Tolkien, J. R. R.

• Series: The Lord of the Rings
  • The Hobbit (10)
  • The Fellowship of the Ring (10)
  • The Two Towers (10)
  • The Return of the King (10)

    • Arguably the defining series of the modern fantasy genre. This is a very entertaining, richly developed series about the adventures of some Hobbits who have great destiny thrust upon them. If you haven't read this yet and are even mildly interested in fantasy, quit kidding yourself and get out and read this series!

      Updated May 2000: With news of the movie version of the trilogy coming out starting December of 2001, my interest in this series was sparked enough to re-read the books I last finished when I was 15 years old. I couldn't be happier with my decision. As much as I loved these books when I was young, I didn't have the reading experience under my belt to truly appreciate them. It has been a long time since I was moved like this, excited by Eowyn and brave Merry and their surprising defeat of the black rider, amazed by elves (written properly) like Legolas, Elrond and Galadriel and moved by the departure to the sea of Gandalf, Frodo, Bilbo and their companions in the end. If you're like me and haven't read these in a long time, do yourself a favor and read the series again. You'll get about 20 pages into "The Hobbit" and wonder where this kind of writing has run off and hidden.

• The Silmarillion (6)

  • A series of short stories that reads somewhat like the Bible only written for Middle-Earth. Tends to plod at times and contains about half a million names, only ten of which you'll ever remember if you're lucky. Still, I enjoyed it because it develops the background for a great shareware game called Angband (a more complicated derivative of Rogue/Moria/NetHack). I'm told that the Unfinished Tales do a similar job of telling old history but they are much better.

Return to the Welcome Page of Doug's Library.