The Fellowship of the Ring

I finished J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring last night. I have to admit, I wasn't impressed, and I think I know why. There was too much description of the landscape for me. Mostly, I just scanned the description paragraphs for anything that looked important to the plot of the story. I love dialogue and the thoughts of the characters, but excessive descriptions bore me.

Since it's one of the few books I've read after I've seen the movie, it was interesting to see how they are different. They really did cut out many parts of the book. My boyfriend, who has read the books, wished they hadn't cut out Tom Bombadil, one of his favorite characters in the book. I thought Bombadil was scarily happy. It kind of creeped me out, even though he is a good guy.

I found it interesting that only two female characters featured very prominently in the book: Tom Bombadil's wife and the lady elf towards the end of the book. Both seemed very ethereal. Arwen was not in this book as much as she was in the first movie.

I'm going to finish the series, but I think it's safe to say that I won't fall in love with these books. I'm still working on Jane Eyre, but I should be done soon.