“Not idly do the leaves of Lórien fall,” said Aragorn. “This did not DRROOOOOOOOHMYGOD IS THAT MERRY’S HEAD ON THE GROUND?!?”
I’ve still never gotten around to reading “The Silmarillion.” One of these days, maybe. One of these days…
I got my wife to read them when she was well into her 40s. I think she liked them but she didn’t care for the battle scenes and she wishes that the story had more prominent female characters.
Point of advice: The Silmarillion is actually several different works in one volume. If you find that the first two sections (Ainulindule and Valaquenta) drag for you, you can skip them entirely and jump to the main part of the work with almost no consequence. Do give them a try, as they’re wonderful if you like that sort of thing, but they’re not for everyone.
The poll of adults in my house – 2 for 2.
100%!
That’s certainly a fair criticism and I do hope that she found the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen in the appendix. Then there’s the Tale of Beren and Lúthien in the Silmarillion.
To be clear, I’d read the Hobbit in, I don’t know, 8th or 9th grade, and liked it well enough. I went to our local library to check out LOTR, but all they had was a single volume of Two Towers which didn’t even have a “What has gone before” at the beginning. I didn’t get past the first chapter, as naturally it was incomprehensible, and didn’t give the story another thought for , I don’t know, fifteen years I guess.
I read the Lord of The Rings and the Hobbit prior to the movies, but only just. I remember that I was so utterly bored reading Fellowship of the Ring until around page 100 when it ‘clicked’ and I enjoyed the rest of the books. Amusingly, Fellowship was my favorite of the movies.
I had a girlfriend who used to talk about how she looooooved Lord of the Rings. And she read the books and watched the movies. As an anniversary present I got a 50th Anniversary Lord of the Rings and Special Edition The Hobbit. When presenting it to her she got all excited, but then showed obvious disappointment as the Lord of the Rings was in book form and not in DVD as she initially thought. We broke up soon thereafter (not for that reason!!). I somehow doubt that she actually did read the LOTR books at all, to be honest.
I read the books just before the movies came out. I figured if they’re making three of the most epic movies of all time, based on three of the most epic books of all time, I may as well read the books.
I’m glad I read the books, but I think the movies were orders of magnitude better.
The Silmarillion is MUCH better than LotR (which I love, don’t misunderstand me). The best way to read the former, I believe, is how the person who lent me my first copy advised. Skip Ainulindaule and Valaquenta on first read, but be ready to refer to them to keep the names of the Valar straight. Be patient as you work through the narrative section; it’s worth it. If you’re enjoying it at all, you’re likely to stop at some point because the first two sections have become worthwhile to you.
I first read LotR in (if I recall correctly) 1969… so I was waiting a long time for those movies.
I have the feeling that the percentage of people who read the books before seeing the movies will approach zero as time goes on, which is the one thing I really regret about the movies’ existence. I think my experience of LotR would have been severely degraded if I had had the images of the movies in my mind before reading the books.
(After reading this post over, it sounds kind of elitist and snobby, but I really don’t mean it that way.)
I have never read any of the Lord of the Rings books.
Ike, have you read Dickens or Scott?
I read the books quite a few years ago and had almost entirely forgotten the story by the time I saw the movies. Does that still count?
Really Not All That Bright writes:
> I don’t think those numbers tell us anything because the books saw a massive
> sales spike after the movies came out. Houghton Mifflin sold two million copies of
> the one-volume paperback in one year after the first film was released.
I saw numbers of copies sold before the Jackson movies came out which suggest that The Lord of the Rings was probably already the best-selling novel of all time before the movies were made. It’s hard to say, since there just aren’t any good numbers. The Wikipedia entry on best-selling books suggests that A Tale of Two Cities or The Little Prince may have sold more copies than The Lord of the Rings, but I’m dubious about those numbers. Furthermore, the number of copies of The Lord of the Rings that has been sold is probably more like 200 million, not 150 million. In any case, the sales because of the movies didn’t really have that much effect on the total. I’ve been looking through the fantasy and science fiction sections of bookstores for at least forty-five years now, and Tolkien’s books have nearly always there on the shelves.
I saw the films first.
I read the trilogy on a plane flight about six years later.
I doubt any of my friends saw the films first, though, as they’re all the right kind of nerds for Tolkein.
Sorry, just saw this. I have read A Tale of Two Cities. I have no idea who Scott is. And while I never read any of the LotR books, I am a huge fan of the Dune series.
If you liked Dickens, you’ll find Tolkien’s style of writing approachable, I think.
If you liked Dune, you won’t have any trouble with the story line.
If you’ve never read Sir Walter Scott, you should give him a try.
I think the books are much better than the films. The films are very Hollywood not really what Tolkein had in mind when he started them as a series of letters to comfort his son who was unhappy at boarding school. Its always a worry when the giant movie tycoons take on a project everyone loves. Probably less than half of the audience who’ve seen the films have read the books. Maybe this is a good thing and will get people interested?
I had to read the Hobbit as a reading assignment prior to entering 9th grade(Summer of '84). I loved it, and tried to read all of the Tolkein at my local public library. I succeeded, with the exception of the Silmarillion. Started it, read like 20 pages, hated it, returned it. Tried every summer from then on, because it irked me that I couldn’t read the book. Finally finished it when I was 30. I wish it had a pronunciuation guide for all of the umlauts and other stuff in the names. They were too distracting. When I read, it just flows, but in the Silmarillion, I would get stuck on the names.