J. R. R. Tolkien: There and Back Again

Last night Alecon and I started watching The Lord of The Rings again. This is interesting for me because we went out on our first date during the premiere of The Return of the King. I thought it would be good that we watch the whole thing together (on DVD).
I love it that they released the extended version. They were able to put in so much detail that wouldn't work in the theatrical release. Full disclosure: I used to be such a Tolkien nut way back in university. I wrote my thesis: "Where in the world is Middle-Earth? A Post-Colonial Reading of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion." (Ana Garamendi, I know you still have my personal copy. If you happen to read this, please contact me). There wasn't a lot of us then back in 1997. My main beef with the movies is that in the effort to be Politically Correct, they made Arwen's character do all sorts of things at the expense of real characters they under-developed, or even scrapped altogether. Glorindel II, where art thou? Otherwise, I really loved the cinematic adaptation. Now I've started reading "The Hobbit" again, and I can't believe how I managed to forget how good Tolkien is. I've enjoyed J. K. Rowling, Eoin Colfer, and Jonathan Stroud in recent years and I really like them. But to think that I compared them to old Professor Tolkien is suddenly ludicrous to me. I foresee myself totally geeking out over the next couple of months about Middle Earth. Now I just can't wait to get home and start reading the books and watching the flicks again.