Golden
Today is my golden birthday (since today is the 22nd, that means I turned 22). Today I finished reading the Tolkien trilogy for the seventh time.
This is entirely self-indulgent.
Between sixth grade (or earlier) and the end of ninth grade, I read the trilogy (plus the Hobbit) six times. The time parameters are rather sketchy in my memory, but I remember reading Tolkien at the lunch table with the group whose fringes I hung on in sixth grade, and I remember finishing my sixth runthrough the winter my mother passed away (ninth). Somehow I didn't read it after that--I think more because I knew, by then, what was going to happen to the characters, than from any associative distress (but I never know, with me).
In the seven years since ninth grade (or, about seven years... another term or half of one will complete the tally) I've very slowly read the trilogy a seventh time. I don't think I picked the prequel (The Hobbit) up until freshman year of college, though I'm not certain of that.
I meant to have the seventh runthrough completed by my 21st birthday, since 21 is a multiple of seven (I like things like that, and seven is the number of perfection). But I barely managed to finish The Two Towers before I was slated to see the movie with my siblings and our favorite uncle. So I decided that having the seventh runthrough finished in the last nearly-seven years, right before my golden birthday, and just as the movie trilogy was completed, would be sufficiently significant.
I'm not a hard-core Tolkien fan. I don't remember the events from one reading to another (unless that was why I stopped seven years ago). I don't refer to the maps or read the appendices. I'm certainly not a canon buff like some of my Harry Potter friends. So I won't deny that the books are dry in many places. But they're also treasure in many places--there's gold peeking up from the murky water. Maybe even a gold ring. Reading through this time (as I wondered if I would ever read them again, considering how long it took me this time) I found a few things I wanted to comment on or mark, so to continue the self-indulgence, I will. Hey, it's my birthday.
Denethor: "But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated." (158) It's just so total.
Eomer: "Ride, ride to ruin and world's ending!" (145) I love the battle cries!
Gandalf: "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." (190) No comment necessary.
Some bits I personally identified with:
Sam: "I wonder if they think of us at all, and what is happening to them all away there." (211)
Bilbo: "…really I think it’s much more comfortable to sit here and hear about it all." (329)
There's huge themes of friendship and parting and growing up in this book... and I have such great friends, the anticipating of parting from them (graduating college), and the reality of growing up (I'm 22, after all. Isn't that supposed to mean something?).
SEPTEMBER 22 IS BILBO'S BIRTHDAY. 22nd by the Shire reckoning, anyway, which is different from the Roman calendar, but hey.
I love the battles best. And I figured out why heroes always survive: the story wouldn't be about them, if they didn't survive. Stories generally frame a life, so the battle that kills the hero(es) generally won't happen until the end, if it happens at all. I feel a little less demoralized, though I would like to see the little people (the foot soldiers, not the hobbits, silly) get some recognition for dying gruesomely. Bah.
I've also come up with a rationale that will allow me to forgive Peter Jackson for changing the stories: he's a storyteller, not a historian. Any good storyteller will change history for pure emotional impact, because the change makes it a better story. Not because it's true or even feasible. Yes, I was miffed by his The Two Towers, why do you ask?
This is entirely self-indulgent.
Between sixth grade (or earlier) and the end of ninth grade, I read the trilogy (plus the Hobbit) six times. The time parameters are rather sketchy in my memory, but I remember reading Tolkien at the lunch table with the group whose fringes I hung on in sixth grade, and I remember finishing my sixth runthrough the winter my mother passed away (ninth). Somehow I didn't read it after that--I think more because I knew, by then, what was going to happen to the characters, than from any associative distress (but I never know, with me).
In the seven years since ninth grade (or, about seven years... another term or half of one will complete the tally) I've very slowly read the trilogy a seventh time. I don't think I picked the prequel (The Hobbit) up until freshman year of college, though I'm not certain of that.
I meant to have the seventh runthrough completed by my 21st birthday, since 21 is a multiple of seven (I like things like that, and seven is the number of perfection). But I barely managed to finish The Two Towers before I was slated to see the movie with my siblings and our favorite uncle. So I decided that having the seventh runthrough finished in the last nearly-seven years, right before my golden birthday, and just as the movie trilogy was completed, would be sufficiently significant.
I'm not a hard-core Tolkien fan. I don't remember the events from one reading to another (unless that was why I stopped seven years ago). I don't refer to the maps or read the appendices. I'm certainly not a canon buff like some of my Harry Potter friends. So I won't deny that the books are dry in many places. But they're also treasure in many places--there's gold peeking up from the murky water. Maybe even a gold ring. Reading through this time (as I wondered if I would ever read them again, considering how long it took me this time) I found a few things I wanted to comment on or mark, so to continue the self-indulgence, I will. Hey, it's my birthday.
Denethor: "But if doom denies this to me, then I will have naught: neither life diminished, nor love halved, nor honour abated." (158) It's just so total.
Eomer: "Ride, ride to ruin and world's ending!" (145) I love the battle cries!
Gandalf: "Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule." (190) No comment necessary.
Some bits I personally identified with:
Sam: "I wonder if they think of us at all, and what is happening to them all away there." (211)
Bilbo: "…really I think it’s much more comfortable to sit here and hear about it all." (329)
There's huge themes of friendship and parting and growing up in this book... and I have such great friends, the anticipating of parting from them (graduating college), and the reality of growing up (I'm 22, after all. Isn't that supposed to mean something?).
SEPTEMBER 22 IS BILBO'S BIRTHDAY. 22nd by the Shire reckoning, anyway, which is different from the Roman calendar, but hey.
I love the battles best. And I figured out why heroes always survive: the story wouldn't be about them, if they didn't survive. Stories generally frame a life, so the battle that kills the hero(es) generally won't happen until the end, if it happens at all. I feel a little less demoralized, though I would like to see the little people (the foot soldiers, not the hobbits, silly) get some recognition for dying gruesomely. Bah.
I've also come up with a rationale that will allow me to forgive Peter Jackson for changing the stories: he's a storyteller, not a historian. Any good storyteller will change history for pure emotional impact, because the change makes it a better story. Not because it's true or even feasible. Yes, I was miffed by his The Two Towers, why do you ask?