J.R.R. TOLKIEN : The lord of the rings

The Lord of the Rings cannot be described in a few words. J.R.R. Tolkien's great work has been labelled both a heroic romance and a classic of science fiction. It is, however, impossible to convey to the new reader all of the book's qualities and the range of its creation. By turns comic, homely, epic, monstrous and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scenes and character in an imaginary world which is totally convincing in its detail. Tolkien created a new mythology in an invented world which has proved timeless in its appeal.

What possibly can you read while you're locked in ? A book that you've had on your shelves for possibly more than a decade and is so big that you've always postponed opening it : the Lord of the rings ! I hesitated between that and Richardson's Clarissa and Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, I guess those will be up for the next virus quarantine.

And now that I've finished those 1137 pages, what should I write that's never been written before, huh ? Nothing new, just that I loved it, that all those pages written in small prints were much easier to read than I had imagined. There was humour in it, adventure, magic, elves, dwarves, weird creatures with no foot toes, big spiders, lots of songs (I didn't expect that) and I was hooked all the while. I'd seen the films before and the epilogue in the Shire, that doesn't appear in the films if my memory serves, was a great surprise.
As Tolkien himself says in the foreword : "The most critical reader of all, myself, now finds many defects, minor and major, but being unfortunately under no obligation either to review the book or to write it again, he will pass over these in silence, exept one that has been noted by others : the book is too short." !

My heart went out to poor Faramir, my favourite character was of course Sam Gangee, so brave, so loyal, who took such good care of his Bill and who has such a big heart - Frodo pales in comparison. Tall, big men may look the fiercest or the brightest, but never underestimate hobbits ! I loved the friendship between almost hereditary enemies (Legolas and Gimli), Pippin and Merry, I loved the love of nature in general and trees in particular, the mysterious Tom Bombadil and - of course - the Ents, that think that "hill" is too short a word for something that has been there for so long.

Many years ago, I had participated in an exhibition at my library on Tolkien and his illustrators (John Howe, Alan Lee and others) and had been fascinated by the author himself : the world he'd so carefully built, his own illustrations, the languages he'd invented (complete with alphabets and pronunciations), the genealogies, the back stories, I was in awe. He was so multi-talented ! I'm so glad I finally got to reading The lord of the rings (I still have The hobbit and The silmarillion on my shelves, but they were less big and I'll read them in my own time).