Well Worth the Time
“…we do not say anything…unless it is worth taking time to say and to listen to.” --Treebeard That’s how Ents, a race of beings whose job is to “shepherd” the trees of the forest (and who, like ordinary shepherds, have come to resemble their charges) approach storytelling. It’s how they approach daily speech, too. That way nobody ever says anything that wastes anyone’s time—which is probably why Ents can afford to take so long saying what few things they do say. Tolkien’s story proceeds on similar lines. I have spoken to people whom, when informed I’m listening to the Lord of the Rings books, have said they tried but found Tolkien too long-winded. I’ve never considered myself markedly more patient than my fellow man, but I do enjoy a good story. And by good I mean one that entertains and instructs and even illuminates. Tolkien may seem a little long in places, but the illumination is always there and the time is always well spent. Further, now that I have finished the whole journey I can say that the time the story takes makes the world in which it happens and the characters acting it out all the more real and substantial. I know there are those—literary theorists, mostly—who make a case against audiobooks on the grounds that it deprives the reader of a chance to fully come to grips with the material, to take it in through the eye and assimilate it via the medulla oblongata…or whatever. Who knows? They may be right. All I know is that I was grateful for a guiding hand on pronunciations of character and place names and especially grateful that every song in the three books is performed by Rob Inglis. His reading is masterful, but his singing adds even more to a story that is already bursting with good things. The one flaw is technical. There is a weird shadow—that’s the best I can describe it—on this recording. I tried downloading it a second time, but the shadow was still there. Not a distortion and not an echo, it’s just a weird thinness in Inglis’ voice. Or, rather, in the way his voice was recorded. It seems to bend from side to side in the middle of sentences. Much of my listening was done on mass transit, so this odd flaw wasn’t a real hindrance. But it is there; hence the three stars for Overall Performance.