I love it too! I love that it says “being the first volume” – I’m a sucker for that construction with fantasy books.

It was so upsetting I almost stopped reading, despite the fact that I was near the end of the book, had been thinking that this was the Best Book Ever, and had been utterly and completely enthralled, (and somewhat terrified) up till that point.

That is definitely true! I’m reading it slowly so I can catch those things – though right now I’m reading slowly because I can’t stand more than a few paragraphs of Tom Bombadil.

*cracks up* I know I’d have had that exact same reaction when I was eleven! And I bet I wouldn’t have liked Gollum either! But yeah, Sean Bean rocks the part of Boromir pretty hard. (Did you see him in Troy? He totally owned Odysseus – I wanted them to make The Odyssey next with Sean Bean playing Odysseus and it would be ALL SEAN BEAN ALL THE TIME.)

I do like Aragorn better than Boromir in the movie. Because of all the sexiness. But in the books he really is a bit dull, Aragorn, whereas Boromir’s the man with the interesting life and the interesting might-turn-evil-ness.

Join us! It is very much not too late to join the readalong. 🙂 And they are wonderful; I’m enjoying Fellowship enormously, it’s exactly what I was in the mood for.

I always expect them to be far more intimidating than they are. The hobbits are sweet and accessible, and we see most of the world from their perspective. Plus, if you bog down, you can always skip ahead and depend on the movies to fill in any major plot points you might be skipping. I am sure that sounds like deplorable advice to proper Tolkien fans, but that’s what I did. Fellowship was actually the LAST of these books that I read, because I was just going by the movie.