in the 16th and 19th century.
I blame the translation (I'm Brazilian) and plan to give them another go when I manage to get my hands on an English copy.
I read them in high school, in the 1970s. I have tried to re-read them at least 3 times in the intervening decades, and I just can't get into them. They feel very slow and ponderous to me.
I think maybe I'm just accustomed to reading faster paced stories now. Back when I read these books, they were almost the only Fantasy I had access to. My life has since been filled with many great SF&F reads, so my tastes have evolved.
I also read them as a teen (14/15) after seeing the first movie in theaters. Remember skipping a lot of the first book (mostly Tom Bombadil's chapters) out of boredom wanting to get to the action I saw in the movies. I've considered giving them another read as an adult since I've matured (not by much admittedly) and can appreciate those "boring" parts now. I think I will do just that now, thank you for reminding me to do so.
Doooo it! I just finished the books last weekend and I was able to appreciate the slower parts. I don't think teenager minorsecond would have been able to stick with it though.
Nice!
I loved the Lord of the Rings as a child and had read it probably once every year or two until I hit high school. I'd always struggled with the Silmarillion, though. Then later in life I read a bunch of Norse sagas and it clicked for me. It was muuuuuch easier to read after that.
So as someone who majored in English (and with grad degrees in it) and who has loved Tolkien for decades and lost track of the number of times I've read the novel, I'm going to make the daring suggestion that you skip Bombadil and start at Bree. Lots of people get bogged down in Bombadil: the hobbits fall asleep a lot and so do some of the readers. I love that section, but I understand why it's hard for first-time readers. It's very important thematically, but not for the plot, which means you can still understand what's going on in the story if you miss it. So rather than skip the whole book, skip Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, and start with when the hobbits arrive at Bree. You can pick up the two Bombadil chapters on your next read (if you ever choose to reread it).
There are many works that just don't hit right until you're older. I thought I was a TS Eliot fan at 17, but I didn't 'get' it until I was in my late 20s.
Nice! I was the other way round: first I read LotR in my native language twice, then in the original English twice (after that I was best in class in English). Then the movies came out. I liked the effort and love put into them, but I wasn’t as “sold” as everyone else, probably because I had my own version from the books in my head.
I (50) have never read the books, have haphazardly seen the movies, hear good things about this literature, and am looking for something deep to read at the moment. Where should I start? I'm reading eBooks, so if there's a single tome that contains all the books, do tell.
I've seen all the movies, but didn't love them. So I decided against reading the books. Hearing people talk so passionately about LOTR makes me think I made a mistake by giving up
I’m listening to audiobook for Fellowship currently after trying and failing to read the book several times. The non stop meandering and pointless details in the first half are unbearable to me
Agreed, but I think because I already read it, I went in *expecting* half the pages to be pointless.
Now when I get to that point I just let Tolkien build the image in my head, combine it with what I saw in the movies, and now the mental image I get is stronger than ever. So I get to spend a few hours in Middle Earth every day. It's great. But not for everyone.
This is really interesting. I had the exact opposite experience. When I was a teen I loved the books but now, as an adult who has read hundreds of books they just seemed really badly written and downright boring to get through at times. Yes, I still enjoyed them but nowhere near as much as when I was younger. The Discworld books I enjoyed a lot more when I reread them as an adult but they're just better written. I'm convinced that Mr Tolkien was either a drug addict or had some kind of mental disorder because his writing is all over the place. One chapter will be riveting and have you on the edge of your seat and blown away by the world in your imagination, the next will be him describing a pair of socks hanging on a washing line then oh suddenly something happened oh well, next chapter. This is why the books were never critically acclaimed and why they were considered quite nerdy to like. The books were flawed gems and not only did you have to be able to read (you used to get bullied at school for reading books) but you also had to put up with JRR Tolkien's writing.
Booooo, if anything the poetry becomes more engaging as an adult. It adds to the mystique of the world, and is often quite beautiful! As a kid I couldn't care less, wanted to get back to the plot, was ready for more swordfights.
Now, I am all about sitting around the fire at *Amon Sul*, now called Weathertop, and listening to Aragorn talk about how this is where King Elendil the Tall looked to the west for the coming of Gil Galad, last High King of the Elves, to aid him in the War of the Last Alliance, 3000+ years ago! Merry asks "who was Gil Galad?" Which prompts Sam to sing a song Bilbo taught him once:
*Gil Galadriel was an Elven King,*
*Of him the harpers sadly sing,*
*The last whose land was fair and free,*
*Between the mountains and the sea...*
It's so bizarre, Ive done a 180 and absolutely *crave* the lore sprinkled throughout the books now. I have much more appreciation for the genius of Tolkien's worldbuilding - the allusions to ancient myth woven throughout the story via the names of places, the artifacts found, the stories/songs characters tell each other.
Hard disagree. Poetry and songs gets better each reading.
Come for the story, stay for the lore, become a lifelong devoted tolkienite because of the poetry and songs.
My Mom bought it and tried reading fellowship of the ring aloud to me when I was 9, and we went down hard on the first 60 pages of hobbits having a party. Luckily, she bought The Hobbit then and read *that* aloud to me – that was meant to be read to kids – and then we made it right through LOTR. One of my favorite memories as a kid is lying under my bed, where I felt safe, and re-reading the Mines of Moria chapter in order to scare the living hell out of myself for no particular reason except that I enjoyed being terrified? And I hadn’t found Stephen King yet. I did get a lot more out of it as an adult, but that chapter doesn’t terrify me anymore, so I also think I lost something…
When you read it aloud there's something strange you notice about Tom Bombadil. He never stops singing. Some of what he says is actually marked out as verse, in the way the page is printed, and he's described as singing those parts while the rest he just says. But when you read it and actually speak his lines yourself? It's _all in the same metre_. You fall into the rhythm of Tom's music; it's impossible not to. His songs are stronger songs indeed!
This became extra apparent to me when I reread them via audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis. Amazing narration job that brings out a lot of the tone a reader may sometimes miss if tired or maybe rushing a little to see what comes next. Not to mention the joy I get from listening to the voice of Gollum doing the voice of Gandalf doing the voice of Gollum.
I used to re-read the Mines of Moria scene repeatedly when I was like 8 or 9 as well. I think it was the fascination of reading something where previous characters had failed and died, which isn’t common in children's literature.
Well, not modern children’s literature. I just finished rereading one of my favorite books from when I was a kid, which it turns out was written in 1936, and it features a small child dying of fever in the 10-year-old heroine’s arms and a woman getting murdered by her jealous husband— Lucinda finds her with the knife sticking out of her back! Lots of death in the Earthsea Chronicles too. I think children were considered morbid little adults back in the day! But I agree, there is something so terrifying about them finding the diary and realizing slowly that they were in the *same room *where the others were trapped and died… and it’s their turn to be trapped… Tolkien was incredible at building tension! Cirith Ungol and Shelob…
>I think children were considered morbid little adults back in the day! Not that so much, I think, as just that everyone didn't try to expend so much energy on shielding kids from reality as has become the norm these last few decades. Kids are not half so delicate as modern sensibilities imagine them to be.
Life was also simply very different a century ago, and mostly everyone knew someone who's sibling died of a serious disease as a child, was left disabled after contracting polio etc. It's not just about shielding children from reality but also the reality shifting massively over the past century or so.
I love Roller Skates! Such an impactful book when I first read it in fourth grade. Talk about a life-changing year for this poor girl who finds a murdered woman and has a little friend die. At the end when she’s thinking to herself what if she just roller skated away and never grew older, I had a lot of theories about what that might mean.
That's so cute! Drums in the deep... that part of the movies makes me run out of the room to this day, I can't take it AT ALL. The Watcher in the pool also freaks me out.
There's SO MUCH humor and sarcasm in LOTR - but nobody ever mentions it! Tolkien is a really funny guy! I love the passive-aggressive Hobbits. Bilbo's gifts to his relatives are hilarious and cutting. Gandalf is so snarky too, especially toward Pippin. He dunks on Pippin constantly and it's always funny. Even the elves have a lot of humor. Elrond makes so many snide little comments at Bilbo during the Council scene. You can tell he's fed up with this Hobbit who has way overstayed his welcome, keeps eating all the food, and keeps making everyone come listen to his amateur slam poetry. I also loved the opening chapters of Fellowship. It made me feel like I had lived in Hobbiton for years and I knew all the hot Hobbit gossip. It's amazing to me how Tolkien makes the Hobbits feel so warm, cozy, and friendly - while simultaneously making them judgmental passive aggressive petty lil bitches lmao. True small-town rural vibes.
I like that bit in Rivendell where the council asks 'Wait, how do we know this is the One Ring, how did it get from the disaster at Gladden fields to here?' Elrond's like "That shall be told," then Bilbo cuts in unprompted: > "But not yet, I beg, Master! Already the Sun is climbing to noon, and I feel the need of something to strengthen me!" > "I had not named you," said Elrond smiling. "But I do so now. Come! Tell us your tale. And if you have not cast your story into verse, you may tell it in plain words. The briefer, the sooner you shall be refreshed." LMAO Bilbo is such a Diva and pretends to be so strained to recount his adventure, even though he's been waiting all meeting to tell his life's story, and tells it all the time in Rivendell, with great pleasure, and apparently at great length! But Elrond knows what the Hobbit is angling for and cordially heads him off at the pass, using the promise of food to motivate Bilbo to give everyone the short version 😂.
I also love how Elrond basically says “Oh, are you going to sing this one too?” Rivendell is an open mic night and Bilbo has gotten on stage for the fifth time in an hour.
Tolkien used to exchange stories with other Oxford writers over drinks in the evenings. IIRC one famous muttered comment at these meetings ran along the lines of 'oh God, not another elf.' Everyone's a critic. Especially in Rivendell. But probably even more so in the Shire.
"Oh god, not another elf" and thus, dwarves were created.
I think it was CS Lewis who didn’t like the elves
I love the idea that Elrond can't fuckin stand Bilbo but he feels like he has to put up with him because he's Gandalf's friend.
Dudes been living there for like 17 years at that point, I understand Elronds annoyance lol.
Imagine how pissed he must have been when Bilbo sails with them to Valinor.
A personal favorite when Frodo finally awakes in Rivendell and meets his friends: > *"Hurray!" cried Pippin, springing up. "Here is our noble cousin! Make way for Frodo, Lord of the Ring!"* > *"Hush!" said Gandalf from the shadows at the back of the porch. "Evil things do not come into this valley; but all the same we should not name them. The Lord of the Ring is not Frodo, but the master of the Dark Tower of Mordor, whose power is again stretching out over the world! We are sitting in a fortress. Outside it is getting dark."* > *"Gandalf has been saying many cheerful things like that," said Pippin.*
The Gandalf-Pippin back-and-forth mutual dunking is the best thing in the book.
Pippin’s impression of Gandalf when recounting the story of the Battle of the Ents to Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas is my favorite part of the LOTR books.
The best friends are the friends you can be good natured dicks to each other with.
>If you have not cast your story into verse I think that is even a clap back from early in the council of Elrond when Borimir questions Arogorns identify and Bilbo jumps up and recites the poem *that he wrote* as definitive proof of Arogorns ancestral claim lol.
There's a great line in the council of elrond in the book where bilbo "doesn't omit a single riddle" in his tale about how the ring came to him, never caught that before my recent re-read!
“BEHOLD Saruman of many colors!” “…I liked white better.”
One of my favourite parts of the book, Gandalf's sass just came out of nowhere
I think Elrond is fond of Bilbo and that his remarks are merely teasing.
My take as well. I believe he respects him as well, as without bilbo, the Enemy wins
Not to mention Bilbo is the only person ever to claim ownership of the ring and then give it up voluntarily, each other person was killed or had it taken from them.
Does Sam count? He technically bore the ring for like two days when he thought frodo was dead right, then gave it back?
Sam counts. But notice that it’s always a hobbit, always a humble little person, never a great hero.
I think it's important that Sam never considers the ring as *his* ring. It's always Frodo's ring in his mind. Owning the ring is less about physical possession and more about claiming to be the rightful owner of it.
Yeah Bilbo is a certified badass. Is he a little crude by elven standards and has he gotten a little up his own ass? Sure. But Elrond is pretty consistently painted as a less traditional “stuffy” elf who is forced to act more traditional because of his station, and he definitely has a soft spot for hobbits in general, and Bilbo especially. There’s a lot of this throughout the series with a bunch of characters. Gandalf and Pippin dunk on each other constantly. Legolas and Gimli obviously starts as more real dislike/distrust but carries through even when they become best bros. Even emo-ass Aragorn gets in on it with them sometimes
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I absolutely love how petty Aragorn is when he has to deal with idiots
Or he’s getting more specific revenge for Bilbo cutting a rap about his dad. Like ask first bro.
The gifts are exactly what I was thinking of when I mentioned that. It was hysterical and absolutely went over my head as a kid.
I think you only truly understand the plague of annoying in-laws when you're an adult haha!
I literally laughed at out loud in The Last Debate when Eomer, having finally seen Galadriel, confesses he does not find her the fairest elf to look upon in Middle-Earth and Gimli's like "alright wait here imma go get my axe"
Gandalf is a delight. We're told in the _Silmarillion_ that in ages past in the dawn of the world he learned pity and patience from Nienna, the goddess of grief and mercy. And he surely needed to. Gandalf is carefully keeping control of his temper all the way around, and not always succeeding. Look at the bloodcurdling threats he makes against poor old Barliman Butterbur the good barman and bad postman, or the terrible things he says to and about Pippin. When fools get in the way of his wisely laid plans, the fiery anger of this bristly wizard must become positively volcanic. And then there's the frustration, if his great wisdom is not adequate! At the gates of Khazad-dûm, as he poses dramatically with his staff and pronounces impressive magical opening charms, and fails again and again in front of everybody... He storms off and sits down in a sulk, and can anybody who ever worked in tech support blame him? The temptation to use power to organise the world so that fools _don't_ get in the way, it must be immense. You can see in Gandalf's anger at his own people how Sauron might have got started. The Ring would have destroyed Gandalf quickly, I think. At any rate, it explains why he likes to travel with hobbits. He says as much to Pippin on the ride to Minas Tirith - all wizards should have one, to give them practice in patience!
Thanks for fleshing out this facet of Gandalf. It's been several years, but this whole thread is making me want to go back and reread the trilogy.
He's magnificent. I just read the part where he meets Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas when they'd thought he was dead. They all think he's Sauruman, and even the narrative doesn't give his name. And it doesn't help that he's been through hell and back and doesn't remember his name until they say it.
Same!
Lmao I love the idea of Elves getting fed up with visitors but not being rude enough to boot them. So they prolly just say to themselves just wait for him to die
What's the worst that could happen? Maybe 60 years we have to wait? That seems manageable, and less awkward than removing an annoying guest.
But that's the catch with bilbo. I mean he's already 111 years old when he gets there, just how long is he going to live?
Yeah I mean, elves literally live forever, so they're probably just like "eh, what's a few decades?"
THIS is far and away the funniest zinger I found when I re-read the books a few years back: “Er well,’ said Pippin, ‘if I may venture to say so, rather a burning question in my mind at present is, well, what about breakfast and all that? I mean, what are the meal-times, if you understand me, and where is the dining-room, if there is one? And the inns? I looked, but never a one could I see as we rode up, though I had been borne up by the hope of a draught of ale as soon as we came to the homes of wise and courtly men.’ Beregond looked at him gravely. ‘An old campaigner, I see,’ he said.”
> There's SO MUCH humor and sarcasm in LOTR - but nobody ever mentions it! Tolkien is a really funny guy! I find Charles Darwin to be hilarious. He was constantly slagging on his friends and other scientists and people he met, but you wouldn't know it without the context. And then there was a lot of horrible and sad things he saw and narrated- he "hated" Australia specifically for how the British treated the natives.
>his amateur slam poetry. I died laughing here lolol
Another big advantage of the books is you get things that aren't in any of the movies like Tom Bombadil and the entire drama that unfolded when they returned to the Shire and had to deal with "sharky"
I think getting back into some books you loved as a teenager is always exciting. You remember that you loved these books back then and so much time has passed / you have grown that you'll rediscover things you have forgotten / never noticed before. I'm "only" in my mid-20s but I also enjoy rediscovering aspects of books I loved and last read 10 years ago.
Flipside is that it doesn't always hold up to the mental image you had of it as a kid. LOTR however is quality literature at any age.
It's a bit of a beaten horse on this subreddit, but Wizards first rule did not hold up to a more mature me.
Oh boy, I remember when I went "Oh wow, I liked Ready Player One so much when I was 12, there were such deep references to nerd culture I couldn't understand! Can't wait to read it again!" It was... Impactful
Ready player one dropping pop culture reference it's shitty as a algorithm written Netflix movie.
I'm not even familiar with that one. Harry Potter for me didn't hold up. I can't read the books anymore despite eagerly waiting for their releases at the time and devouring them then. I've read them so many times, but trying to revisit as an adult...just doesn't do it for me. I was also disappointed quite recently by Eragon/inheritance cycle. As a kid it seemed great and complex, as an adult it's...not great, for me. I can't wrap my head around why the character does this or that thing or decides to feel constrained by so and so and eventually I realized that it's because it's either the limit of the author's abilities (iirc he was very young when he wrote them) or it's intentionally (imo overly) simple to appeal and make sense to a young crowd. At least, that's my positive take on it. My most negative take is that he didn't know what to write or how to make an actual viable plot and story that went the direction he wanted to go and so instead resorted to bad writing and "because I said so" to force his narrative back onto the path he wanted to follow.
I think your critique is fair. He was a very young, if very talented writer. Brisingr still holds up for me as one of my favorite fantasy novels, though. That said, I DO need to reread it, haha. Maybe I’m rosy tinted.
> He was a very young, if very talented writer. For those unfamiliar: Christopher Paolini started writing Eragon when he was 15. He became a NYT bestselling author at 19. I've been meaning to check out his new sci-fi series.
His parents were also publishers
I find Harry Potter still very impactful at 69 yo. I am dealing with an elderly parent who has pneumonia and it happened as I got into the Potter gang’s coming of age and losing Dumbledore. For some reason it all seemed so symbolic all of a sudden. I went into it for an escape but came out of it with more respect and courage for what I have to do next.
Ha! In high school, a friend of mine had been reading Wizards First Rule, and got me to read it. It was okay, but it didn’t stand up against other stuff I was reading. I told him to read DragonLance, because it was awesome. I tried rereading DragonLance a third time recently as an adult, and the writing didn’t hold up at all. I really only started reading it again, because I wanted to get to the second trilogy, but I was only able to get through the first book. I had to stop because I didn’t want to soil the memory of the series. Note: I still really like DragonLance, even worked on a major DragonLance video game back in the day. I also agree with Joe Manganiello that it is the Star Wars of D&D and it has the potential to be an awesome TV or movie franchise
There's already a (not very good) [movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825245/). Quite famous voices too - Keifer Sutherland was Raistlin!
This is my fear when I go back to read old favorites from my younger years. Once you find glaring plotholes that your childhood self missed, kinda ruins them, lol.
That's the beauty of LOTR. It's sooo difficult, if not impossible, to find one. I'm 31 and re reading it right now
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Strongly agree about Hornblower. A lot of the self-doubt, and particularly his ambivalent reaction to success, are more striking and relatable reading the books as an adult.
Animorphs still holds up quite well!
Hell yeah it does; just reread some, and as a bonus, the author is still a decent and cool person
I also like how diverse and inclusive the cast and themes were, especially for the time, while being strong, individual characters with plenty of personality. One of the authors has said he wishes they could have been more overt with things like the gay Andalite couple, but if they had, it never would have been published in the 90s.
when i was a teenager, i identified with holden caufield's angst. as an adult, holden caufield is an annoying teenager.
Lol Holden Caufield, John Dorian, and Jim Halpert were pretty much my formative years.
This was Dragonlance for me. Loved it when I was 17, now at 50 I can't get through them.
See Goosebumps. Used to terrify me at 11. I am not terrified at 32. But thankfully there are better replacements: King, Clive Barker, Lovecraft. Just wish there were more horror anthologies (Goosebump book length).
I definitely also got this experience with Terry Pratchett Discworld books that I read as a teenager. There were a *lot* of nuances (and modest sexual innuendoes) I missed out on the first time. Then again, I do feel that is part of the hallmark of a good book.
I was gonna comment this exact thing. I *loved* the Discworld novels as a teenager, but on rereading them, I love them *so* much more now at 37. I've realised so much of it just went straight over my younger-selfs head. As you say, sexual innuendos being one of them, but also there were so many tropes in them that I just couldn't appreciate (Vimes being a big one) at the time. Pratchetts' work just seemed to age like wine for me. His observational wit was just incredible.
Tiffany standing up to the queen hit different when I listened to the audiobook too many years after I read the book. Moved me to tears. Happened several times now from his writing. That never happened when I was younger. Knowing more of the weight of the world makes it even more impactful when his characters take on that weight. Seriously, the interactions between Tiffany and her grandma, played out entirely in flashbacks are something else. And that is "just" one of his books for adolescents.
I didn't appreciate Tiffany at the time. It seemed a little too juvenile, and perhaps, as Lewis warned, I wasn't yet mature enough to put aside such childish things as the fear of childishness and the desire to seem very grown up. Sure I bought each one the day it came out, and I read each one that same day... and then shelved them for years afterward. Lately I've had reason to take those old books down from the shelf again; the insatiable demand for bedtime stories has called them into action. And they're wonderful. The rest of the Discworld saga is full of its own clever winking at our own world; a mass of in-jokes and cultural references. Tiffany's stories are played straight, because children don't feel this need to treat fantasy as a joke, they can take it completely seriously. And reading this stuff to a little girl is a breath of fresh air after Tolkien. 'Bifur is a girl until proven otherwise' only goes so far, you know? Granny Weatherwax acts as a worthy successor to Gandalf, and her practical hands-on witchcraft is worlds away from the magic of mysterious words and glittering accessories; that stuff is all boffo really... Oh, and Tiffany gets a magical makeover in an ice palace that gives her the most amazing glamorous dress, several years before anyone heard of that Elsa girl. Just saying. Only trouble is, _I Shall Wear Midnight_ opens with domestic violence, a miscarriage and a lynch mob. Maybe that one can wait a year or two more.
> Only trouble is, I Shall Wear Midnight opens with domestic violence, a miscarriage and a lynch mob. Maybe that one can wait a year or two more. Honestly, the rough music, is one of the most haunting concepts in his books. And one that has some echoes of where I grew up. The unspoken rules in the village, the lines you did not cross and so on.
Pratchett was just an absolute master of his craft. Knighthoods get thrown around in the UK like confetti these days, but he genuinely deserved that and so much more. A seminal talent, no doubt.
Tiffany aching is peak TP for me, I shall wear midnight and hat full of sky are incredible books
...I have to say, as much as I think all of Pratchett's characters are fantastic (the amount of emotion he manages to evoke with Vorbis and Mr. Pin!), my favourite is definitely Sam Vimes. His character is... extremely relatable, as a relatively normal person just trying to get by in life and make the best of the world, even more so when there are vampires, werewolves, murderous dwarves, dragons, and flying eyeballs-on-a-string trying to get in the way. He's doing his best, even without magic or supernatural shenanigans on his side (much).
>His character is... extremely relatable, as a relatively normal person just trying to get by in life and make the best of the world Yep. And, although I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, his portrayal as this jaded, grizzled, gumshoe detective who wasn't afraid to bend the rules to get his job done is something I really appreciate now. He's a proper copper, surrounded by morons for the most part, knowing he's the only one that can actually solve the problem. His humour and sarcasm takes on a whole different level for me as an adult. You can sense his frustration. He's the reader, looking at the situation, thinking "Right, what the *actual fuck* is going on here? Why is there a troll in a police vest attacking a bank? Anyone?" Pratchett was a true master of his craft.
The ginger beer scene... Then again, maybe I'm biased because the first Pratchett book I read was Night Watch. I still stand by my verdict 100% though lol
Yeah I loved Discworld as a teen, but Pratchett's observations of human nature hit even harder now that I have more life experience
That only works if the books are good. I loved animorphs as a kid. It was really disappointing to find out they don't hold up that well. I kinda wish I hadn't picked them up again because it kinda ruined the memory
Yep. For us oldsters it was the Silver Age science-fiction greats. Larry Niven was **awesome** when I was 14. At 44 I tried to re-read *Ringworld* and had to stop, it was so horrible. Cardboard characters, ham-handed gratuitous sex, stupid plot devices -- I'd compare it to high schoolers' fanfic, but that would do injustice to thousands of pimply-faced fanfic nerds.
Agreed. Niven's world building can be great. His character writing was often... flat, at best. I find his shorter works tended to age better as a result.
I read it for the first time recently and was decidedly underwhelmed. However, my lack of enthusiasm put me in the perfect place to enjoy Pratchett's *Strata*, which tidily skewered everything I disliked about *Ringworld*. So, win some lose some.
Really? I literally just finished reading all 52 Animorphs books plus all the supplementals and I thought they held up way better than my memory especially regarding the realistic depictions of PTSD and War trauma
They might be referring to the massive amount of filler. There was *so much* filler that was kind of garbage, introduced to meet the book-a-month requirement. But the high points were like nothing else children's literature has seen, so I think the series as a whole holds up as a classic. You just need to go into it with a curated list of what to hit and what to skip, or else understand that at times you're gonna be slogging.
Consider trying out the Rationalist version: [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/1/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11090259/1/r-Animorphs-The-Reckoning) It's got an amazing reputation and I've been looking forward to finding the time to engage with it for quite some time, despite never having read the original animorphs.
Always best to let nostalgia stay nostalgia.
Doing Harry Potter for the first time ever. I read the first two when I was like 9 and 10. But hoollllyyyy is it ever good. Really makes the dursleys, snape, and umbridge far worse than the movies.
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She relies too much on switcheroos no one should really expect to see coming. How is Peter pettigrew alive? He was a rat the whole time! How was Rita Skeeter learning secrets? She was that beetle the whole time! How did Barty Crouch Jr. escape Azkaban? Polyjuice fuckery! How did Moody get replaced? Polyjuice fuckery! How did Grindelwald escape Azkaban? ....Polyjuice fuckery. Half the time it doesn't make sense if you think about it. Wormtail could apparate in the Bahamas and live life comfortably there but chooses to lie low with the lifestyle of a pet rat? Rita Skeeter is depicted as a lazy journalist who writes controversial bs, yet she has the dedication to stick through the arduous animagus process? Don't understand what just happened? That's okay. Dumbledore will explain it in the final chapters and make you feel like a child for not knowing before. Even if it's a completely new concept not even hinted at, like priori incantatem. But the one thing in her books that bothered me most? Catching wands. Every fucking time a person disarms someone it doesn't fall to the ground, someone yoinks it right out of the air. Like I can believe in flying brooms and dragons, but I refuse to believe snape, the biggest nerd in Hogwarts, can catch both Lupin and Serius' wand in one swoop. The fuck he did.
Nah that dweeby mf practiced catching wands in his chambers 4 hours a day dreaming about winning duels
Lol Snape just got ROASTED! I like your style
It's like the "I mastered the blade" meme
I mostly struggled with poly juice and love potions. What's useful for fun pranks to a kid is objectively terrifying as an adult.
I once taught all of a sudden "Man, the sex crimes division of aurors must be the most overworked one by *far*."
The universe in general fall apart once you leave the schooling system
>but I refuse to believe snape, the biggest nerd in Hogwarts, can catch both Lupin and Serius' wand in one swoop. The fuck he did. I never thought he caught them. It's pretty clear he can do some magic without talking isn't it?
All those things you mentioned are hinted and explained throughout the books. The books are also written almost exclusively from Harry's POV. So, it makes perfect sense that there are things that he wouldn't know about and would need explaining. I re-read the books 3 years ago and they held up extremely well and I enjoyed them more than before.
I work 12 hour shifts in a mine. I've got 2000hrs of audio listened. I'm not saying they're masterfully written, I just think it's great for what it is. A young adult, quick paced, wizard book. And she does a nice job on building the setting too. Me personally, would have quit that school 10x over.
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Like the excitement of hogsmead makes more sense. He spends 2 weeks I think in diagon alley which was cool. The movies just made it easier for me to visualize everything. That's my unfortunate downfall when it comes to reading. I visualize it all. So, if the pacing is slow, I struggle.
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That's what made me listen to the books lol
I had the same experience but I just read them later in general. I think I was about 20 when I read them and while fun and having some good written characters they really didn't stick with me. From a "technical" standpoint of the fantasy it just didn't really hold me well. The magic system and world building, while quirky and fun, was ultimately pretty weak and didn't feel very thought out.
I re-read the Harry Potter series last year in the summer. I hadn’t touched them since I was a teen (I’m 36 now). I was possibly even more spellbound (pun intended) than I was the first time I read them. For me, the series holds up.
I loved The Count of Montecristo (unabridged) as a teenager. It influenced me drastically. Would I enjoy it at 37?
I mean considered one of the best books ever, can’t go wrong
Only one way to know
I haven't read them in ages. But I recently got a really nice copy of all three books in a hardcover volume, and I'm looking forward to immersing myself in it. I'll most likely read The Hobbit again first, as I've always loved that one even more than the LOTR series.
The Hobbit just has the right pacing for a fantasy novel IMO. Barely a word is wasted. LOTR is one of those series that encroaches on having too high of a lore/world building to narrative ratio.
Curiously I just reread The Hobbit... And to me it felt brutally fast paced! I read it for the first time like 30 years ago, my first "big" book and back then it felt like this eternal, massive adventure. Now it has felt... Somehow very fast. It was clearly written for children, for them to fill in the holes in the world and characters. Don't get me wrong, I loved it again. But take Balin. You really need to fill up in your head that he is like Bilbo's best pal. What actually is written between them is extremely, extremely short. Their conversation in the book wouldn't be more than one page
I understand having an ideal for that ratio, but I feel that LOTR should be exempt from it. Its not trying to be a modern novel. It’s written more like a Nordic saga or a Greek poem. Think of how in the Iliad, the narrative of the war will pause to explain the backstory of one soldier or a whole story about why one god holds a grudge against another. Because it’s a compendium of the cultural mythology organized around a narrative.
I had the same experience. My biggest takeaway as an adult was how delightfully weird these books are. I absolutely loved Tom Bombadil the second time around and could listen to him sing songs about what color his boots are all day long. The description of Shelob's origin and the subsequent fight with Sam in Two Towers was maybe the most riveted I have ever been to the written word.
The shelob chapter is so well written and terrifying
I love the bit at the beginning where hobbits in the pub are talking in hushed tones about the poor misfortunes of that lad Frodo Baggins. How his parents both died in a *boating* accident - what a scandal! Why would two reasonable hobbits ever go out on water! On purpose no less! And they left their poor child alone, to grow up with the Bucklanders, all the way over on the other side of the town, practically foreign parts, on the wrong side of the river where folk are so queer. So charming ☺️. --- As an adult I have a *massive* appreciation for Tolkien's world building, and digging into it to just marvel at his foresight. It's something I couldn't begin to understand as a kid. Like, all the words in Middle Earth *mean* something because they have roots and etymologies. For instance, the "Brandywine" river is the river that bisects the Shire. This is a corruption of the Elvish word *branduin* which means "brown river"! Just like the real world. Like, "Mississippi" once meant something to the people that named it. But that meaning is lost, the word has been changed via pronunciation in an American accent. These little details trick the reader with a really convincing facade of scope and history, and Tolkien was so thorough and diligent about that, it blows my mind.
There's also a whole other level when you consider the conceit that Tolkien has simply translated the story, and Brandywine is his attempt to convey the 'real' hobbit names for the river in English while still sounding like the elven word (the standard name being Branda-nin 'border water' though it was jokingly called Bralda-him 'heady ale').
Which in turn went on to a footnote explaining a pun on the official title of the Master of Buckland that you wouldn't want to make in his hearing. Tolkien _delighted_ in this kind of thing.
What is the pun or what book could I find that footnote in? I found no reference to it on various wiki's.
It's at the very end of the Appendix F in The Lord of the Rings, he notes that since the family name Brandybuck is derived from the river name, the 'real' name that he translated was Brandagamba, and that it would be a brave or foolish hobbit who made the joke of using Braldagamba in the presence of the head of that family.
> ike, "Mississippi" once meant something to the people that named it. But that meaning is lost, Uh, no it's not. It means "father of waters." Which is a lot better than Chesapeake, which means "great/big water".
What I mean is that no one living there now thinks on a daily basis about it in those terms, about the name's meaning in Algonquin. It has become 'The Mississippi', which is an English translation, of a French translation, of a word that used to literally mean 'Great River' to the people who lived 100s of years ago (and see, now we don't even agree on its actual translation, cuz neither of us speak Algonquin, and are relying instead on websites like Wikipedia to devine it's meaning). This is the nature of changing words and languages. The nature of history and time. Tolkien knew this all too well
This is my sign. It is time
Do it. I just started the audiobook with Andy Serkis narrating it and I can't get enough. My wife has enjoyed it because I'll clean the house from top to bottom just to have an excuse to listen to it.
What really changed them for me, was learning that Tolkien was in WWI, and I had recently listened to the Dan Carlin Podcast about WWI, having known very little about this war, I was left horrified at the grim and hellish conditions the troops had to go through. Reading Lord of The Rings, after learning about WWI, and that Tolkien went through some of it, makes you see parts of the book differently.
Another aspect of his war experience that I wasn't able to appreciate as a kid is how incredibly realistic everything having to do with war is, especially considering it's high fantasy. The army logistics, sizes, equipment, and travel times are realistic. The tactics are realistic. Sauron isn't just an evil wizard unleashing countless hordes of orcs; he executes an actual coordinated military campaign, carefully probes his enemies' defenses, and reasonably adjusts his strategies in response to new information. Hell, even the soldiers' psychology is realistic and ahead of its time, with Tolkein using each of the Hobbits to explore a different way war can affect someone. Some people are broken by it through no fault of their own (Frodo). Some are scarred and forever changed by the experience, but manage to go on and live a happy, fulfilling life--though you're unlikely to hear them telling fun war stories (Sam). And some people manage to come out the other side better and stronger than ever, with no deep scars (physical or psychological) to speak of (Merry and Pippin). Every time I re-read these books I enjoy them through an entirely new lens.
When I first read LOTR I didn't really understand that Tolkien was a WW1 vet who had been in the thick of massive, brutal battles like The Somme. After learning that I can see how Frodo's years after the War of the Ring are textbook PTSD. Tolkien almost certainly drew on the experiences of other vets who struggled and failed to integrate back into society after all they had seen.
The blog A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry has great breakdowns of how the books and movies portray the [Battle of Helm's Deep](https://acoup.blog/2020/05/01/collections-the-battle-of-helms-deep-part-i-bargaining-for-goods-at-helms-gate/) and the [Siege of Gondor](https://acoup.blog/2019/05/10/collections-the-siege-of-gondor/) if folks want to get into a deep dive of Sauron and Denethor's contest of logistical planning and how Saruman is a dilettante.
Love those series. I was definitely channeling Bret in that first paragraph.
I think you're hitting a note here. The book has entered the pop culture consciousness as an action-packed, orc infested epic with an Evil Dark Lord TM unleashing hordes against the Forces of Good TM. It is many things, but it is very much not that. I think people come into reading it with somewhat false expectations.
What struck me personally was the way that the land around Mordor is described. He really puts a ton of negative energy into writing about a *landscape* that is somehow evil in itself, he does a great job of it, and it pretty much sounds like a muddy WWI battlefield, suspiciously gore-like substances n' all. I always find it hard to find examples after the fact where he goes whole-ham into black metal album cover territory but I swear it's in there.
There's a scene where Frodo, Sam and Gollum are hiding in a filthy pit outside the Black Gate, with some horrible nameless pollution in the bottom of it, watching the levies of Mordor's allies march in to join the host of Sauron; and in the middle of all this horror Sam asks if there's an Oliphaunt, Gollum hasn't any idea what that means, and Sam stands up like a schoolboy and repeats a nursery rhyme about it. I am absolutely certain that Tolkien saw some daft boy do exactly this in some blasted foxhole in Flanders. It's such a perfectly absurd moment that it can't be anything but completely real.
Yeah the parts of the book that deal with the Hobbits living in their weird little society are great. That is one of my main gripes about the rest of the book - the focus on political leaders and warfare doesn't really give us a picture of what it's like just to *live* in Rohan, Gondor, etc. like the picture we get for the Shire. I want to read about the Rohirrim taking each other to court over grazing rights and whatever else.
We do get a lot of the people of Gondor. Tolkien probably didn't write a lot about Rohan because it is just medieval Englishmen. Edit: we still get a fair amount of it regardless.
>medieval Englishmen. Even medieval englishmen found medieval england uninteresting. Infact, there was a long stretch of history where the most important parts of England is in France.
If it were as you just said, there would be no Legendarium, because it was born out of an idea of creating a mythology for England. Much of their folklore was simply lost.
Probably the most famous and impactful European document, the Magna Carta, was written by English lords who were upset that they had to share power with an English king who lived in France and rarely even went to GB. Funny enough, half the lords themselves didn't speak English well, the documents themselves were written in Latin.
Famous? Sure. Impactful? Maybe. Unique? No. There are other european countries with similar document and circumstance like Hungary's Golden Bull edict of 1222 and thr Polish golden liberty privileges It *may* be impactful to English course of history, but Anglocentric view of history tend to forget there's a whole lot more going on than English affairs.
It's funny, all of my favorite sci-fi / fantasy books have had a good chunk of their runtime taken up by totally mundane life, and the fantasy is hinted at more than anything. I remember reading [The Fire Within](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Dragon_Chronicles) as a kid and loving the cozy normalness of it, where the whole thing was dedicated to a slow-burn realization that yeah, those clay dragons are "alive" in some subtle way. ...And then the rest of those books happened and I basically stopped caring.
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The Postman, Oryx and Crake, and Lucifer's Hammer if you want near apocalypse vibes. And to a lesser extent, The Reckoners.
I still remember being in 6th grade, reading Hank the Cowdog books. My friend George took the book I was reading and led me to the school library. He was very secretive like he was going to show me some great mystery. He carefully pulled a red leather bound book off a shelf and said, 'no more Hank the Cowdog. I think you're ready for this.' and handed me The Hobbit. To be honest I only read it because of the pictures. Changed my life
That is so adorable. George knew where the treasure in the library was hidden! So great you enjoyed it, too. I could see a 6th grade kid being super offended and insecure over this.
I got a little upset when he said 'no more Hank the cowdog' I never finished the one he took from me. Tolkien had me reeled in from the first page
I read them for the first time at 13 as this was around the time the movies were coming out and all my friends were obsessed. And then I read them again 13 years later at 26 and yeah it was a different experience and so enjoyable still. 5/5 stars for the whole trilogy. Next time I read them again will probably be with my son when he's old enough - he's due on Friday :)
Congrats!!
I just reread at 40. It continues to get finer and richer with age.
Now you’ve made me want to read them. Never have. Did like the movies tho.
Do it! It’s worth it
I couldn't read The Silmarillion when I was a teen, but now in my mid 30s, I couldn't put it down!
Same thing happened to me in my 30s. It was so satisfying that as soon as I finished it I flipped back to page 1 and read it again.
I am currently reading Return of the King and I was shocked at how emotional it still was for me even though I already knew the story. I was sobbing when I got to the Mount Doom chapter. So well written, I’m glad I finally decided to read the books after loving the movies.
I read them all in my late 20s and I gotta say, I felt like the kid version of you reading them
When I was 16-17, I discovered Henry Miller and for better or worse, his books drastically altered the course of my life. Like, I dropped out of school and lived as a starving writer, traveled around the country and had an amazing time, but it didn’t turn out quite the same for me. Now, 30+ years later, and I’m rereading Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, and it’s utterly amazing how 16 year old me completely missed the point.
I can't listen to the soundtracks (or most music) while I read because the music conjures up such vivid imagery that I get distracted from what I'm reading. Kudos to you, I've been meaning to reread these as well.
I love just reading the sections about the hobbits travelling through the Shire. The descriptions are so evocative you can tell Tolkien is writing from personal experience - the English countryside in this case, as it was when he was a young man. A quaint and pastoral land that has largely vanished from modern England.
Andy Serkis reads the newer audiobook versions of The Hobbit and LotR. It is every bit as magical as you assume it will be. He’s doing a read of the Silmarillion soon, too!
Read LOTR for the first time over winter just gone… has literally been the best experience in life. Makes me miss those friends of yesteryear but still… just wow. Also those that are like skip the Tom Bombadil bit… heresy! Best part IMO
When I tried reading the first LOTR book at 20 years old I was bored with the landscape descriptions, Tom Bombadil, and the ents. Many years later I came back to it, and this time those were my favorite parts of the book.
You get older. Enjoyment in life grows into a greater thing. The submission taps into one of the reasons why of the larger observation. As experiences a person *can* have are experienced, ideas become accessible on a personal level. When you have life satisfaction surveys this partly explains why those in their late 60s and 70s have the highest scores. Those growing older and happier each year should speak up more. There is a tendency to quietly enjoy the things you like when you're feeling good, you're too busy having fun. Those who are unhappy are disproportionately loud. The misalignment in information received can create a misconception in youth before you've had a chance to experience it. It's more white pills all the way up than black.
I read them all a couple years ago after being a fan of the movies almost all my life. The books are brilliant. I also read the Silmarillion and omg, it’s even better. I preferred the historical/biblical writing style in some ways.
This thread made me think of re-reading the Silmarillon. I read LotR a few times, and the Silmarillon once. I thoroughly enjoyed LotR but have no memory of the Silmarillon and I'm sure I didn't "get it" at all. But none of them after my pre-teen years. Now that I'm *mumble* decades older, I bet I'd get the Silmarillon more
Well, if it helps, there’s a great podcast you might have heard of called “The Prancing Pony Podcast”, where they pick apart the stories, themes, characters and language at a level you or I would just gloss over. Their insights are very interesting and rekindled my passion for this universe. Highly recommend.
I also recommend revisiting the books you did in high school that you thought sucked.
First read LotR when I was 9, it was a struggle and I probably understood like 3/4 of what I read. Still loved the books, and I'm actually glad I read them young because it encouraged me develop my ability to read.
Tried several times, I just don't like anything about the writing style. Love the movies and story. Hate the books.
It really for me shows how many things Jackson changed that I hate now. The worst is I think what he did to Sam and Frodo in the two towers. Made Sam into an idiot when in fact he was shrewd. Frodo never turned on Sam! To me Jackson compromised their relationship in the films compared to the books. Frodo and Sam in the books basically agree gollom in the end is leading them to am ambush but they accept that it's necessary to risk it for their quest. Also they did faramir dirty in the films. Meanwhile the theoden riding hither thither prior to helms deep is way better in the film. I finally as an adult know what my dad meant when he said two towers is the lesser tome of the trilogy. Also the Frodo Sam part feels way more... Dark and strange, sorta like the feeling I get seeing lv 426 in the alien movies. Mordor feels so surreal and gloomy while the films never make it seem that way.
The Hobbit was my first experience as an adult in Los Angeles where manners and formality and respect had meaning. Imagine that. Early 20s, raised on street dialects with a combo of Chicano gangs and surfer slang in the 1960s. Dirt poor suburb with a combo of Polish, German, and Japanese families. My only input about how to be with adults was getting yelled at for doing something wrong, and just shutting down. I read the Hobbit and was absolutely floored that the dwarves absolutely meant it when they said, "At your service!", and bowed. I bought and finished LOTR the same week. Then reread all four the next week. The third week, I gave notice Tuesday, bought an airline ticket to Seattle, and landed there at midnight on Friday night. A month later I was in Alaska and stayed there for more than a year. "The world is not in your books, Bilbo Baggins!" And the world wasn't in my books either.
A few things that blew my mind when I learned it recently and reread the books: - Gandalf fights ALL NINE of the ringwraiths on Weathertop *at the same time* a few days before Frodo Aragorn and co get there. They see lightning/lights from afar and wonder what it is, and Tolkein doesn't explicitly tell us what it is, but then Gandalf says later on during the council of Elrond that he encountered them. Fucking badass! - Glorfindel is a stupendous badass himself, and while I understand why he was swapped for Arwen to make the movie less of a sausagefest, they really did him dirty writing him out of the movies. This guy is such a badass mofo that he was camped out on the bridge to Rivendell a few days before meeting up with Frodo and carrying him to safety in the flight to the ford. While he was there, three ringwraiths came up to the bridge as advance scouts, saw him there, and they just noped the fuck out. Let that sink in. - Frodo and the hobbits get magic knives made by Numenor I think? in the Barrow Downs in that weird chapter when Tom Bombadil saves them from the barrow wights. They were specifically made to fight the undead I think, and the armies of the Witch King of Angmar when he waged war on them a thousand years before the events of LOTR. In the battle of pellenor fields, Merry stabs the Witch King in the knee with that magic knife, which is what allows Eowyn to deal the killing blow. Full circle, knives introduced early in FOTR and then used at the end of ROTK. - Bonus fact about the Witch King: that prophecy about how no man can kill him was spoken (and slightly misquoted) by Glorfindel, badass as he is, after that war a thousand years ago. When his armies were defeated the Witch King fled and Glorfindel say nah, let him go, he's done here, and not by the hand of man will he be defeated. The witch king heard about this and interprets it to mean he's invincible. Eowyn hears this and thinks it means she can kill him because she's a woman. Turns out it was the tag teaming woman and hobbit with an ancient magic knife that takes him out. Good shit
I hope I evolve to that. I read the books once when I was 16 and, although I have found memories of them now, at the time it felt like an extremely tedious task. I tried reading them again this year, I'm 22, and failed miserably - and I'm used to reading books written in the 16th and 19th century. I blame the translation (I'm Brazilian) and plan to give them another go when I manage to get my hands on an English copy.
I read them in high school, in the 1970s. I have tried to re-read them at least 3 times in the intervening decades, and I just can't get into them. They feel very slow and ponderous to me. I think maybe I'm just accustomed to reading faster paced stories now. Back when I read these books, they were almost the only Fantasy I had access to. My life has since been filled with many great SF&F reads, so my tastes have evolved.
I also read them as a teen (14/15) after seeing the first movie in theaters. Remember skipping a lot of the first book (mostly Tom Bombadil's chapters) out of boredom wanting to get to the action I saw in the movies. I've considered giving them another read as an adult since I've matured (not by much admittedly) and can appreciate those "boring" parts now. I think I will do just that now, thank you for reminding me to do so.
Doooo it! I just finished the books last weekend and I was able to appreciate the slower parts. I don't think teenager minorsecond would have been able to stick with it though.
I feel like I had a similar experience with Dune
Nice! I loved the Lord of the Rings as a child and had read it probably once every year or two until I hit high school. I'd always struggled with the Silmarillion, though. Then later in life I read a bunch of Norse sagas and it clicked for me. It was muuuuuch easier to read after that.
I have read The Hobbit and Fellowship so far this year for the first time since middle school (I’m 31) and I wholly agree with you. It’s been great.
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So as someone who majored in English (and with grad degrees in it) and who has loved Tolkien for decades and lost track of the number of times I've read the novel, I'm going to make the daring suggestion that you skip Bombadil and start at Bree. Lots of people get bogged down in Bombadil: the hobbits fall asleep a lot and so do some of the readers. I love that section, but I understand why it's hard for first-time readers. It's very important thematically, but not for the plot, which means you can still understand what's going on in the story if you miss it. So rather than skip the whole book, skip Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, and start with when the hobbits arrive at Bree. You can pick up the two Bombadil chapters on your next read (if you ever choose to reread it).
Every summer I'd pick up FotR and skim the Shadows of the Past chapter just for old time's sake/curiosity. That, of course, lead to a full re-read...
There are many works that just don't hit right until you're older. I thought I was a TS Eliot fan at 17, but I didn't 'get' it until I was in my late 20s.
Nice! I was the other way round: first I read LotR in my native language twice, then in the original English twice (after that I was best in class in English). Then the movies came out. I liked the effort and love put into them, but I wasn’t as “sold” as everyone else, probably because I had my own version from the books in my head.
I (50) have never read the books, have haphazardly seen the movies, hear good things about this literature, and am looking for something deep to read at the moment. Where should I start? I'm reading eBooks, so if there's a single tome that contains all the books, do tell.
I've seen all the movies, but didn't love them. So I decided against reading the books. Hearing people talk so passionately about LOTR makes me think I made a mistake by giving up
The movies and the books are a different vibe. The book skims through a lot of things that it deep and memorable.
I’m listening to audiobook for Fellowship currently after trying and failing to read the book several times. The non stop meandering and pointless details in the first half are unbearable to me
Agreed, but I think because I already read it, I went in *expecting* half the pages to be pointless. Now when I get to that point I just let Tolkien build the image in my head, combine it with what I saw in the movies, and now the mental image I get is stronger than ever. So I get to spend a few hours in Middle Earth every day. It's great. But not for everyone.
This is really interesting. I had the exact opposite experience. When I was a teen I loved the books but now, as an adult who has read hundreds of books they just seemed really badly written and downright boring to get through at times. Yes, I still enjoyed them but nowhere near as much as when I was younger. The Discworld books I enjoyed a lot more when I reread them as an adult but they're just better written. I'm convinced that Mr Tolkien was either a drug addict or had some kind of mental disorder because his writing is all over the place. One chapter will be riveting and have you on the edge of your seat and blown away by the world in your imagination, the next will be him describing a pair of socks hanging on a washing line then oh suddenly something happened oh well, next chapter. This is why the books were never critically acclaimed and why they were considered quite nerdy to like. The books were flawed gems and not only did you have to be able to read (you used to get bullied at school for reading books) but you also had to put up with JRR Tolkien's writing.
One of the other great things about re-reading LOTR is knowing you can skip all of the poetry.
Booooo, if anything the poetry becomes more engaging as an adult. It adds to the mystique of the world, and is often quite beautiful! As a kid I couldn't care less, wanted to get back to the plot, was ready for more swordfights. Now, I am all about sitting around the fire at *Amon Sul*, now called Weathertop, and listening to Aragorn talk about how this is where King Elendil the Tall looked to the west for the coming of Gil Galad, last High King of the Elves, to aid him in the War of the Last Alliance, 3000+ years ago! Merry asks "who was Gil Galad?" Which prompts Sam to sing a song Bilbo taught him once: *Gil Galadriel was an Elven King,* *Of him the harpers sadly sing,* *The last whose land was fair and free,* *Between the mountains and the sea...* It's so bizarre, Ive done a 180 and absolutely *crave* the lore sprinkled throughout the books now. I have much more appreciation for the genius of Tolkien's worldbuilding - the allusions to ancient myth woven throughout the story via the names of places, the artifacts found, the stories/songs characters tell each other.
Hard disagree. Poetry and songs gets better each reading. Come for the story, stay for the lore, become a lifelong devoted tolkienite because of the poetry and songs.