But of COURSE I read ‘em all, immediately upon release from Lord Sauron's ward from hell - but through a dense cover of numbing neuroleptic thunderclouds. The pilgrimage of Frodo, Sam and their fellows lasted for a year, and it happened so that it took me nearly as long to see them home to the Shire. Well, people say good things happen slowly, so I don’t regret the journey one bit. The worst part is that the shrinks started taking any and all diversions away from me, along with my books. Dreams were verboten. The alliance that failed to vanquish evil from the world thousands of years ago is now represented in the titular fellowship comprising of a dwarf, an elf, two men, a wizard and four hobbits. And they march to destroy the ring - and thus evil - before Sauron can restore himself to his full power again. There have been many books that I have cherished through the years, and I expect there will be many more to come. But The Lord of the Rings will always be the one I treasure the most of them all.

I’ll use a far-fetched example to make my love for this book sound totally crazy put my love for this book in perspective: if I had to choose between reading this book once and having unlimited access to all the other books ever released, then I would choose this. No contest even.The fact is that these flaws do exist in The Lord of the Rings. They are present. They are easy to find. But few of Tolkien's rabid fans want to hear about them. These musings can only begin to describe how much this book means to me. It sparked my passion for reading at a young age. It made me love the fantasy genre and all that came with it. It made me start creating worlds of my own, and in the end find one in particular that I liked so much I started writing stories set in it. Why, it even made me intrigued by poetry eventually. But I have yet to read anything by any famous poet that can match Tolkien’s utterly incredible poems. A Slip of the Keyboard. Бил на 12-13, когато прочел „Властелинът на пръстените“ за пръв път. Родителите му го оставили у някакви съседи да бави децата им, докато всички възрастни отишли някъде на гости. Тери (който като всяко хлапе от мъжки пол тогава хич не бил по четенето), уж да минава времето, се захласнал във „Властелина“ и изведнъж във въображението му вече се било ширнало Хобитово, а краищата на протъркания килим в стаята били границите на Графството, отвъд които чакали приключения. Та така, Тери Пратчет чел цяла нощ, а след това и през целия следващ ден. Прочел романа за 26 часа (с малки почивки, разбира се – все пак пикочният мехур на едно 12-годишно дете не е мях). След това в продължение на години го препрочитал по веднъж годишно. Така е то, умовете на гениалните хора резонират в съзвучие.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this mini-review, this second volume had a bit less of Tolkien's wordshmithery, his awesome poems and songs. Instead, we got more fast-paced action sequences that were also slightly better done than the ones in the first book. But never fear, the writing style is still gorgeous and the descriptions astonishingly vivid and colourful, opening up distant corners we hadn't been to yet and introducing even weirder creatures of Middle-Earth than we've seen so far.When my parents wanted to wash their hands of me and thereafter treat me with a distanced forbearance - as I sweated it out in a nearby hospital and resisted my coming of age - it seemed the whole world had ganged up on me, though of course it hadn't. And there is so much between the lines here. The world of Middle-earth lives, utterly lives. Instead of tugging on what-ifs, this fantasy forces readers to imagine. Tolkien's work is the fullest realization of literary world building ever penned. And so here we are 20th Feb 2019 and I've finished Book 2. I must admit I had wondered if after such a gap from reading LotR and watching the films so many times if I would enjoy the book(s) as much, I think I can now 2/3rds of the way through safely say that somehow the film experience has made me love the book more (if that is possible). Book 494 From 1001 Books) - The Lord of The Rings (The Lord of the Rings #1-3), J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.

He included songs and poems, stating more than once that true magic lies in both (as is represented by the elves for example). His nature descriptions are not only sweeping and vivid, but also utterly beautiful. His dialogues, while being quite wordy, are fluent and artistic.

The books are racist; they are sexist. They are not perfect. And I must criticize the elements of The Lord of the Rings that make me uncomfortable and deserve no praise. But my complaints and the complaints of critics make Tolkien's achievement no less great. Perhaps the one place where political events in Tolkien's own life affect the narrative is in the episode at the very end of The Scouring of the Shire. Here we see History catch up with the Idyllic and somewhat isolated Shire where violence (the sad, pathetic revenge of Saruman on Bilbo and Frodo for having thwarted his plans) rages across the land, nature is destroyed, and industrialization arises. This represents the Industrial Revolution but also the coming of age for Tolkien himself in WWI and, I would argue, the bombing of Oxford during the Battle of Britain during WWII that he experienced first-hand as well. It is interesting that this is included as a coda after the main action of the epic is already concluded, as if he had this one other thing to say before sending Gandalf, Frodo and Bilbo off to Grey Haven with the Elves, thus definitively ending the pre-Modern Middle Earth (and by extension Medieval and Revolutionary Europe) and entering into the Modern/Industrial Age. I shall re-watch this last movie, too, of course and am already looking forward to discovering yet more details I couldn't know about the very first time I saw the movie. I already learned a bit of trivia that astonished me (like the fact that I discovered only now that Aunt Zelda of the new Sabrina series is Eowyn! or that that actress only got the role after Elsa from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade declined the role - I can so NOT picture that woman as Eowyn)! You see: lots to see, every time and I'm glad we, as readers (but in this case also as watchers) have such impressive realms to dwell in and so many lessons to learn there, too. I don’t know half of you half as much as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as much as you deserve - #burn Stealing everything possible from mythology and the, maybe sometimes a tiny bit boring, old, classics.

Actually, I read Tolkien's masterful Middle Earth fantasy corpus, beginning with The Hobbit in the early 70's and finishing the Lord of the Rings almost a decade later, before this anniversary edition came out. (I also read all four books to my wife in the early 80's; she loved them too!) But they said it ALL. All three of these books. By throwing the Ring into Mount Doom, we give up the Siege against Reason (our diseased and Irrational Self-Justification). One does not simply walk into Mordor is something missing in the book to give Boromir a bit of spice Love Moria, very well paced, and the out-of-time depiction of Lothlorien made me fall in love with Elves So here we are in March and the final book of the trilogy, and what an epic finale it is. Again different to the film, but yet again immeasurably superior.