I finished reading it, much quicker than I expected.  Regardless of what literary critics might have to say about it, it’s the most beautiful novel I’ve ever read.  It makes me want to live a noble life for its own sake, like no other piece of fiction has.  My heart is filled with longing for the characters and places in this book…  My main criticism would be that most of the prominent characters in this book were either impossibly noble or impossibly evil, and not enough in between, while the real world is filled with inbetweens.  It does show what we can become though, with just one step toward the light or one step toward the dark.  I found Gollum to be the character most like us in this sense (he has the potential for both good and bad), which came as a surprise because in the movie trailers he was so repulsive.  He’s repulsive in the book too, but seeing Gollum through written words helped me see other things in him, whereas when I saw him on screen, it was hard to get past the immediate visual repulsion.  Having first seen the movie (I was not all that enthused at the time) and now much later having read the book, I realize there’s so much I didn’t see when I was watching the movie.  Then again, I was 19 when I saw the movie… much has happened since then, and we only see as much as we know.  Maybe I’ll rewatch the movie now.

The part I dwelt on most: chapter 6 (The Forbidden Pool) of The Two Towers, when Frodo calls out to Smeagol (Gollum) to save him.

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