The Fellowship is broken

The third time was not the charm for me and "The Lord of the Rings."

I don't know what it is about me, but to most people I apparently seem like the kind of guy who would've read JRR Tolkien's trilogy. When the first movie was bout to come out and I told people that I was looking forward to it, but would like to read the books first, they seemed surprised I hadn't already.

So I signed a copy of "The Fellowship of the Ring" out from the library and started reading it. Is it just me? I thought the story dragged on and on. Iknow, I know, it's just the beginning of much longer story -- the same thing I told people when I defended "The Phantom Menace." But still I just found it so difficult to read.

So I saw the movie (on DVD -- I don't get to the theater as often as I'd like anymore) instead. And I loved it. I decided to take another crack at the books before seeing "The Two Towers." Surely, now that I've seen the movie and knew what great things lay ahead, the book would be easier to get through, right? Guess again. I borrowed copies of all three books from a friend, but again I just couldn't get through "Fellowship." (In the meantime, I saw "Two Towers" on DVD and thougth it was great.)

Then this summer I finally saw "The Return of the King" on DVD and was just blown away by how great it was. I felt inspired to try reading the series again. I started off with the best of intentions, but once again I just couldn't plow through it.

So that's it. Strike three. I love those movies and I appreciate that the books are landmark pieces of literature, but I guess I was just never meant to read them. It seems I've been spoiled by the fast-paced works of Michael Crichton and Dan Brown.

Now I'm reading a book called "The Donor." It's about a guy who wakes up in a hospital only to discover that someone has removed one of his kidneys -- and that's not all. It appears two years earlier, someone removed a piece of his liver. Appearenlty this man is a match for someone and they are harvesting organs from him one-by-one. So he goes on the run and sets out to find out who is stealing his organs before they find him.