Um dos melhores livros da minha vida. ( )

Finally finished the fellowship of the ring and while it was challenging, I did enjoy some parts of the book, (mainly Sam and Aragorn parts and a bit of Gimli and Legolas) but hopefully we get more pippin and merry in the second book since I felt they were 鈥渇orgotten鈥� at some parts. Hopefully I don鈥檛 see Tom bombadil again though, he annoyed me so much and I felt his chapter was useless. Boromir pissed me off the most in the end but I know why he did what he did but still, dude needs to chill out. ( )

After reading so many comments about Tolkien being boring, I wish I was able to tell any fantasy lover before reading Tolkien for the first time this:
So you read a lot of fantasy books and you loved them. Now you want to read "the first and the best of them", expecting it will be exactly the same, only much better. Well, it still may be better, depending on your taste, but it certainly is very different.
Fantasy developed a lot from The Lord of the Rings. Today, fantasy is packed with action, quests, sub-quest... In Tolkien, you will find a lot of places where nothing really happens - they do not directly contribute to the plot. He just describes the world, characters, society they live in, their motivations, feelings... He imagined the world to tiniest details and the world lives regardless the story itself. In other fantasy books, anything that appears somehow serves the story, but in Tolkien the world just exists and he likes to describe it as such, even crossing to lyrics at times. It is therefore far less straightforward to read.
It is absolutely fine if someone does not like it, we all like different things. I believe though that a lot of disappointment comes from the expectation (it will be the same, just better). I was very lucky to read The Lord of the Rings in early age, not reading much fantasy before, and it completely blew my mind. When reading it again after several years of other fantasy books though, I do understand the disillusion of many if they expect just better version of what they know already... ( )

The narration is amazing. Serkis has a large range for voices and gives many characters distinctive accents or pitches. He has a knack for knowing how to intone passages and disperse pauses for maximum effect. And the plethora of songs are actually sung, not read.

As to the content, it's been decades since I first read LotR and I've been reminded of what a grind the meandering first half of this book is. I nearly gave up on it then, but thankfully I persevered and learned what a treasure it is on the whole. ( )

Another re-read, I may just do the whole series at this point since it鈥檚 been quite a while since I read them first.

The book is obviously much slower and less action packed than the movies, the characters do fight and perform daring deeds, but they feel much more mundane than their movie counterparts. What the movies cannot match, however, is the loving detail in every aspect of the world Tolkien created. It all feels acutely real and one gets the sense that Tolkien thought deeply about every plain and hill and forest. The world feels historically grounded and lived in in a way few other fantasy works do.

Generally enjoying my re-read of this series so far and finding quite a few things I didn鈥檛 appreciate or remember from the last time.
( )