The Lord of the Rings

Bambi

Bambi

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After watching the films a couple of times and constantly asking questions that I assume will be explained in the book, I've decided to just read them.

I'm just wondering if the hobbit was meant to be read before or after. I'm assuming it was written after, but as I've not read any of the books anyway would it be better to leave it to last or if I have the opportunity to read it first, should I?
 
The hobbit was written before "The Lord of the Rings". Its not key that you read it first, but characters in "The Hobbit" are in LOTR(Gandalf, Bilbo, others).

But I would recommend both to read. I found them both to be interesting and attention-holding. Along with those two, Tolkien has a large range of books based in the same universe.

However, the flowing of the books is somewhat different to the films, and characters are in the books who aren't in the films.PM me if you want more info
 
Oh well, I'll read the Hobbit first, not sure why I thought it was written after as I know it's set before LOTR :wacky: .... duh
 
The hobbit came before but you don't really have to read it to understand Lord of the Rings. I am not sure if I ever read the book, but I did read the graphic novel version when I was eight, and it was awesome
 
the hobbit is far easier to read, since it was intended to be a kid's book while lord of the rings is much darker and aimed an an older audience. both are excellent though
 
Great, I've just started the hobbit and Im really struggling to get into it... though I am only a few pages in, so I'l give it a chance. I get put off by things wrote millions of years ago after being forced to read Pride and Prejudice in school and its full of stupid words. Admittedly, Ive not come across any stupid words yet, but it doesn't seem to be flowing all that well for me yet....
 
the first couple of chapters of the hobbit do drag a bit. if you're struggling with the hobbit now though, you'll hate lord of the rings. he goes on for pages describing landscapes in it
 
Oh dear.... i might have to do a bit of skim reading then... i'l see how i get on :wacky:
 
The hobbit was written first, but I believe he re-wrote pieces of it after he wrote Lord of the Rings. I like the Hobbit a lot more as a book as it's much shorter, LotR does not deserve to be around a 1000 pages long, it's not that good. Some bits are incredibly boring too, all the stuff before they leave the shire drains one's will to live.
 
I haven't been able to get into 'The Hobbit.' :ness: I found 'Lord of the Rings' a lot more interesting, although I was only 14 and only managed to read 'Fellowship of the Ring' and half of 'The Two Towers' - my dad bought me all three in one book, so I treated it as one book and ended up a little overwhelmed by the mass of content. :wacky:

The books are heavy. There's a lot of description, but there's something incredibly fascinating the the level of detail with which Tolkien wrote. He truly envisaged an entire world. He envisaged, and desribed, eons of its history and hundreds, if not thousands, of its people, elves, dwarves and creatures.

If you can't get into 'The Hobbit,' I'd still attempt LotR, but I've been a persistent reader for yeaars.

(I also had a bit of a crush on Legolas when I read the book... :lew:)
 
I read a very old copy of Lord of the Rings that had all the books in one book. In that one book after the story had ended there was about 300 or so pages of character biographies and other miscellaneous notes.
 
Belle and Sebastian said:
I read a very old copy of Lord of the Rings that had all the books in one book. In that one book after the story had ended there was about 300 or so pages of character biographies and other miscellaneous notes.
Click to expand...

Sounds a lot like my version. There are also notes on the elvish language, the symbols for certain words/letters and lots more. I absolutely adored it! I read a fair few pages of the Appendices, despite never finishing the books. I need to read Return of the King!!

Might start that later today. :awesome:
 
The stuff at the start of the books is terribly dreary, the whole Shire history and family trees are very dull. Then it starts getting quite good until that Bombadil bastard appears. Then it returns to being really rather good
 
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