On my trip to Florida I began reading “The Fellowship of the Ring,” in preparation for the movie coming out at the end of the year. I never read these books in high school or any other time, and I’m enjoying it immensely. Tolkien’s writing is spare and beautiful, and he has an uncanny ability to create a sense of magic in his world. I even started marking pages when I found passages I particularly liked. Here’s one that reminded me of a certain Texas governor – Frodo tells Gandalf that Gollum deserves death, and Gandalf responds:
“Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
I’ve been putting off reading my Tolkien book, but I suddenly realized that I have to get on with it — the movie’s showing in less than a month! After reading your post, hmmm, I’m getting a little push here… =)
It took me several tries in high school to read LotR — my friends were all done waxing lyrical about it by the time I finally finished. Great, great stuff. Been thinking about pulling out those old paperbacks again …
What have you got against Rick Perry?
I think there’s no way the movie can measure up to the books. All I’ve seen so far in the trailers is — CGI Explosions! Deep-Voiced Gandalf! Elijah Wood as Frodo! (the hell????). The one nice thing about the crappy fantasy movies this year is they seem to be encouraging people (and children especially) to actually READ books, rather than buy thousands of Star Wars action figures. On the other hand, I’ve already lost track of the faux-thoughtful local news segments on “Can Harry Potter Somehow Harm Your Child’s Imagination”?