I've re-read them once, maybe twice. I'm inspired to read them now... :-) On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:29 PM, PATRICK MOORE <bertin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:13 PM, David Estes <cyclotour...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> I guess I came into this the opposite way. I was a BOB, Bridgestone >> Owner's Bunch member that ended up on the Rivendell mailing list when GP >> started the company. Although I read the Hobbit and LOTR in middle school, >> I didn't really make the connection right away. It had been fourteen years >> or so since I read the books, and "Rivendell" the place didn't really stand >> out for me. Plus I'm just slow that way. >> >> I'll probably start reading them to my oldest rather soon. Right now >> going through the L. Frank Baum Oz books which have a lot of the same >> elements in them. >> >> Bonus question: Anybody re-read the LOTR books after seeing the movies, >> and did that make the books better/worse for you when you read them again? > > > My situation was similar, although I didn't read any Tolkien until I was in > my 40s. LOTR and Hobbit were popular among some of my fellow 7th graders > (1967-8; "Frodo Lives! was a popular graffito) but I somehow never got > around to reading them. However, I have read Hobbit and the Trilogy at least > 20 times since my first reading; they sit on my shelf and I will often pick > them up and skip and skim for a quick before-sleep read. > > It's funny, even now I don't think of LOTR, etc, when I seen things from > Riv Bic Works; I think of Grant. And vice versa: Frodo doesn't make me think > fondly of my bikes. > > I thought the movies were quite well done, as I had been dreading their > Hollywood-ization (hobbit song and dance numbers, gratuitous sex and nudity > among the elves, slow motion dismemberment, with closeups of severed limbs > and spurting arterial blood, among the orcs, car chase scenes in the caverns > of Mora, Gimli talking jive). The battle scenes in particular were > interesting and, I think, well done, and Gandalf hit the right mix of > avuncular crustiness and hieratic wizardly dignity. I found some of the > elven folk a little too elevated, and I didn't like Legolas's hairstyle. But > all in all, quite well done, from this Hollywood skeptic. > > But I find the books, still, better, and the movies didn't change my > opinion of them. > > Favorite passages, for the language and the images and feelings they > conjure: > > A strong place and wonderful was Isengard, and long it had been beautiful; > and there great lords had dwelt, the wardens of Gondor upon the West, and > wise men that watched the stars. But Saruman had slowly shaped it to his > shifting purposes, and made it better, as he thought, being deceived -- for > all those arts and subtle devices, for which he forsook his former wisdom, > and which donfly he imagined were his own, came but from Mordor; so that > what he made was naught, only a little copy, a child's model or a slave's > flattery, of that vast fortress ... Barad-dur, the Dark Tower, which > suffered no rival, and laughed at flattery, biding its time, secure in its > prie and its immeasurable strength. (II, 8). > > And: Naked I was sent back -- for a brief time, until my taks was done. And > naked I lay upon the mountain-top. The tower behind was crumbled into dust, > the window gone; the ruined stair was choked with burned and broken s tone. > I was alone, forgotten, without escape upon the hard horn of the world. > There I lay staring upward, while the stars wheeled over, and each day was > as long as a life-age of the earth. Faint to my ears came the gathered > rumour of all lands: the springing and the dying, the song and the weeping, > and the slow everlasting groan of overburdened stone. And so at the last > Gwaithir the Windlord found me again, and he took me up and bore me away. > (II, 5) > > > > -- Cheers, David Redlands, CA --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
