Reading Lord of the Rings For the First Time

I've been a fan of Lord of The Rings for as long as I can remember. I've seen the movies a million times, and they've even inspired me to become a filmmaker. I basically know the movies by heart, but have never actually read the books! I know, it's a little bit of a travesty.
I started reading the books in December 2014, and have very slowly made my way through them over a year. The reason it took so long to read was mainly due to school. November-April was incredibly busy for me and I must've read at least 3 textbooks cover to cover, 3-5 novels and countless short stories. I also got way too invested in Grey's Anatomy Netflix and worked three jobs during the summer, so it didn't leave a lot of time for reading. I really did wish I could have read them faster, though.

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I'm glad I read them. I loved every single minute of reading The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien is an amazing writer and story-teller. You can't even compare the books to the movies. The books are amazing, and so are the movies. Many people complained about certain characters or details that were left out, but I didn't really see how they could have been important to the movies. They were mostly just random characters the Hobbits met along the way and never heard of again.

One of my favourite things about the books, is Bill the pony. I think it's hilarious that Tolkien took so much care in telling the story of this one pony. At the beginning of their journey, the Hobbits were given a pony that was being mistreated whose name was Bill (just like his master). He was described as skinny and sad, but as the journey went on, all the up to Moria, Tolkien made sure to update the reader on Bill, and how he seemed to become healthier and happier. "So Bill was going as the beast of burden, yet he was the only member of the Company that did not seem depressed."
And just as we thought we had forgotten about poor Bill, he reappears in the last book and we find out his fate!

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It's all the little details like this that made me enjoy the books so much. They are a masterpiece and honestly when you're reading them, they almost start to sound like real history books.