JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings
Yep, one post for all three books: I've made it back through JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings cycle. (And then last night I saw on the Munro's Books sale table the new Children of Hurin that Christopher Tolkien put together, but I resisted.)
I'm not sure now how I didn't read this until I was an undergraduate, especially since I read CS Lewis' Narnia series several times in my teens. Maybe that explains it, actually; maybe one can be either a Lewisite or a Tolkienian, but not both. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed each novel in the series -- Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King -- when I first read them all, and I enjoyed them again. I'm still not sure how, though, they've attained their cultish status. Tolkien's imagined world is enormously detailed and varied, certainly, but I'm not sure that explains it. I mean, the two heroes of the story are basically gardeners. From this root a mighty oak wouldn't normally be expected to grow (the Peter Sellers film of Being There notwithstanding, of course -- a film everyone should see at least a few times).
A delight, these books, genuinely, even if to me the delight is rather lighter than the heft of the pages....
I'm not sure now how I didn't read this until I was an undergraduate, especially since I read CS Lewis' Narnia series several times in my teens. Maybe that explains it, actually; maybe one can be either a Lewisite or a Tolkienian, but not both. Whatever the reason, I enjoyed each novel in the series -- Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King -- when I first read them all, and I enjoyed them again. I'm still not sure how, though, they've attained their cultish status. Tolkien's imagined world is enormously detailed and varied, certainly, but I'm not sure that explains it. I mean, the two heroes of the story are basically gardeners. From this root a mighty oak wouldn't normally be expected to grow (the Peter Sellers film of Being There notwithstanding, of course -- a film everyone should see at least a few times).
A delight, these books, genuinely, even if to me the delight is rather lighter than the heft of the pages....
Comments
Dawn Treader I liked a lot, but mostly because that's the one I first owned for some reason. The swanky green cover was a hit. And yeah, I'm with you on the two you don't like much, especially The Last Battle, which almost feels like it's from a different series.