Review| Lord of the Rings : The Fellowship of the Ring

I started my magical quest with a friend. Over our shared love of the LOTR movies (and yes even the Hobbit movies) we decided to pick up these books and read together. Mostly curious to learn a little more about the world, and compare the differences to the movies.

HUGE DISCLAIMER : This means my review is pretty heavily skewed by comparing it to the movie. Spoiler for the end of the review, however, we liked the movie better.

My biggest problem when reading the books is emotion. As I read I felt like Tolkien didn't write alot of emotion into this book. Actions and moments that happened, quite brilliantly in hindsight, in the film came across flat in the book. Some of my favorites were:
Gandalfs line , "We only choose what to do with the time that is given to us."
When Bilbo leaves and comes up with an ending to his book.
I felt these fell so flat in the book and made me yearn to re watch the beautiful moments of emotion in the film.

Secondly the characters came off a bit strange. Sam comes off as a complete dopey idiot. In the movie its quite endearing, the book hes too in servitude toward Frodo. Dont even get started on Bill the pony! Even if this was Sam's original intention and purpose, watching the movie and seeing the difference cant be unseen.

Lets get to the good!! Its still a wonderful magical world and I loved learning more about it! The part in Lothlorien is a particular favorite! Some of the added details of places is interesting. Pippin and Merry are more competent and interesting in the books which I enjoyed! Where they seem whiny and dumb in the movie (more so pippin than Merry) they are intelligent and helpful in the book. Although I do like their mischievous ways in the movie!
To further add to that point is the bond between them. I liked how Merry and Pippin were Frodos really good friends and helped him.  Lastly my friend and I were shocked to find out how much time passes, where it seems like a week in the movie MANY years have passed in the books.

The book definitly felt slow, a lot of it dragged and sometimes explained too much of what was happening. The final conclusion my friend and I made was how impressed were for Peter Jackson to create what he did out of this book. We're excited to get to the second and third book though where I hear it picks up and there's more action. Plus the bonds between the characters get more focus!