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Notes -
It's been almost a month. If you've read much more since you posted that, did whatever things we were talking about improve the reading experience?
Yeah it has actually, sort of meant to do a follow up post and never really got around to it but I've definitely been enjoying it more. @OracleOutlook's suggestion to use the Phil Dragesh audiobook was a gamechanger. I usually read history and my goal is kind of just processing information as efficiently as possiblec, which isn't so well suited here. By taking away my ability to control the speed of reading I was able to get more of an immersive experience. I feel like that's also helped me appreciate the other elements people like yourself mentioned, like all the worldbuilding and references to the world being fallen from ancient greatness.
I've also just been enjoying the Two Towers more. The Fellowship felt like a lot of build up but I've read Book III now and it feels like the plot is progressing and more action is happening. My friend sent me the ACOUP series getting into the weeds of the battles which also helped me appreciate how much background effort went into making the world belieavable/functional.
Glad to hear you're enjoying it!
Yeah, books 3 and 5 are my favorites, I think because of what you were saying, that it feels most like the plot is progressing and important things are happening.
If you like things that read more like history, you'd probably enjoy the appendices, especially appendix A, once you finish. (A, B, E, and F are the ones I enjoy more.) You'd also like most of the Silmarillion—the first two sections aren't very history-ish, but once you get to the third (which is by far the largest section), it's much more like history than Lord of the Rings, and I found it fun. It's the sort of work where you need to be regularly consulting family trees and maps to keep track of what is going on.
I'll definitely be checking out the Simarillion then! Good to hear it's rewarding because I'm pretty sure I signed up for it by accident along with the others when I joined the Book Club - I honestly hadn't realized Tolkien had written anything else.
If you kept reading at the same pace, you should have finished the book by now. How did you find it, now that you're (probably) done?
I haven't responded earlier mostly because I'm trying to think of something more intelligent to say and unfortunately I don't have a ton lol. I found the first two books pretty rough but I liked the last book the most; the battle scenes were impressive and the sense of resolution in the final sections was very satisfying. I think I came to appreciate the series more as a whole after having read the entire thing in a way that no individual book probably could have achieved, just because it all kind of builds up grand epic style. I also came to appreciate the prose more, which previously I found kind of a slog but I think helped establish the series of something that felt older or out of a different time. I listened to a lecture on Tolkien's translation of Beowulf and heard that Tolkien was interested in how Beowulf made references to other events or writings that we have no remaining records of now, and tried to sort of recreate the effect of a document that existed in a time and world separate to ours but constantly referencing or hinting at it in tantalizing ways, and I think he definitely achieved that.
Overall I'm definitely grateful to have read the series and the suggestions people like yourself offered here definitely helped me appreciate the series more, especially understanding it as a sort of shell of a former world full of magic and life. I actually am trying to read the Simarillion now as you recommended, and will report back when that's completed.
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