The Ring Goes South [Fellowship of the Ring, Ch.15]

Discussion of Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter Three

Join Cam and Maggie for a special late-night episode. The whole Fellowship is together now, and we finally get to know some of our new friends! Legolas seems cool, Aragorn remains the Alpha, and Maggie hates Boromir for some reason. We dive into the first fully-fledged adventure of the book, breaking down the sudden evolution of Tolkien’s nature writing and Elrond’s total uselessness as a mentor. Maggie leads a discussion about the birds and their strange, uncertain role in Middle-earth. Are they Gandalf’s spies, BFFs to Radagast, independent creatures, or servants of the Enemy? Cam has a dumb theory about pee. Actually, we both talk about pee for a while. It’s been a long day.

In our Second Breakfast, Cam waxes poetic about Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. He shotgunned the book this past week and we watched the movie when he finished. The urgent, bombshell pacing of that story provides a sharp contrast for Tolkien’s storytelling, and Flynn’s role as the writer of the original book and the screenplay for the film provokes an interesting conversation about adaptation.

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