LotR -- Book 5 - Chapter 01 - Minas Tirith

[Guinevere]

There is little left for me to remark, everything important about Denethor and Pippin having been said.

Just some things I noticed.

I only realized now that the riders Gandalf & Pip passed in the dark were errand riders of Gondor, and one of them must have been Hirgon.

In several places Tolkien makes the connection to the Frodo & Sam - thread, to events that we already have read about, but that take place simultanously with the ones we read about now.

He wondered where Frodo was , and if he was already in Mordor; or if he was dead; and he did not know that Frodo from far away looked on that same moon as it set beyond Gondor ere the coming of the day.

and I remember vividly that scene from Henneth Annûn.

...and the warm sun that shone down beyond the river, as Frodo walked in the glades of Ithilien, glowed here on the smooth walls and rooted pillars...

Pippin's first glimpse of Minas Tirith is such a lovely sight!
And the description of the Pelennor is very accurate indeed (I had to look up a lot of words in the dictionary though: like fiefs, tilth, fold , byre, oast and garner...)
I wondered also about the description of the road: "Wide and well-paved, and along its eastern edge ran a broad green riding-track, and beyond that a wall." This is exactly painted like this in a picture of Minas Tirith by Ted Nasmith!
At this reading,I looked up on the map all the places where the troups from the outlands come from.
(Incidentally, does everyone here know, that Pelennor is pronounced Pelennor? The movie crew obviously doesn't, and I am only sure where the stress is since I have heard Tolkien himself pronounce it on a CD!)

The ancient culture in Gondor is such a contrast to the one where Pippin comes from! It is like a journey in a long past, medieval world.
The Shire is much nearer to our world: the hobbits have family names like we have, but in Minas Tirith, Pippin Took becomes Peregrin son of Paladin, soldier of Gondor.
In the Shire, they seem to have watches und measure time as we do, but in Minas Tirith the hours are counted from sunrise and rung with a bell.

I find it very refreshing to meet Beregond (an almost "normal" Gondorian) , and especially Bergil. Yes, I wondered too, why his father let him stay in the city. But the boy himself finds it exciting and doesn't really realize the danger:
"Almost I wish now that there was no war." he says to Pippin.
Beregond's words about Denethor are pretty revealing:

The Lord Denethor is unlike other men: he sees far. Some say that as he sits alone in his high chamber in the Tower at night, and bends his thought this way and that, he can read somewhat of the future;and that he will at times search even the mind of the Enemy, wrestling with him . And so it is that he is old, worn before his time.

And Denethor himself, when he tells Gandalf:

"For though the Stones be lost, they say, still the lords of Gondor have keener sight than lesser men..."

is almost lying. How can he think that Gandalf doesn't suspect the truth?
I find it a bit strange anyway, that the Gondorians can have completely forgotten the existance of the Palantiri...