I had been contemplating listening to The Lord of the Rings as an audiobook, as a way of forcing myself to pay attention to each word of a text that I must have read dozens of times. I tried The Hobbit first, because it’s narrated by the same person, Rob Inglis.
I won’t be listening to Lord of the Rings, either read by Inglis or at all. With regard to the Inglis versions, I just wouldn’t be able to take the songs. It may be that my brain is corrupted by pop music, but the songs just sound all wrong—both the tunes the music is put to, and the way Inglis sings them. The idea of sitting through all of “Earendil was a mariner,” which as I recall goes on for pages, very nearly gives me hives. But in general, the movies have given me specific ideas about how the characters sound, and hearing a different voice for Gandalf in The Hobbit was subtly jarring enough that I wouldn’t look forward to hearing a whole trilogy’s worth of different voices. I also have some pretty specific ideas about the phrasing of various lines, from having read the thing so often. I might have to exercise some discipline to really pay attention to the familiar text, but I think it’s probably best to have it be just me and the text and no other voices.
As for The Hobbit itself, I haven’t read it for quite a while, so it was interesting to note that it’s actually fairly grim all the way through, even though I had the impression it’s considered a relatively light book. I’d also forgotten the extent to which it’s a cautionary tale against greed; and the extent to which the plot depends on fortuitous (or, perhaps, divine) circumstances. On a lighter note, Beorn was doing some major genetic modifications on those dogs of his to get them able to walk upright and carry things on their front paws—did Tolkien have a dog and realize just how ungainly they are on their hind legs?
Weirder yet: Listening to the BBC LOTR radio play, featuring Ian Holm as Frodo. Dude, Ian Holm is BILBO.
I’ve been listening to BBC radio plays recently, actually, but not that one. I think I may have checked that one out of the library a few years ago; if it’s the same one, I didn’t get very far into it, because I didn’t like the Gandalf voice and then was in no mood to keep listening after being pulled over for my very first speeding ticket.
WRT paying very careful attention to the exact wording of The Lord of the Rings…
Do you by chance read any other languages semi-fluently? Here’s why I ask: probably the most rewarding look into TLotR I ever had was a couple of evenings spent with my brother during some vacation or other, reading TLotR together in a very weird way. I am slightly fluent in French; he is slightly fluent in German. I had a copy of Le Seigneur des Anneaux, he had a copy of Der Herr der Ringe, and we had a Ballantine paperback of TLotR for reference.
The game went as follows: I would read a paragraph of the French to myself, and speak out loud my attempted reconstruction of the original English. This was partly a test of my memory of the original (I’ve also re-read it repeatedly), and partly a test of the translation and of my skill. My brother would check me against the English, we’d comment on any differences, and then he’d hand me the English copy and do the same with the next paragraph, from the German.
It was remarkably fun, and got us miles deep into the precise wording and nuance of the text. It occurs to me that you could do something like this solo, though it would be less fun. If your language is German, you’d even have the pleasure of working with a good translation. (The French is pretty weak.)
David Tate: alas, I do not, though it sounds pretty interesting—in a limited way with manga and anime, I’m finding that comparing translations, and also comparing the same story told in different formats, to be thought-provoking.
I like the Rob Inglis audiobooks of The Hobbit and LotR a lot (he also did “A Wizard of Earthsea”), but I agree with you about the singing. It’s… not good.
I’ve mostly skipped the songs and poems when re-reading the books anyway, which is impractical in an audiobook, but Inglis’ singing isn’t good. It’s weird-sounding. However, he doesn’t actually sing the Earendil poem, since it’s a poem, not a song. He chants it. That makes it be somewhat more tolerable than what you imagine, despite its length.