The Fellowship of the Ring

Extract: This is my fourth reading of The Lord of the Rings. This is perhaps the most challenging. Let me begin by saying I love the Peter Jackson films. Despite the omissions and liberties he took, I thought he did a tremendous job capturing the essence of the films. In fact, I just recently finished a day-long marathon of the Blu-Ray extended edition, from about 11 a.m. to almost 1 a.m. My last reading of LOTR was back around '83, so my memory of the details are not very sharp, and I've been able to watch the films without saying, "But what about...?" every few minutes. Now in anticipation of reading the books with the imagery of the films in my head, I wasn't sure how I'd be able to appreciate the books as I had during my first readings. Fortunately, I didn't have a problem. Instead, my mind went back to my own images I remember from all those years ago, peppered with the art of the Brothers Hildebrandt's Tolkien calendars of the '70s. And my experience of the actual reading has been more of a "Oooh, I remember that!" and "I don't remember that!" and finally a "Why am I not one of those people who rereads this every year!"...