I've been meaning to do another read of Tolkien's work for a while now, and when the book came up in Discord @Irene suggested we do a bit of a book club read along. She then bullied me into making this thread.

Is anyone interested in such a thing? I imagine we'd follow the example of the HP read alongs, and go chapter by chapter, or a few chapters at a time, before discussing them.

Raise your hand or hand in your nerd credentials.

 

This thread has my full support, including the bullying

 

I was going to ask a moderator for help, but then I realised my folly.

 

I have also intended to re-read for many a season.

 

I could manage a chapter or 3 at a time. Probably.

 

I'm down. Sounds like fun.

 

A chapter at a time makes the One Ring Mine.

 

I've actually never read TLOR (tried, but couldn't get into it). Maybe I can give it another shot.

 

I've never managed to get through Lord of the Rings*. My best friend loathes me for it.
I can maybe give it a shot, but I'm not sure how hot I'll be at the discussion.

*And I managed to read through Lightning on the Wave's 2,000,000 word slash series.

 

It's been a few years, and I've been thinking about reading through this, and then giving the peripheral books a spin too after. I'm probably down.

 

Well, I'd say that's a decent amount of interest. I've added a poll to determine how much we'll read at a time before we break to discuss.

 

I've been a quarter into the first book for a while now, so this is a nice chance to finish it.

 

Here's a list of chapters in LotR to help make informed decisions on the poll: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Portal:The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Chapters

Does "one book" in the poll refer to one of three or one of six?

 

Without appendices we are looking at 62 chapters. With 3 a week that would take 21 weeks or about five months. One per week and we'd finish Christmas 2022 at the earliest.


// We might also want to group chapters by length or content, rather then count. Having weeks with barely 10k words and other with 30k+ won't make for a great experience.


http://lotrproject.com/statistics/books/chapters

 

I think there's something to be said for breaking it down by words rather than chapters in that case. I'll see about adding an option to the poll. Something like, 'Approx 20k words per week'?

 

So for Fellowship the breakdown would look something like this:


Most weeks it's two or three chapters. The exception would be the prologue with four and The Council of Elrond which is 16k on it's own. Probably the main reason why just saying three chapters a week won't work.

I could also look to split up the six books individually instead of grouping them like this.

 

Sounds like a neat idea, i lent my copy of lotr out years ago and promptly forgot to whom.

Maybe I'll listen to the audiobook or get an ebook version.

 

I suggest we add this to the LOTR reading list as well.

 

So whats our start date? November 28th? December 26th? Jan 2?

 

How about a week from today?