Pun Salad

About 10 years ago, I resolved to read the Tolkien paperbacks I'd bought as a college student about 40 years ago. I read The Hobbit sometime around 2003, The Fellowship of the Ring in 2005, The Two Towers in 2007, and now, finally, The Return of the King.

To be honest, at a lot of points in this series, I found myself wishing for a "just the good parts" abridgement. Because there's an awful lot of walking, descriptions of geography, eating, drinking, poetry, … Tolkien built his own world, and darned if he wasn't going to show it to you. At times I felt I was reading the King James Bible, and not the interesting or inspiring parts either.

But there's also, of course, a powerful and wonderful story involved, with great characters, a lot of lovely scenes, a lot of excitement and suspense. (If you can pretend you didn't already see the movie.)

Which reminds me: one rap on the movie version was the long running time after the climactic scene on Mount Doom between Frodo, Gollum, and Sam. Guess what: the book goes on even longer. But it's some of the best writing of the series, as the four hobbits unwind their adventure, only to come back to a Shire that's not as they remembered or expected. Most of this was totally missing from the movie (for good cinematic reasons, certainly).

So: I'm glad I read the books. Also glad they're behind me.