The Lord of the Rings – Report One

Each of these reports will reflect on the content from a section of around one hundred pages, to the nearest chapter.

Deciding to read The Lord of the Rings came with a bit of trepidation. It is a book that I should have read years ago, more towards the beginning of my journey through this wondrous genre of ours, but put off until I had grown tired of its sort. Keen in my mind is the amount of praise it has received in the past fifty some years since it was initially published, the number of writers it has inspired, and the number of hearts it resides in. If you think the hype surrounding the latest release from Big Publisher X is bad…

The Lord of the Rings encompasses many of the things I dislike about the genre, which played a large role in my avoiding it all these years, and it may as well be the patron saint of the subgenre I have largely abandoned out of tiredness and boredom. Thus, I find myself in an interesting position. I could go into the book with a negative disposition, expecting and embracing the worst if only to attempt to fortify my my decision to avoid it all those years ago. On the other hand, I could go into it with an open mind, perhaps in an attempt to rekindle the fires that brought me into the genre in the first place or perhaps just to understand why it is so praised, beloved, and imitated. In the end, it is probably somewhere in between.

First, an admission. The prologue proved too much for me after a couple pages and I skipped it. If I was forced to read anymore Hobbit history, I would have just given up on the book entirely. World building is not exactly something I look for in a book, because… well, I really do not care about it. The only thing I ask is that your setting is something more substantial than a plywood theatrical backdrop with bits of grit thrown in for good measure. I don’t want histories and infodumps and massive appendices or common animals with weird names, a plethora of races with minor differences, or this war or that war or the war to end all wars. Enough of that, then. I moved on to the story, lest I lose my sanity and my desire to read on.

When it comes to questioning whether or not to continue reading a book, usually when I am failing to get into the book on any level, I tend to adhere to a ‘hundred page test’, which amounts to me asking, “Has anything significant happened?” If yes, I continue reading. If no, I drop the book back on the stack and move on. Having to fall back on this rule is a rare occurrence and, even then, few books actually fail. I think the last one was Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker. Technically, the last one that failed this rule was this book, The Lord of the Rings, but I am not stopping because I want to see it through to the end.

I started making excuses for it in order to continue reading: “Well, you have to remember that it is actually one book split into three. A slow first one hundred pages out of a thousand something page novel is not so bad.” The story has my interest, but it is so sluggish that it struggles to keep my attention. In these first hundred paged pages, there has been a party, Bilbo left the Shire, a lot of waiting has been done, and a confused Frodo has begun his journey, but is still not out of the Shire. I am at a point where I want to continue reading, I want to know what happens next, but dammit, I wish something would happen.

Oh, and the amount of songs so far in this book is enough to inspire rage. I dread turning the page and finding another one. It is like randomly inserted torture. I like these Hobbits, they tend toward the lazy and love to eat and drink, but their incessant singing could inspire mass murder. There are songs for walking, for baths, for this and that, and, really, I am thankful this is not not that sort of book, because I do not want to know they sing upon achieving orgasm. And on that note, The Lord of the Rings may be the most unintentionally funny book I have ever read. I have a dirty mind, so when it comes to older books and outdated phrasing there tend to be passages that have me cracking up. One in chapter five, which sees Merry and Frodo discussing leaving the Shire, is basically turned into a conversation about how quickly the group might get off. Within an hour, according to Merry.

I am somewhat disturbed by Tolkien’s love of exclamation marks, which works well for the most part, extending the proper tone of excitement, but sometimes goes in a different direction, lending his characters’ dialogue a sinister edge. Watching Gandalf and even Frodo turn on a dime from warm, kindly characters to seemingly angry and even mean and right back to warm and kindly often has me scratching my head and wondering about their sanity. Bilbo’s sudden shifts in mood were influenced by the ring, what is their excuse?

A hundred something pages into the book and I am surprised to find that it is not as overly descriptive as I was led to believe and that I do not yet wish to throw it against a wall and abandon it in a twisted pile on the floor. It is not a bad read, but it moves at a snail’s pace, has far too much space devoted to songs, and makes me glad that Tolkien did not share a habit with George R.R. Martin, otherwise the many times they stop to eat would create a never-ending succession of intricately described feasts.

On to the next hundred.

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