Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Even Better the 3rd Time Around

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

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What a difference time can make when re-reading books! The first time I read The Fellowship of the Ring, I was an undergrad and felt that about the first 100 pages was a slog. The second time (I don’t recall when that was), I was prepared for the slog and knew I’d enjoy the rest of the novel, minus what I felt was a rather pointless section with Tom Bombadil. But this time was different. It’s been several years since I last read it, and […]

The Boys Trip

The Hobbit: The Graphic Novel by J. R. R. Tolkien

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I have never really had an interest in reading J. R. R. Tolkien, simply because if you can make as many movies from one series (Lord of the Rings) as it has had, and I know that a lot of what is in the novel is taken out, I am thinking they are not for me. However, I do know that The Hobbit is a bit shorter, and since it is just one novel, I thought maybe I could tackle it. It wasn’t until I […]

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

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CBR12 Bingo: Yellow When I was a kid my dad read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy to me. I’d already read The Hobbit, and of course as a kid I preferred the simplicity and accessibility of that book, but I can still remember the moment that my dad and I finished reading The Two Towers: “Frodo was alive but taken by the Enemy.” Whew. Eat your heart out, The Empire Strikes Back–that is a killer ending to a Part II of a trilogy. […]

One Ring To Rule Them All…..

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

The Return of the King by JRR Tolkien

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My first encounter with the enormous doorstop that is Tolkien’s classic was when I was ten and my dad read it to me as a bedtime story. I blame him, and these books for my obsession with fantasy and the ridiculous amount of Pinterest boards I’ve dedicated to LOTR and Hobbit fan art.  Even so, sitting down to re-read the doorstop is a commitment I’m not usually ready to make, so for a long time, the movies have kept my obsessions alive. But pandemic lock […]

One to Bind Them All

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Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1988) – There are several books on my shelves that I must reread every couple years because I miss them.  The Lord of the Rings is one of them (along with Dune, Harry Potter, and the Modesty Blaise books).  I guess I originally read it in the seventies and have reread it consistently through the years.  Although I’ll try not to compare the book with the movie, after you’ve seen Viggo and Elijah as Aragorn and Frodo, it’s […]

A theology master class in Tolkien. Just my style.

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As a kid, I grew up with C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, but I missed out on The Lord of the Rings until much later. Several of my classmates in high school were huge Tolkien fans, and I was curious enough to give him a try once I graduated. I read The Hobbit between high school and college, and with the last film coming out, I spent the first semester of my freshman year in college reading The Lord of the Rings books in […]



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