Lord Of The Rings: Prologue To Chapter One

Well, I got through the easy part.

I was going to summarize what happened in these first 53 pages, but then I realized that Tolkien has packed an absurd amount of information into them. So, all you need to know is:

Bilbo Baggins is a Hobbit of extraordinary preservation and wealth. He had adventures, and has gone, without warning to his adopted whatever-he-is Frodo, on yet another. He leaves Frodo a magic ring that was clearly a bad influence on him, which we can conjecture from the wizard Gandalf's worry over it. Frodo is now alone in the Shire and must face the wrath of Bilbo's extended family, who wish to strip his house of any valuables.

Characters Introduced:

• Bilbo Baggins: The titular Hobbit of the last book, now advanced in age even for a Hobbit and quite odd. He is in possession of a ring, which he leaves with Frodo along with a great deal of his estate upon his departure.
• Frodo Baggins: Bilbo's adopted whatever-he-is, orphaned from a young age when his mother and father drowned.
• Gandalf: A wizard with fireworks who is clearly worried about the influence of the ring that Bilbo acquired in his last grand adventure.
• Lobelia and Otho Sackville-Baggins: Not likely to be important, but quite amusing characters to me nonetheless. Basically a couple with an inflated sense of self-worth who are scandalized by the lack of representation they get in Bilbo's will.
• Merry Brandybuck: Look, I know he's important. He shows up for two seconds to inform the Sackville-Bagginses that Frodo is indisposed.

Overall, I was charmed by the environment of the Shire, though M. Tolkien is definitely already setting the reader up for things to come. He mentions the ring more than once, and its history. We see how it's put a strain on Gandalf and Bilbo's friendship, how Bilbo's personality changes when it comes to the ring, and Bilbo's dependence on it. Basically the ring is the magical and inanimate equivalent of an addiction or a bad girlfriend Bilbo can't seem to break off from.

The emphasis on just how unknown the Hobbits are outside of the Shire sets us up for an unlikely hero sort of plotline, one that by now everyone is familiar with.

And now for some LotR weirdness.

There was a musical, in case fans thought they were immune to such a thing. And if my memory serves correctly, this is not the only one. :D I have to admit, the score is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine... It was A.R. Rahman and a Scandinavian girl group! How could it fail??? Oh... like that...

So I like my male duets. A lot. Shut up.

Starting Lord Of The Rings...

Having read The Hobbit [The film of which will feature Benedict Cumberbatch's voice in two roles; Smaug the Dragon and The Necromancer. The good news just keeps on getting better!] at least seven times, I thought I should at last try to graduate to Tolkien's masterwork. I have started reading it five times; each time I got to the part where the Fellowship was formed and then I stopped. God knows why I can read The Hobbit so often but have such a difficulty trying to read The Lord of the Rings.

My edition

So I thought blogging my progress would help things along. Writing about my observations every day helped me to an absurd degree with The Name of the Rose, after all. I will be posting on my Lord of the Rings journey as time permits.

In other news, the first meeting regarding Tartuffe is happening this Tuesday at five. I am very excited to at last receive my rhyming script, and to share my ideas about how to interpret the Officer with the Director, who shall have to suffer a great deal from me on this point, I believe. However, she's a Doctor Who/Sherlock/Moffat-when-he's-not-being-stupid fan, so I likely won't be as insufferable to her as I am to other people.

Speaking of Doctor Who, I've finally got around to watching some of the more vintage episodes, with John Pertwee and Tom Baker and so on. I thought the time period in which it was made, but instead it just adds to the charm. Having been raised on Dangerman and The Avengers, maybe this is just me, but I feel as though the seventies-style sci-fi makes the series even better, and not sickeningly nostalgic either.

The story for the Femme Fatales Anthology is finished and in the process of being edited. I like the work I did with the story, though there are a couple of points I still want to tinker with. Maybe I will write more about it later.

Finally, because I believe I promised to, here is the monster essay on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I hope I did him proud.