darth_ender said:
Finished The Hobbit and Thursday and I'm finally reading Fellowship. I began once many years ago and never finished. This time I'm determined to do it. I have to say, in the intervening years between their separate releases (I think18 years), Tolkein's style drastically improved. He's also certainly quite a bit wordier--I don't think I've ever read a longer set of introductory sections before getting to the first chapter of the actual novel.
Every film takes artistic license, but I didn't realize just how drastically the film diverged from the novel. The movie creates a far more immediate sense of impending danger. Right now in the book I'm at the point where the four hobbits meet a chap named Tom Bombadil. Wow, we got none of this in the movies. I understand that you can only transfer so much of a book to the screen, and don't get me wrong, I love the movies. I just am surprised at how thus far much of the plot is unrecognizable to what I'd already familiarized myself with.