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[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Replaced_Texan
I finished reading Fellowship of the Ring for the first time about an hour before the movie came out. I started it a year previously with the intent on finishing the series before the movies came out, but Tolkien's dense prose was just really hard for me to get through.

I finished the The Two Towers about a week later and Return of the King about a week after that. I think that seeing the first movie helped give me context for what Tolkien was talking about that helped me considerably in reading the second two books.

The problem with Tolkien is that he's so descriptive, it took me awhile to realize that paragraphs that were longer than a page generally could be skimmed, but sometimes the songs needed more special attention.

Tolkein:

• Sam strode forward. Sting glittered blue in his hand. The courtyard lay in deep shadow, but he could see that the pavement was strewn with bodies. Right at his feet were two orc-archers with knives sticking in their backs. Beyond lay many more shapes; some singly as they had been hewn down or shot; there in pairs, still grappling one another, dead in the very throes of stabbing, throttling, biting. The stones were slippery with dark blood.

RT: Huh?


Peter Jackson:


RT: Ahhh!