When was the last time you read The Lord of the Rings?

[aThenian]

I probably haven't done a complete reread in a decade, instead have read favourite sections. I don't know how many times I've reread it in entirety but I'm guessing around 10-15 times. I'd like to reread the whole thing again and am currently putting that off, so I can try and come to it a bit fresh. (It's one of a very small list of books that I'm deliberately not reading, so that it doesn't become completely stale, and also so that I have them to turn to if I need to. )

 

[PartialMitch]

My most recent reading took place in 2014, and I've probably read it thirty times or more. As a teen in the Nineties, I didn't own very many books, so I reread the several (including LotR) many times. Since reaching adulthood, I've taken to reading it every three years or so. I'll always have a special place in my heart for it, though it's not really among my favorites anymore.

 

[Faye HG]

August 2014 - Brilliant book, much better than the films imho.

 

[Faye HG]

Also read for the first time in 1967, and many times since, but haven't done a full re-reading in at least a decade. I find I either re-read my favorite parts, or just pick it up and open it at random and start from wherever I am.

I love to just pick up a favourite book and read random parts of it!

 

[The Ace]

Finished it last night - I've lost count of how many times I've read it.

 

[kythe]

I've started reading LOTR to my son, who is 14 yrs old and autistic. He dislikes fiction in general because he prefers concrete ideas to subjective themes, and he is well behind his grade in reading level because he is better at math.

But for some reason I have never understood, he loves "The Hobbit". Recently he asked why we don't read stories anymore, so I said, "because you don't like fiction". But for another inexplicable reason, he went to my bookshelf and picked out Lord of the Rings and said I should read it to him. So I am.

Time will tell if his interest in the story continues as it gets more complex and themes are much darker than The Hobbit. If so, I will continue rereading it myself anyway.

 

[Bick]

This thread made me consider a re-read, but I specifically decided to re-read The Silmarillion. It must be 30 years since I read this, and I'm really enjoying it. I do plan a complete re-read through The Silmarillion, Hobbit and LOTR this year. I bought them all recently in lovely hardback editions at some expense. They are the original edition style reprints.

 

[BAYLOR]

I read the The Hobbit and LOTR about 20 years back I read the Silmarillion between book's 1 and 2 of LOTR.

I liked the stories of the Silmarillion, But wish he had made into series like LOTR. It could have been an even greater saga then LOTR. The Silmarillion had such great possibilities.

 

[Bick]

Now.

What is interesting to me on a re-read is the huge amount of detail and content that the recent films missed out. It takes 150 pages to get to Bree, wherein the troop of hobbits meet and spend a night with some travelling Eldar, get lopst i the old forest, get rescued, spend a couple of evening with Bombadill, get in toruble in the Barrow downs, and finally arrive at the Bree comunity. I remember watching the films and thinking how close Jackson had got it, but now I'm far less sure.

One thing I will say, and its a niggle only, is that Tolkien is too repetitive in the hobbits' adventures in the first section of The Fellowship - they get in trouble, and are then rescued by a higher power, no less than three times between Hobbiton and Bree. The repetition also makes the novel too stop-start I think - it doesn't actually flow all that well early on. I'm enjoying it, but I read with quite a critical eye these days, and Fellowship is not without its faults, though they are minor. The other thing worth noting is that many say that the interlude at Tom Bombadill's seems out of place, but I would disagree. I think it fits in fine, and is in keeping with other aspects of the early stages of The Fellowship. If anything I felt the introduction of Gildor and his travelling Noldor were more out of place here, as they seemed rather sudden - appearing deus ex machina fashion bang in the middle of the Shire just when the dark rider was sniffing them out - slightly convenient for me.

 

[Extollager]

Finishing a rereading of The Hobbit, anticipate rereading LotR this autumn.

Bick, I like all those Fellowship episodes, but your criticisms are fair. I think Tolkien did some improvising early on; as you might know, he hadn't planned to write a Hobbit sequel and started writing LotR in Dec. 1937 without a clear plan of where he was going to go.

 

[J Riff]

But, the 1st 50 pages are a perfect lesson in how to start off a trilogy. Too bad everyone thinks they should try it!

 

[Rafellin]

Read it once, along with The Hobbit and about half of The Silmarillion, all during the last half of 1979. My grandfather was a fan, but I found it tedious in places. It was a groundbreaking work, but has been surpassed.

 

[J Riff]

Dunno that its been surpassed... in what way? Gotta rember that Ogres, Orcs, Hobbits... all were new, fresh, interesting... now its like a very obvious thing to do. Plus I don't think many authors who write elf/dragon fantasy, were or are as good as, or put in as much work, or were as groundbreaking.. as Prof. Tolkien.

 

[Rafellin]

Tolkien was arguably a genius, and his creation will stand the test of time... And for anything to be that groundbreaking, it'd have to found a new genre.

But as a piece of high fantasy, The Lord of the Rings, for me, pretty much defined the 'high fantasy' genre, forming the 'rules' upon which others built. If you'd like an example, I think Tad Williams' Books of Memory, Sorrow and Thorn top the stack - and as it is a decade since I last read any 'serious' high fantasy, there are probably others.

 

[J Riff]

Never hern 'em. Hard SF types all read LOTR because it was there, and did not disappoint. Reading a massive trilogy is no fun here, I like 250 pagers with no sequel unlest there;s overwhelming public demand. Timing, timing, timing... * )

 

[Evorath]

Last time I read the LoTR trilogy was...2013? I've only read The Silmarillion once, so that is actually on my list of books to go back through. Most likely, I won't get to it until the beginning of next year though (so much to read/write). After I reread that one, I will likely go through the trilogy again, and The Hobbit I guess (after all, I can knock that out in one night).

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The other thing worth noting is that many say that the interlude at Tom Bombadill's seems out of place, but I would disagree. I think it fits in fine, and is in keeping with other aspects of the early stages of The Fellowship.

I agree with this. I think the main reason the Tom Bombadil episode gets ignored or left out is its sheer oddness to us as a 'modern' culture - the rosy cheeks, the oddly cringe-worthy songs, the Goldberry relationship... yet the scenes with the latter stages of the Old Forest and with the willows are as good as anything in the first book.

 

[DZara]

We re-watch the movies every year around Christmas and New Year's Day - then I sneak off and read my favorite parts of the books, since I'm really the only reader in my family.

It's been a lot of years since I've read the stories in full. I'd have to read LOTR, plus the Hobbit, plus JRR's version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I read in college and really loved.

 

[Extollager]

I'm glad that Jackson omitted the Bombadil episode. Somehow it seems to me that to do that right would require genius. I think Jackson's a very skilled craftsman, but not a genius.

Some years ago I read Coventry Patmore's brief essay "The Point of Restin Art," which is available here:

Principle in art, etc. : Patmore, Coventry Kersey Dighton, 1823-1896 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

That gave me the key to Bombadil, which I wrote about in a short paper that will (re)appear in J. R. R. Tolkien: Studies in Reception eventually. In brief, Patmore noticed that great works of art often have a "point of indifference" in the composition, to which the eye returns after looking at other details. He instances the Infant's heel in a painting of the Madonna and Child. Patmore invites the viewer to imagine that point gone and to perceive how much less well the art would "work" as a while. He gives an example from literature, of a character in King Lear who is not particularly interesting in himself in contrast to the other characters. I applied this principle to Tolkien. Bombadil is the character who puts on the Ring and nothing happens. He takes no part in the War of the Ring. If we liken the episodes and characters of LotR to a vast canvas, the Bombadil material could well be the "point of rest" that's so mysteriously important.

I think Jackson's movies could help some people to test this idea. It could be that, if you come to the book having been immersed in the movies, you come acclimated to a protracted swirl of adventures. That's what you may want from the book. When you read the book, it may seem to be unsatisfactory because the adventures occur against a carefully evoked context of the natural world, of ordinary social life, of contemplation of beauty and the depth of time, etc. Bombadil's world is part of this, as is that which we glimpse in Sam's song in the tower with "above all shadows rides the Sun, and stars forever dwell," etc.

Also, as I wrote in another paper that will also be reprinted in the book, LotR celebrates the Four Loves.

Touchstone Archives: Rings of Love

The Bombadil material gives us what we wouldn't have, otherwise, in the book, namely a picture of newlywed love. It doesn't matter that Tom and Goldberry have, perhaps, been together "always"; Tom is always in the state of a young man who has just married his lady. Tolkien was writing in a time and place in which it was normal for a couple not to have sex or cohabit till they were married. The honeymoon was the period of newlywed joy, lasting weeks or months, where now "honeymoon" is, I suppose, the term for the expensive vacation taken by just-married couples whose sexual coming-together is long behind them, so that things would feel rather flat after their wedding if they didn't do something financially extravagant.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I think there's also an element of Tolkien saying with Bombadil: Nature is greater and stronger than anything human beings can make. Nature is greater than the Ring. Nature is inviolate. That's my reading, anyway…