yovargas wrote:I split this off from the News from Bree thread - VtF
(I can't find any existing thread where this would seem to fit, and I don't feel like starting a new thread, so I am sticking it here.)
I first read Lord of the rings when I was around 10 years old and fell head over heels in love with the books. I reread them every year or two until about the time that the movies came out, which were in my early twenties. For whatever reason, the last time that I had read the books was the year after the first movie came out, before The two towers came out. That would have been 2002, so it had been nearly 20 years. In that time, I have seen the movies dozens of times, and I usually name them as my all time favorite movies.
Increasingly, as time went by, one reason that I was reluctant to read the book is the observation that as time goes by and I get further and further from my 20-year-old self a lot of things that I loved back in those days don't particularly resonate with me anymore. The thought that I might read them as my older self and not love them seemed an unhappy thought about something that seemed so important to me in my youth. So I kept putting it off and putting it off, while feeling like I had to go back to them again someday. And now, a few months after turning 40 years old, I have finished reading Lord of the rings again.
The result? I could say a thousand things about it, but suffice to say that unfortunately, my fears were right. I largely enjoyed the books, much of it is quite wonderful, but I don't think I can truly say I especially loved it. It did not grab me and move me the way it did my younger self. Honestly there are large stretches of the book that I found rather dull. I'm fairly certain that if this had been my first time exposed to this story in any form, it will have just been another nice, enjoyable book amongst many other nice, enjoyable books.
On a more personal note, it is something that saddens me and weighs on me a bit more than a simply finding one's opinion of one thing change over time. For I keep feeling over and over, as I get older, that it gets much, much harder for me to truly feel passionate about something, and easier and easier to find fault in things. It is a sombering thought. I am only 40 now. What will life feel like at 60?
One final, controversial thought: the movies did it better!
I have noticed the opposite effect. The older I get the more I love them.