Ten years since I last opened this, which is embarrassing to admit for a book I’d call one of my favorites, and I went back into it worried the spell would be broken by, I don’t know, being an adult with a mortgage and opinions about grocery prices. It wasn’t. If anything I noticed different things this time, the way the Shire chapters, which teenage me skimmed to get to the interesting parts, are actually load-bearing, they’re what the whole rest of the book is defending.
I know some people bounce hard off the third book specifically, the pacing after the Ring’s destroyed feels like an afterthought to more than one reader I’ve talked to, all wrap-up and Frodo moaning and Sam feeling torn without much happening. I get the complaint and don’t fully share it, the Scouring of the Shire did more work on me this read than it did the first time, because now I actually understand what it means to come home changed and find home changed too, in smaller, sadder ways.
What surprised me most is how much slower and stranger the prose is than the movies trained me to expect, entire chapters are basically extended songs and genealogies, and I loved almost all of it, which past-me would not have predicted. Five stars, no real hesitation. Some books you outgrow. This one just waits for you to catch up to it.