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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Agback" data-source="post: 584164" data-attributes="member: 5328">This is a very common experience. I must know ten or a dozen people, some of them real fantasy buffs, who have tried hard to read LotR and bounced before they got past the Council of Elrond. And when I re-read the book I often start at the Council of Elrond, which is where the story starts.I'd like to say that this was a fatal flaw in LotR. But it is very hard to maintain that a book that has out-sold every other book ever written (except the Bible) has a fatal flaw.I still maintain, though, that LotR would be a better book for a heavy edit, and better still for a substantial abridgement. The Reader's Digest condensed version (due out in 2044, Sonny Bono willing) could easily be half the length, and omit neither incident nor characterisation. In addition to which there are long sequences that don't belong to the book at all. For instance, the whole first chapter is essentially a bridge from The Hobbit. This is quite unnecessary, especially as readers rarely come to LotR as a sequel to The Hobbit and the book would benefit from its excision.If I had been in Peter Jackson's shoes I would have cut the Party sequence as well as Tim Benzedrine and the Barrow-wights, and done without a prologue, to leave room for myself to build up to a revelation in the Council of Elrond.Regards,Agback(Edit: insert missing subject in main clause of last sentence, and correct italicisation.)</blockquote>

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