Review: The Fellowship of the Ring
/2019 CHALLENGE: 1 RE-READ PER MONTH 05 / 12
5 stars. Simply. Perfect. I don't think I can write a review of this. It's too challenging to communicate how lucky I feel visiting Middle Earth again.
Favorite moments:
1. The Black Rider sniffing for the ring. What a badass detail.
"The riding figure sat quite still with its head bowed, as if listening. From inside the hood came a noise as of someone sniffing to catch an elusive scent; the head turned from side to side of the road."
2. Tom Bombadil.
"He then told them many remarkable stories, sometimes half as if speaking to himself, sometimes looking at them suddenly with a bright blue eye under his deep brows. Often his voice would turn to song, and he would get out of his chair and dance about. He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles."
3. Reading this and picturing the scariest movie moment of my childhood.
"To his distress and amazement he found that he was no longer looking at Bilbo; a shadow seemed to have fallen between them, and through it he found himself eyeing a little wrinkled creature with a hungry face and bony groping hands. He felt a desire to strike him."
4. Lothlorien.
“As soon as he set foot upon the far bank of Silverlode a strange feeling had come upon him, and it deepened as he walked on into the Naith: it seemed to him that he had stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more. In Rivendell there was memory of ancient things; in Lórien the ancient things still lived on in the waking world. Evil had been seen and heard there, sorrow had been known; the Elves feared and distrusted the world outside: wolves were howling on the wood’s borders: but on the land of Lórien no shadow lay."
5. When Boromir tries to take the ring and it feels shocking and inevitable at the same time.
"‘Ah! The Ring!’ said Boromir, his eyes lighting. ‘The Ring! Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing?"
So good.
Per internet tradition, it seems that this book is a bit polarizing and people either love it or hate it (like ... to the death). I acknowledge that the writing is dull in places; that the black-and-white depiction of good versus evil is problematic; that there are sexist undertones; that the worldbuilding occasionally hurtles beyond playful into pretentious territory; etc etc. I recognize its flaws but feel as though its merits outweigh them.
All that stuff aside, I don't know what took me so long to pick up these books again. The escape offered here is of immeasurable value, to me. I want to crawl into the world of these words and curl up there forever.