J. R. R. Tolkien - The Lord of the Rings, Part 1: The Fellowship of the Ring

I don't think that I have to tell you anything about LOTR, so I decided to tell sth about my reading and viewing experience:

I was only around twelve when I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time. I had my problems then, mostly because there where lots of unusual names and many different peoples. It took me more than one year to finish the big red book with the very thin pages, and in the end I was not really sure what I had read.

When I had finished I saw the Ralph Bakshi Film, which stops somewhere in the middle of the story.

My second reading of The Lord of the Rings (this time the new german translation in green) was before the first Jackson-movie came into the cinemas. This time I could follow the story much easier and I could grasp much better what was why happening. And then came lots of film watching. I have no idea how often I watched the the special extended version...

So the thing that happened, the second I opened the book (the english version from Harper Collins) this time, was I read "concerning hobbits" (which is the name of the prologue) and had instantly the respective piece of music in my mind. On the one hand this is great because I love the score by Howard Shore, on the other hand, myphantasy was not anymore triggered. I know that Gandalf looks like Ian McKellen, how a hobbit hole looks like... I know everything about Moria and about Gollum.

And than... the film is much more dramatic (ok, this is surely on purpose) and it interprets the book in parts very freely, I know I am a little nit-picky... but I like it when a film is LIKE the book. For example, Frodo is not such a crybaby in the book... 

All in all, for me, it became impossible reading LOTR without thinking about the film(s). I am not sure, whether this is a good thing or not. My phantasy is not working the way it was when I read it for the first time, when all characters where really created in my mind. This did not happen now, and because I like the films, it is now difficult for me to decide whether I like the book or whether I still like the films... Crap.

I will definitively go on reading, but not just now. I will start reading the german version of "The Bookthief" from Markus Zusak tomorrow.