The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
448pp, Fiction
Notes
2020-06-10
Reading this to K. A great book to read out loud, esp love the bits where I get to do Gandalf, basing my reading on Michael Horden from the 80s BBC radio adaptation
on finishing it...
We both enjoyed it, it was interesting experiencing it through her eyes and I expect she will have picked up some of my own feelings about the book – I like the pastoral stuff more than most I suspect, always appreciate a good helping of food and farming in my fantasy books. We both quickly agreed that reading the songs is not required, K is very astute re the lack of female characters “what! even the moon is male?” and the book’s racial essentialism is a good place to start necessary conversations.
It really is a singular book though. It looms large in our culture (largely down to the early 00s films) but revisiting it I was struck by its oddness in terms of structure, language and concerns – it’s easier to see how Gene Wolfe and other lit-fantasy outliers relate to Tolkien than the more obvious mainstream followers. But also, in amongst all the lineage of elves tiresomeness (seriously, Rivendell and Lothlorien are the worst bits) Tolkien really knows how do do cool set pieces. The mad dash to Rivendell, Gandalf vs the Balrog in Moria etc. K was literally (literally) jumping up and down when Gandalf returned the other night (we’ve started book 2).