Reply To: [Lord of the Rings] How did you find your way into this universe

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In the before time when libraries were still a thing … that’s where I’ve discovered Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

I think I read LoTR and the Hobbit both in Dutch and English. Not sure in which order.

I remember the LotR book as it was big (like Tolkien intended) with lots of thin pages. It was an ancient copy compared to the regular books in the library at that time (probably from the 60’s or a lot of borrowing).

I’ve seen glimpses of the Bakhsi movie.

btw: you should try Silmarillion … that thing is a slog. I think I read one page and gave up. Tolkien created an interesting world, but he is a terrible writer.  He’d rather spend ten pages describing the road than waste a single word on a big battle.

The Hobbit is IMHO his best work, because he had to write it for his kids instead of himself.

Somewhere in my collection is a copy of ‘The Hobbit’ with illustrations by Alan Lee
Not sure where in the pile of my stuff it’s hiding.  I’d swear I own a copy of LotR with those illustrations as well, but I could be imagening that.

The One Ring by Free League Publishing has art that reminds me so much of the stuff done by Alan Lee. I’m not sure if they used the same artist or someone similar to his style, but it is glorious.

The movies were kind of meh. As great as it was to see some of the stuff on the big screen I was dissapointed that aspects from the book had been changed drastically (especially in ‘return of the king’ and practically all of the Hobbit trilogy with that darned love interest and bloated battle). If they ever do the entire series as a tv-series they should have ‘the scouring of the Shire’ as the finale season.