Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Lord Of The Rings - BBC Top 100 Reads 87/100



I first started reading The Lord Of The Rings when I was 10. Fuelled by my recent love of The Hobbit that my teacher had lovingly read aloud to us, I thought this would be an easy follow on. Suffice to say, I think I managed to read the first chapter and then gave up. Years later, it came up again on the BBC Top 100 list - I had already watched and surprisingly loved the films as part of an earlier challenge, but still my mind went back to being 10 and wondering if I would struggle to read it.
I read each book separately, which I think helped. Faced with a mammoth tomb of a book always puts me off - at least with a smaller book, you get a sense of achievement when finished. I found the books hit me in waves. There were parts that I totally struggled to understand or even follow and then there were huge parts that I loved and it become a struggle to put the book down. It is a wonderful story, but my mind doesn't handle fantasy all that well and I have trouble trying to create the scenes in my head that Tolkien is describing. I'm really glad I finished it, but would I read it again? Probably not. I think I preferred the Phillip Pullman books more.

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