If you weren’t able to make it to our live voice chats for Book One of the Lord of the Rings, here’s a recap of what was discussed! Please excuse any typos or formatting errors as these are not as polished as I’d generally prefer my notes to be, but they are simply meant as a quick recap for anyone who missed our live chats since they are not recorded.

Book One Voice Chat Discussion Recap (June 4th)

Andy Serkis Audiobooks: The majority of our community has really enjoyed the Andy Serkis audiobook narration of The Lord of the Rings and is eagerly anticipating his narration of The Silmarillion which releases June 22nd. https://amzn.to/3oPBJ5m
Movie Discussion: Many minor differences between the Peter Jackson films and the books overall, but two major ones appear in this book -- Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-Wights.

Adaptations inevitably color your understanding of the book which is unfortunate because you kind of lose the ability to create it yourself, even when the adaptation is done well!
Many of Tom Bombadil’s lines are given to Treebeard in the films -- how interesting!?

Tom Bombadil Discussion:

Tolkien was just as intrigued by his characters as we are!
Discussion of Tom Bombadil as being created by Tolkien long before his own story
Discussion of various Tom Bombadil theories (many theories are linked at the end of this post!)

First Impression of the Hobbits:

New readers were impressed by the Hobbits, especially Merry’s courage and organization.
The Hobbits running around naked after the Barrow-downs can be seen as a symbol of their innocence; “it's almost like Tolkien sees embracing innocence after dealing with darkness as something that can be restorative and healing…”- Carli
The Hobbits’ resilience is on full display in these chapters as they’re continually narrowly avoiding death but then burst into song moments later. I feel like their innocence and lack of attachment gives them an ability to just be in the moment and flow with what is actually happening

Grieving for Frodo as he’s having to leave the Shire: Book One allows you to fall so deeply in love with the Shire so that you can really keenly feel the loss of it moving forward.
Links Mentioned in the Chat:

Book One: Book Club Notes

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