Day 13 - A Fictional Book
The Lord of the Rings (all three parts)
"Tolkien's stories take place against a background of measureless depth . . . That background is ever-present in the creator's mind, and it gives Frodo and company a three-dimensional reality that is seldom found in this kind of writing." --Washington Post Book World
"J.R.R. Tolkien's epic trilogy remains the ultimate quest, the ultimate battle between good and evil, the ultimate chronicle of stewardship of the earth. Endlessly imitated, it never has been surpassed." --Kansas City Star
I mentioned awhile ago on Facebook that I was reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy (LOR), starting with "The Hobbit". I picked these to mention today because usually the task of giving book opinions in this family falls to me. :)
As far as books go, I am a fast reader. Very fast. That is because I usually end up skimming books quite a bit to get through all the stuff that some would call "good descriptive writing", but in reality it's just unimportant crap that does nothing to further the storyline. LOR has a lot of text, but it is generally important, or at the very least interesting. It took me a LONG time to read these books - no only because there is over a thousand pages of tiny print, but because I was fascinated and had to read every word.
This is one of the most intensely creative and depth-filled series I have ever read. Is it confusing here and there? Yes. Some of the characters and places have more than one name. I had to constantly look in the back of the third book at the more than 100 pages of appendixes to clarify something, or look at the map to determine where the characters were, or re-read to make sure that i understood what exactly a passage meant. But the story was interesting enough that those things didn't matter - those things made the story better. Had I known in advance that I would be doing all of that, I may not have read these books - and I would have robbed myself of an excellent story.
Until next time . . .
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