[areader]

Read the first chapter.

I got sucked into the story. I read it at 12, my sister who never read anything, bought it with all the money she had for me at a jumble sale, she didn't get anything for herself...and she was a mean elder sister! I took the books...but I thought they would be pretty awful. She wasn't into reading.

I read it through. And I read it two consecutive times after that and I still read it and probably will at least once a year. Has someone else replicated it for me...nope...that was the year my Mum started shouting, "Get your head out of that book" and "You are not reading that at the dinner table."


if you've ever been to the family gathering from hell and had relatives you've disliked, if you've ever had a secret, if you've ever wondered who your friends really are,if you've ever felt burdened by something, if you think some things in life are worth saving even at a personal cost, if you've lost something to gain something, if you've found help when you least expected it ...if you've ever wondered if in a dire situation whether you'd meet the challenge.... Its a great story...and things ring true all the way through it right to the very ending.

No one writes like this...devils advocate...well it has lengthy descriptions, pages of poetry, words galore...and a hefty appendix. And I remember throwing a full scale tantrum and howling tears. I had a long conversation with my mother about how I wanted to know what was going on with Frodo and should I skip ahead to find out as it was taking too many chapters...my mum had no idea...so I showed her by marking with my fingers how long it had taken...and she said you might miss something important...so I didn't.

Someone told an eight year old I know, that he could see the movie if he read his way through the three books (a bit violent for a kid his parents thought)...Nan and Gramps provided them... So there he was sitting there and reading them. I got lost in the covers...they were the original books that I had read and long since fallen apart. When I saw those covers, I knew he would read it to the end....the books were 33 years old. That's a long time to be keeping them on the bookshelf. It took him a while, but not quite as long as his parents hoped it would take him. Somewhere along the way he had a bit of a conversation with me, about skipping pages...I kid you not.

Some books stay with you. This is one of them.