The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Our book club decided to read The Fellowship of the Ring, which is book 1 of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I didn't love that first book as much as I thought I would. That could have been because I listened to the audio version and so may have been distracted. I decided to read the remaining two books and I'm glad I did.

I don't know what I can say about The Lord of the Rings. It's become so culturally prevalent, it's hard to add anything to the conversation. I've seen the extended version of the movies several times, and I notices the movies track along with the books pretty well. Even the twelve hours of footage, however, leave out a few scenes. I'll admit that having the visuals to refer back to helped me greatly as I read. Tolkien has a gift for description, but knowing the way the scene is portrayed in the movie and constant referral to the maps in the back helped tremendously.

What sets Tolkien apart from every other author is his ability to create entire universes in his head. Not only does he conjure up whole physical world, he brings to life an entire made-up history. His character have family trees and backstories. He refers to ancestors with the assumption that the reader has heard the story and needs the information as a point of reference. I have no idea how he does that! It makes the story so rich. It's not just the history and geography of an imagined place, but it's a world he, as a story-teller, asks us to enter into. Normal history  is not like that. The best historians can try to weave a tale out of the events and people who populate the past, but even the giants are stuck with myriad unfamiliar names and places which can make communicating a big story difficult. Tolkien has set up for himself the best of both worlds. He's a great historian telling a tale with enough extra-textual information to make it seem real, but no more than he needs to tell the story he is telling. Somehow, he manages to place all those details in service to a narrative involving two small hobbits. Do we need the entire hobbit geneology? No. Does it add richness and depth and a sense of reality if we do? Absolutely!

The book is long. My copy clocks in at 1178 pages including the appendixes, index, and maps (seriously, what fictional book has all that?!?). But do not leave life on this earth without immersing yourself in Middle Earth!