*leans back against a tree in the Shire and lights his pipe, and blowing a smokering that Gandalf manipulated, I start to tell of my adventure...*
It was late 1975 when a friend and I went walking around the neighborhood. We stopped to share a smoke when he told me of this book he was reading called The Hobbit. I asked what it was about and he told me about hobbits and the fact they tended to stay home and loved to eat and smoke. That got me intersted as I figured they smoked alot, got high and then had the munchies. He loaned me the book after he finished and I started reading it and loved it! He told me on one of our walks about another book called the The Fellowship of the Ring. Of course I read it and since my friend wasn't reading them as fast as I, I checked out Return of the King from the library rather than waiting for him to finish. of course I delved into Middle Earth as I combed the Apendices for every scrap of detail. Early 1976 I spotted this girl reading Return of the King by the flagpole and I struck up a conversation. It was a nice relationship to finish out the senior year as we would write Tengwar notes to each other, and our crowning achievement was when we cut class after lunch when the construction crew went to lunch, and we inscribed 'friends' in Tengwar into a wet cement curb. It was there until last fall when rennovation of the school caused the destruction of that curb. It was too bad the last time we saw each other was graduation night....
Anyway, I loved Tolkien's writing, and was in the line party at the local Walden Books for the release of the Silmarillion... the first new glimpse into Middle Earth since the Return of the King was released in 1954.
I was also one who went to the theatre to see Bakshi's animated Lord of the Rings. I wasn't impressed with much of it, mainly because it ended at Helms Deep and was never truely finished. I did like the way the Orcs were portrayed as it was more like my minds eye saw them (they were too organized in the PJ movie).
I lapsed in my vigilance for Middle Earth for some years after that, not caring for the animated Hobbit and poor finish-up of Return of the King... Then I saw Unfinished Tales on a bookrack in a grocery store... one of the small ones in the checkout line, and I immediatly bought it, though I didn't read it for some months afterward. I loved it much, and promptly read the trilogy again. It was then I started writing some fanfiction and I used some of an unfinished novel I was writing over the years, and had fun making my own Middle Earth side stories. Anyway.. I digress...
It was with mixed feelings when I heard a movie was being made of the books, and though I think PJ has done a remarkable job of bringing Middle Earth to the big screen, there are many aspects of the movie I can never agree with (Rohan being rocky being one, the changing of the story so much being the other though I know why it was done).
The one thing I think has been lost is the Mind's Eye "seeing" the characters as described by Tolkien himself wheras reading the book for the first time after seeing the movie, the character imprint is already on ones mind before reading the descriptions. On the bright side, it has brought many more people to know the fine writings of Tolkien! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]
* tamps out pipe and stretches in the sun as I eat an apple..*
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