It's hard to review a book that is already a classic and widely read and about which people are already very opinionated. I'll give it my best shot, though. This is the first time I've read this book all the way through, although I read about half of it six years ago before giving up. This time it was very hard to read the book without comparing it to the movie, but I will try to base this review solely on the book.

For starters, this book is written in a style that isn't very easy to read. The characters speak using language that every day people don't use. But after a while I found that I was able to fall into the story and no longer notice that the language is odd. Each time I picked up the book I could slip into this mode more and more quickly and pretty soon I found that I was actually enjoying the language as opposed to be annoyed by it as I was when I first began.

The story itself takes a while to get going. It starts off with a bang with the departure of Bilbo and then it stagnates for a while, waiting for something else to happen. When the action finally does start again, it starts slowly and only happens a trickle at a time. During the first 200 to 290 pages Frodo was running from something—he didn't know what—to somewhere—he didn't know where—and it was a bit boring. I also found the chapters about Tom Bombadil to be very boring and not at all helpful to the story. After Frodo and his friends reached Rivendell, the action picked up considerably and never let down until the book ended—suddenly—as we all know it does.

My biggest complaint about the book besides the slowness of the beginning chapters is the mention of many names and places, most of which have no bearing on the story and most of which the reader is clueless about. I can see now how all these names may have enriched the wonder of Middle-earth, but at the same time, I tended to get bogged down with them. My other complaint was that I felt there wasn't enough detail given about the places they saw. They went to a variety of places and I felt the details about them were scant.

Overall I enjoyed this book and I'm glad I gave it a second chance. If there's anyone out there who hasn't read this book yet, you should, it's worth the effort. I'm looking forward to reading the next two books in The Lord of the Rings series as well as The Hobbit. In fact, reading this book has made me wish that Tolkien had written more books about the goings-on of Middle-earth in other times and other places. I want to hear more about how the dwarves created Moria or what the elves have been doing in all their long years.