The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955)

I finished re-reading this a couple of weeks ago and then set it down and forgot that I had read it because I was just relieved to have finally gotten through it again. The main thing I learned from re-reading The Lord of the Rings is that reading it once in one lifetime is enough. That's a tough lesson to have to learn in a finite lifetime! If I had children, "Only read The Lord of the Rings once in your life, and maybe zero times even," is the first thing I'd add to my list "Advice for Making My Child's Life Better (None of Which They'll Probably Take, the Ingrates)."

This might be a spoiler if you're a two year old with a Goodreads account but the One Ring is destroyed in this book by Chapter Three of Book Six (the Second Book in The Return of the King. Does that mean the trilogy is actually a sexology? I don't know. What am I? A person who can do math and knows words too?). That means there's something like seven chapters left! And one of those chapters involves a marriage! A MARRIAGE?! Between Aragorn and Arwen even! Which I'm supposed to believe is a happy ending? I guess the text doesn't definitively say Aragorn is gay but you don't go to the extremes that man was going to to avoid marrying a hot elf woman if you're into the ladies!

I suppose trudging through even more chapters about resting and traveling and singing is worth it to get to the most gruesome and bloody murder in the entire series. If only Peter Jackson had had the guts to film the Scouring of the Shire and the murder of Saruman. His throat being slit wide and the spray of blood splashing over the faces of the horrified Hobbits! I bet Ralph Bakshi would have done that scene right! But no! Instead Rankin and Bass screw it up and leave it out as well!

When I was younger, my favorite part of the book was when Éowyn kills the king of the Ringwraiths. I was all, "Ha ha! Because the prophecy said no man! But she wasn't a man! Ha ha! Stupid prophets! What a great twist!" But now I read it and I think, "Stupid prophets. This is why we, as a society, should try to encourage gender neutral terms and pronouns! So that if I ever become the lord of the dead and the lost King of Angmar, I certainly don't want to be killed because some jerk didn't account for half of the people who might kill me!"

In The Two Towers, my favorite characters were Treebeard and Gollum. In this book, my favorite characters were Pippin and Merry. Merry and Pippin are like a couple who decided to open up their marriage. First Merry is jealous of Pippin having gone to the big city, probably banging loads of studs, while he's stuck trying to get into the pants of a prudish horse king. Then later, Pippin is super jealous of Merry banging the hottest stud in Mordor and he's all, "Oh no! I'll never bang anybody as hot! But I've got to go and try!" But then Gimli is all, "You two are perfect together! Stop this nonsense! Never forget that troll I had to pull you out from under, Pippin!" And then Frodo is all, "At least your ex didn't throw your fleshlight into a volcano."

I highly doubt I'm going to read The Sillymarillion next.

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

I think the "two towers" referenced in the title are the two characters who carry the weight of this entire book: Treebeard and Gollum. At least that's what I think as an adult. When I first read this as a twelve-year old, I had no idea what towers were being referenced. Now, don't jump to the conclusion that I was a complete dimwit! It was obvious Orthanc was one of them! It's the most towery tower ever to appear in fantasy fiction. But what was the other one? Minas Morgul? Barad-dûr? The watchtower atop Cirith Ungol?

I know a lot of you are shaking your head and making "Pshaw!" noises at me and snorting, "It was obviously Barad-dûr, you stupid twit." But would you stake your nerdy life on that?!

Hmm, maybe you would. I bet there's a letter that J.R.R. Tolkien penned to some second cousin that was all, "It should be clear to everybody that the towers I was talking about were Orthanc and Barad-dûr. Only stupid dumb 12-year old twits who couldn't even tell the difference between Saruman and Sauron wouldn't understand that!"

Yeah, yeah. I was somewhat confused by those two wizards! I didn't say I was zero percent dimwit at twelve! But seriously, Tolkien had to pick two names that were that similar?! He was absolutely taking the piss.

Anyway, the tracking of the hobbits is boring. The Riders of Rohan are the worst characters of any book I've ever read (and I've read most of the Xanth books). Frodo might as well be a straw effigy with a ring tied to it. And Sam is just a bitter, thwarted cook. Gollum and Treebeard are the only interesting parts of this book.

Although I suppose the Battle of Helm's Deep was exciting because I was really wrapped up in whether the Elf character or the Dwarf character would murder more orcs than the other. You probably think the Elf would run away with that one because he could kill so many with arrows before one orc even got near the dwarf's axe but you would be surprised at how easy it is for a writer to pretend that wasn't the case at all and the dwarf actually could win that contest. So unbelievable.

Hopefully when I get around to reading the Sillymarillion, it explains what happened to the Entwives. If that mystery is never revealed, I suppose the next book I'm going to read is a Ouija board as I summon the spirit of J.R.R. Tolkien to explain his damned self.

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

This book is like The Seven Samurai except there are nine of them and they aren't samurai and they're defending the entire world instead of just a village. This is the book that introduced everybody in the Sixties to the idea of Lembas wafers and probably hobbits and almost certainly balrogs. It probably also made a lot of people cognizant of the amount of hair on their toes. I hardly have any and I always felt ashamed that I wasn't more hobbit-like, even if I walk about a mile every morning to get coffee and tea while barefoot.

I think Popeye's biscuits are probably what Lembas wafers tasted like and I also think the movie The Hangover was based on this book.

If you like books about traveling through exotic locations that are entirely fictional while an elf and a dwarf become the closest of friends, this is the book for you!

Spoiler: Some people think this is a book about how even the smallest and seemingly most inconsequential people can do extraordinarily good things to change the world while potentially sacrificing everything. But I think it's a tragic love story between a misshapen bug-eyed monster and a ring. How come nobody's written a musical from Gollum's point of view yet? I suppose it's because he's already too sympathetic. Better to write stories about characters who are so bad that you would be praised for your hot take showing how they're actually sympathetic characters caught up in a terrible world who maybe made bad decisions because of the way other people treated them. Or to show how a monster is just, you know, protecting his mom from a bunch of drunk jerks constantly partying at their log cabin.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937)

According to my mom's note in the back of my copy of this book, I first read it when I was eight years old. I remember my sister had checked it out from the school library and I was intrigued by the pictures (the copy I own (actual book pictured above!) which was my parents' copy and which I actually read doesn't have pictures. I don't know what edition my sister had checked out). I'm not sure how many times I've read it since then. Maybe no other times. But I just reread it in two days so I guess it was pretty good?

I didn't read The Lord of the Rings until junior high and I remember restarting more than once. I reread Bilbo's birthday chapter a few times before I stuck with the book. And another time, I stalled partway through The Two Towers and left it for so long that I, much later, simply began again with The Fellowship of the Ring.

Apparently I had projected the parts of The Lord of the Rings I found boring and tedious onto The Hobbit as well. Turns out, there really aren't any boring and tedious parts of this book. I suppose there would be if the book were written from the perspective of one of the dwarves. How useless are those guys?! The first half of the book is simply Gandalf saving everybody every time they get in trouble. The second half of the book is Bilbo saving everybody after they get in trouble. The dwarves could have been eaten by the trolls at the beginning of their journey and nothing would have been different. Except maybe for making things easier at the end when it came time to divvy up the treasures with the humans and elves.

I suppose the dwarves were needed to call in Dain's dwarf army to give the humans and elves a chance against the goblin attack at the end. And it's not like having the dwarves die would have stopped the goblins since the dwarves weren't at fault in sparking their wrath. That was caused by Gandalf murdering their king in the dark when he could have just screamed, "Fly, you fools!"

What I'm trying to say is I understand why this book wasn't called The Dwarves. I was more upset by the death of Smaug than by the death of Thorin. If you haven't read this book yet, I'm just kidding! Nobody dies! *wink*

Is this the book that started the trend of having one fat kid in the group for comic relief?

Book Review: The Hobbit

According to my mom's note in the back of my copy of this book, I first read it when I was eight years old. I remember my sister had checked it out from the school library and I was intrigued by the pictures (the copy I own which was my parents' copy and which I actually read doesn't have pictures. I don't know what edition my sister had checked out). I'm not sure how many times I've read it since then. Maybe no other times. But I just reread it in two days so I guess it was pretty good?

I didn't read The Lord of the Rings until junior high and I remember restarting more than once. I reread Bilbo's birthday chapter a few times before I stuck with the book. And another time, I stalled partway through The Two Towers and left it for so long that I, much later, simply began again with The Fellowship of the Ring.

Apparently I had projected the parts of The Lord of the Rings I found boring and tedious onto The Hobbit as well. Turns out, there really aren't any boring and tedious parts of this book. I suppose there would be if the book were written from the perspective of one of the dwarves. How useless are those guys?! The first half of the book is simply Gandalf saving everybody every time they get in trouble. The second half of the book is Bilbo saving everybody after they get in trouble. The dwarves could have been eaten by the trolls at the beginning of their journey and nothing would have been different. Except maybe for making things easier at the end when it came time to divvy up the treasures with the humans and elves.

I suppose the dwarves were needed to call in Dain's dwarf army to give the humans and elves a chance against the goblin attack at the end. And it's not like having the dwarves die would have stopped the goblins since the dwarves weren't at fault in sparking their wrath. That was caused by Gandalf murdering their king in the dark when he could have just screamed, "Fly, you fools!"

What I'm trying to say is I understand why this book wasn't called The Dwarves. I was more upset by the death of Smaug than by the death of Thorin. If you haven't read this book yet, I'm just kidding! Nobody dies! *wink*

Is this the book that started the trend of having one fat kid in the group for comic relief?