The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit (4 Volumes)

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If you fail to comply with this obligation, we may have a right of action against you for compensation. In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE, is best remembered for the creation of 'Middle Earth' and the series of legends and adventures set within, beginning with the acclaimed children's tale The Hobbit (1936) and continuing through the epic trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954-5) and the posthumously published mythopoeic volume The Silmarilion (1977). More interesting than these is his portrayal of Gollum, one of the few characters with a deep psychological contradiction. One cannot entirely blame Tolkien because Jordan, Martin, Goodkind, Paolini, Brooks, and Salvatore have created a genre out of his work which is unoriginal, cloying, escapist, and sexually unpalatable (if often successful). Reading The Lord of the Rings was a really different experience from The Hobbit not only because it's got a more epic scope and deals with more POV characters, but also because I felt like it introduced me to "Mr Tolkien".The introduction of the one and only Shadowfax was another highlight for me, the main reason I was attracted to the films as a kid. It might be a classic, but there are many who have stern reservations about reading this series, partially I suspect due to its length. At first the idea of following several characters quite separately may be quite unusual, even a little daunting. This was the purpose of all of Tolkien's long, dull songs, the litany of troop movements, the lines of lineage, the snippets of didactic myths, and side-adventures.

I was also very unsatisfied that John chose to stell the stories of the individual character(groups) in sets and not according to the timeline, alternating between the different POVs. He wants the wealth of characters to match the number of unimportant side characters one would expect from a historical text.

Unlike Gro, Gollum is not a character with an alternative view of the world, but fluctuates between the hyperbolic highs and lows of Tolkien's morality. Two of my bookgroup friends chose to co-host these books, with an effort to find the "applicability.

By turns comic and homely, epic and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scene and character in an imaginary world which is totally convincing in its detail. Studying up a bit on other people's theories on Tolkien's writings was fun, but even more was what could be discerned about Tolkien himself from his letters and writings to friends about his books. Not to mention biases or mis-remembering from the narration of elves who were alive during that time. The writing style was magnificent, but the story-telling so lengthy at times I didn't know where to put my brainpower. Says that Frodo and Sam later on learned the truth of what happened and made the necessary changes in their narration of Lord of the Rings.The struggles and hardships are of such importance and value to both the reader and the characters by the end of the journey, Tolkien has spoken volumes about friendship, love, bravery, honour, loyalty, deceit.