I’ve watched the Fellowship of the Ring movie maybe a dozen times. I’ve seen The Two Towers a handful of times, and Return of the King maybe once or twice. Given this, it’s pretty hard to separate my experience of the book from my experience of the movie. I think this is both for better and for worse.

For worse because I have a hard time taking characters and scenes exclusively as written by Tolkien. Instead, end up I envisioning the scenes as they were interpreted by Peter Jackson. But, my experience with the movies is for better because I found some parts of the book to be kind of a drag, or written inaccessibly, and in those moments I was happy to have my understanding of the plot and the character dynamics from the movie to help propel me through.

Given that I’ve seen the second two movies a lot less than I’ve seen the first one, I am interested to see if my reading of the second two books is less affected. My book versions of Aragorn, Gandalf, Frodo and Sam are already starting to diverge a bit from my movie versions of them… and I hope that process continues as I read the next books.

I’m also really looking forward to rewatching all three movies after I finish the books.