I have a confession to make...

I have never read Tolkien.

Now I realise somewhere on the planet there's probably someone else who hasn't. But see, I read lots of phantasy fiction, and have most of my life. I took lots of linguistics in school, and nearly have a graduate degree in ancient and mediaeval studies. I'm a librarian, for pete's sake. I spent my entire adolescence in epic adventures (um...reading them, that is, which kept me from getting into the more normal teen adventures). But when I tried to read The Hobbit when I was fifteen I...well...I was bored.

Blasphemy, I know. Please don't get me wrong. I love epics. Give me the Iliad, the Ranayama or Beowulf. But like a lot of scholars, Tolkien tended to have a dry writing style. (Dorothy Sayers, Elizabeth Peters, Mary Renault, Andrew Greeley, and Marjorie Reeves are some exceptions). As far as I'm concerned, the key to good fiction writing is that the style, no matter what it may be, should draw you in without distracting you. It just didn't do it for me. And I always preferred some major female protagonists, rather than a ethereal blossom of womanhood who mainly gave the hero a favour. From what I've been told, many young girls who have seen the movie will be terribly disappointed when they read the books, because Arwen really doesn't have much to do in print, it being mostly men who go off to save the world, which makes sense in a mediaeval-style world. I am somewhat embarrassed that having been a gaming and computer geek most of my adult life, I did not know that a friend's character, Arwen, was named after the elf, or that another friend's computer name Nazgul, was from Tolkien.

I've decided to try again. There are other things, like Plato, that I despised as a teenager but love to read now--tastes change. And even if I don't like it, I feel like an idiot for not knowing the lingo. I did finally see The Lord of the Rings movie last weekend, and didn't have any trouble understanding it, except that I thought the great ranger Aragorn had a horse named Bill, until it was pointed out to me that it was only a pack pony (and even that has a long backstory in the books, apparently.) Having not read the books I went in without the usual prejudices of the truly Tolkien-mad (you know who you are). I thought the movie was decent enough, had some humour, showed that a bunch of men travelling on a quest will most likely have bad hair (except Legolas--it must be elven magic), and yes, I even cried when Boramir died, though I thought the manner in which he died made up for his being a get through the rest of it. Frankly I don't think you have to wait for the great and powerful wizard Gandalf to tell you to run when all the orcs? goblins? gnomes? whatever those thousands of things crawling down from the ceiling in Moria were suddenly and inexplicably turn tail and run. I found it pretty predictable (remember, I didn't know the story) with shallow/nearly nil characterisation, but I understand there's a time limit, and it's hard to condense Tolkien's description without losing the detail. It lacked the fabled magic of the stories. I'd take Harry Potter or Star Wars over this, although I'll certainly see the rest of the trilogy. And in the meantime, it has inspired me to plough back into Tolkien's prose...I'll let you know if I succeed.

Obviously I couldn't sleep, so I went playing on the Internet. I found out that my Hobbit name is: Ruby Bumbleroot of Haysend. Seemed like a good one. Of all the places I saw in the movie, I loved Lothlorien best (I didn't really care for Rivendell as well, but then I've always wanted to live in giant trees), followed by the Shire. Well, in point of fact, you could just say I liked New Zealand, since that's where it was filmed. I'd make a good hobbit--I've very nearly the feet for it, although they're not quite hairy enough. And while in an earlier post I took a test that said I was most like Galadriel, I must confess, I'm actually more a cross of Frodo and Sam (although I think I would have chucked Pippin somewhere along the way as a matter of survival).

This time I am heading to bed...really.