Home :: Books :: Science Fiction & Fantasy  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

List Price: $29.96
Your Price: $19.77
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 .. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 .. 115 >>

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Best Ever
Review: Have you ever heard of a book called The Hobbit? Listen now because this is the book I am going to reccomend it to you! This book has lots of adventure and excitement. The author of this book is J.R. Tolken. The Hobbit is the first of his books in the series Lord of The Rings. So read The Hobbit first.

The main characters of this book are Billbo Bagins, Gandolf, Thorn, Feily, Keily, Byfor, Bofor, Owen, Glowen, Dory, Nory, Bombar and Smaug. The book is about a group of drowfs and a hobbit Billbo. Smaug is a dragon who is grauding a treasure. Thorn's family used to live and mine there, but smaug came and took all the gold and silver and took Thorn's family out of the mountian.

Now Thorn and his comrads are coming back to take the mountains again. So what will happen to Billbo, Thorn, Gandolf and their comrads? I persomally like this book because it has lots of action and adventure. I think you should buy this book because if you liked the movie Lord of the Rings, you will love this book.The ending is very exciting, and it has a giant surprise at the end. So go and read The Hobbit to find out what happens!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Fantasy Literature?
Review: A master-piece. Boring at times, but a good read over-all. Just be patient and read it out to the end. The will of one hapless hobbit is what the world depends on. I don't understand why there isn't a final battle between the king and the enemy, oh well.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Exquisite, Excellent, Magnificent, Fantastic
Review: If you are willing to read thousands of review on this site about LOTR, you will see most of the reviewers feel that this is the best series in 20th century, and it is! J.R.R Tolkien had create a whole new world and its history, language(elvish), geography, creatures(ents, orcs...) and more. The plotline is simple yet complicate, there are many battles in the Return of the King, characters is well develope, and more.(you can see the rest of the list on the other reviews)

Then why 4 stars?

I minus one star because not all people will like this books. This series require extensive time to finish, and also, the scenery is a bit overdescriptive.You will read stuff about leaves, rocks, trees as the characters walk. Also, Tolkien fill his books with unnessary detail that is not required and may make you yell "get on with the story!"(For example, When a new character is introduce, you are more than likely is going to learn about their father, mother, etc, etc)

Overall the Lord of the Ring serie is EXQUISITE. Highly recommand it te people who do not have anything to do for the next week or so and love fantasy, and any people who wants to read quality literature.

Who should not read this serie? those people who play vedeo games, watch TV all days, watch the movie and expect exactly the same thing, people who do not have any imagination, people who hate waves and waves of description, and people who is extreamly busy.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Hobbit And LOTR
Review: Magnificient books.....if you are not a fantasy nut you will be after these two books....Please read first then watch the movie.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Pretty good
Review: This is one of the best noval in the whole world, and if you like fantasy, then I will highly recommand this book. If you like humors and twisting plotling,then I won't be recommanding this to you because there are hardly any humors.

reading age: 15+

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ignorant are those who rate it anything less than 5 stars
Review: Anyone who dares to call himself a reader, or better yet, a learned reader, should therefore be intelligent enough to recognize the sheer genius of 'The Lord of the Rings'.

To say nothing of the symbolism and subtle incorporation of humanistic themes, there is the author's obvious skill and knowledge of Norse/Gaelic mythology, German history and linguistics, particularly Old and Middle English. How many authors today are that learned?

This book reads like a more charming version of ancient history. From a factual standpoint, it is so thoroughly complete, expanded and detailed, that it is quite possible to make a career of studying Middle-earth and its inhabitants. Actually, there ARE professors who have devoted themselves to studying Tolkien.

And why not? Only Tolkien could have incorporated beautiful prose into a book aimed for children, have it reach international success...Then write a "sequel" that outshines it?

"The Hobbit", an innocuous work for the 1950's Harry Potter demographic, unleashed hobbits upon the world. When readers begged for more, Tolkien did not write a cheap companion that would have robbed his brilliant ideas of their potential. Instead, he took 12 years to connect 'The Hobbit' with 'The Silmarillion', marrying the innocence and childlike beauty of the former, to the epic scope and near biblical prose of the latter, to create 'The Lord of the Rings'.

What makes 'The Lord of the Rings' works is its ability to appeal to any type of reader: Those who look for fantasy may find it, as do those who look for real romance, those who seek action and adventure, and also the simple reader who wishes to believe that in a fight between good and evil, good will reign.

And what makes 'The Lord of the Rings' still dominate the fantasy genre after half a century, is its originality. I do not mean Tolkien's creation of hobbits, or his concept of a ring of power. I mean that Tolkien was the first author to write a work about such foreign concepts and beings, set in a foreign world with foreign cultures, on such a grand scale, and yet allow the smallest reader to feel that they are a part of that story. It is the simplicity of 'The Lord of the Rings', its accessibility to any reader, that gives this book its popularity.

I read this book through the month of December. During the Christmas holidays, I finished 'The Two Towers' and 'The Return of the King'. Sometimes I wish I could go back and read it for the first time again, for nothing comes close to the first time I put down that third installment, my heart breaking into thousands of shards, and tears flowing as if there were no tomorrow. Nothing compares to how I felt when I first realized the story was over. Truly over.

In my opinion, if a reader derives no pleasure from 'The Lord of the Rings', it is purely the fault of the reader, not the book. People should know by now not to expect the usual fantasy drivel from Tolkien. If they do, then they have been living under a rock in an enclosed camp of ignorance. You cannot blame the book if you are too illiterate to understand its beautiful prose, or too short-minded to read anything that does not offer gory battles within the first few paragraphs. It is not Tolkien's fault that few "readers" these days have the ability, or the desire, to understand any literature that is not predictable or formulaic.

'The Lord of the Rings' is the supreme achievement of the fantasy genre; of fiction; of literature. To know 'The Lord of the Rings', to understand it, to enjoy it, to share it, and to love it, is to enrich the very part of you that dares to believe.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Lord of the Rings deserves its acclaim.
Review: This review comes from a reader who has read classics from Dickens, Victor Hugo, Steinback, Thomas Hardy, etc. as well as great contemporary sci-fi and fantasy books; but I always come back to Lord of the Rings. It is my favorite book for many years already.

Though there are many fantasy and science-fiction books nowadays, none of them can match Lord of the Rings. The reasons are simple: many of these contemporary novels know nothing of subtlety, and each fantasy book keeps trying to be "bigger" than the last. It's like a rat race.

Tolkien really was a genius in being able to convey so many emotions through a book. True, the poems can be embarassing and Tolkien's prose can get cumbersome; but in the end, they all aid, not hinder.

I recommended this book to three of my friends; they all read it, and two ended up loving it while the last thought we were completely crazy. It isn't a great surprise that last person couldn't enjoy Lord of the Rings: he chopped his reading experience to bits and read pages randomly, and he did that only under my urgings. I suppose the Lord of the Rings just can't ring in the hearts of certain types of people. I do pity them for missing out in one of the world's greatest novels.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: This Is Sooooo Good!
Review: I first started reading J. R. R. Tolkein's The Hobbit when I was incouraged by my friend Nick. (Also an Amazon Reviewer .) At first I thought, oh wow a bunch of Dwarves are at his house and there's someone named Grandoff or something so I stopped reading after about 4 chapters. But then something happened. I was going to see the movie Zoolander and I saw the preview for the Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, and I thought to myself, "Wow! This looks really good. I bet The Hobbit is this good." So I started reading it and there I was, smack-dab in Middle-Earth fighting off huge spiders and floating dowm a river in barrels. I couldn't stop reading it! From then on I became a Lord Of The Rings fan! I wasn't just going to stop after The Hobbit, no way! I was going to finish the first book before the movie came out. So I started reading The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring. This was twice as good as The Hobbit. I could not stop reading this. It had such a good plot. Think about it. Something as simple as a golden ring could cause so much peril. And it had the best characters. Aragorn being my favorite, but I didn't finish it before the movie came out. I finished it 7 days after, and of course I still saw the movie anyways. Then I started reading The Two Towers. This book was about the struggle of Frodo and Sam marching their way towards Mordor. Along the way the meet a foul creature named Smeagol (Gollum) who acts as their guide. If you think that this sounds boring, you're wrong because you don't have to care about Frodo and Sam, there are plenty more things happening with Gandalf and the rest. This one I skipped around in reading and I finished it in about two months. Then I started read The Return Of The King which is, by far, the best one. I was reading every chance I had in school and my friends thought I was weird, and I finished it in 15 days! That's how good it is. And when I finished I was sad because I wanted there to be more great books like them to read. I tried looking but none of them match the gargantuan greatness of The Lord Of The Rings.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: What's It All About, Alfie?
Review: The foregoing reviews seem to divide their readers into two groups, those who love it and those who hate it. It occurs to me that many people start with a handicap, not knowing Tolkien's purpose in writing it. Tolkien was, above all, a Christian, and he wrote for Christians. Those who are Biblically illiterate will miss the allusions and evidences of Divine Providence that are of such importance to the narrative.
Having said this, I believe that lovers of the saga are to be found in all walks of life and all ages, including twelve-year-olds like my son, who has said, "This is my very favorite book of all books." Tolkien himself said that it is not an allegory, but "history, real or feigned." Whether it is to be viewed as real or feigned is a judgment of each individual. This work is, arguably, the greatest work of fiction of the twentieth century. More has been written about it by the best writers than any other novel of our time. It is either very deep or very shallow. Try it. If you have the necessary background, you might like it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fantastic
Review: The Lord of the Rings is an amazing series. From the moment you read of Bilbo Baggins' setting out to kill the great dragon Smaug in the Hobbit, you are caught in the grips of a fantasy land of no equal. Middle-earth is an extensively developed world, with many maps and detailed descriptions of its various locales. And unlike fantasy lands in some other books, Middle-earth leaves you inspired and joyful about living on our own earth. You never have to worry about whether Frodo will get caught by the Ringwraiths, or whether this time Gandalf won't save them; throughout the whole story there is a sense of providence, a reassurance that good will prevail. And in the end, everyone is left singing songs and eating feasts, a tribute to the good life that is normal, but occasionally interrupted by the necessary battles with orcs and goblins. You can read these stories to your children, and teach them about how God has created our world, and governs it, and the joy that Christians have as a result. In many ways, Middle-earth *is* earth, and Tolkien forcefully presses this point home.


<< 1 .. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 .. 115 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates