Audrey Zambrano’s Reviews > The Lord of the Rings > Status Update

it as platonic or romantic). right now im curious about hope in the story and how it relates to sam and aragorn - i really liked all the moments in the movies where aragorn talks about hope (obvi considering that estel, meaning hope, was his childhood name), but it seems like hope is more closely tied to sam's character in the books. hope and home r two kinda interconnected topics that i feel like come up super frequently in his dialogue or thoughts.

also the languages are super interesting to me just bc tolkien did such an AMAZING job with them. like for khuzdul there are all the bs and zs and then in quenya there are the ys and in sindarin there are a bunch of commonalities between suffixes and stuff. like boromir/faramir, mordor/gondor, gil-galad/galadriel and stuff like that. soososoo cool im absolutely in love with it. ive been learning a bit of sindarin - just the basics like some root words and phrases like mae govannen, hannon le, lasto beth nin, mellon nin and stuff like that. but its enough that i can often understand the non subtitled parts of the show where aragorn or other characters are speaking in sindarin! like the part where arwen says noro lim asfaloth or when aragorn says mellon nin to brego and hannon le to legolas. Speaking of legolas... thats legit my other goat. like i seriously had such a big childhood crush on him and hes still bad asf but now i think i have a greater appreciation for his actual character LOL. his and gimlis friendship/relationship/whatever u wanna call it is like so fucking sweet. i just love that they have inside jokes with each other and stuff. and in the movies legolas is always like helping gimli/letting him go ahead and obvi they ride on the same horse. theyre just awesome. earlier in my notes app i was just writing about how ironic it is that they were still hating on each other when they came to durins stone (which is basically an anachronism of a past in which dwarves, elves, and men lived in harmony) and then like immediately after that they become best buddies. like AWWWW AWWWWWW omg😭😭😭 but ya im just heartbroken over boromir and faramir rn and im super excited to see more of faramir in the minas tirith scenes coming up!!!!

oh and i dislike all th changes to faramir that the movies made. like i totally get it cuz someone had to be driving the plot but😭😭😭😭what happened to my boy😭😭like hes so wise and insanely smart and calculated in what ive seen of him so far in herbs and stewed rabbit and window on the west and then in the movies hes just like. some guy whose dad hates him and hes also kinda brave and brash sometimes. like they dumbed him down so much when he was just as valiant as boromir in diff ways like w his intellect and the way he didnt even blink at the ring. i love boromir and i think hes an incredible man and basically epitomizes the proudness and rashness and stuff of the race of men. actually i was about to compare them and say that i think faramir is the greater man but on second thought i really think both of them were such good men, just kinda goes to show what the ring can do to even the best of people. but anyways i js love how chill faramir was about the ring and if there was one character in the book that id really like to have a conversation with atm i think itd be him

also ive been REALLY impressed with tolkiens writing starting from pg 600 onward. that being said i did skip from like 450 to 600 to keep up w my class and im going back in a couple of weeks to reread it. maybe that section is just as good but idk. ive just really been loving his descriptions of settings and also the dialogue and the way he writes sams thoughts. like slinker and stinker🥺and the section where he was wondering about the southron's backstory and whether he wouldn't have preferred to stay home🥺what a wonderful character genuinely. and gollum is obvi done sooo so well and im loving the way that the pronouns he uses for himself change depending on how honest hes being. im hoping to see more of frodo becoming corrupted soon because thats the one thing i feel like i havent seen a lot of tbh

oh and the elves are prob my fav race in the book just because im basic asf but i genuinely do think theyre so cool. i think i read in one of the appendices about them having like a secret second name which reminds me of the dwarves cuz one of the appendices mentions that they have a name they only speak in khuzdul or smth like that iirc. the appendices are amazing and i loved e and f. i had fun flipping between the page w the runes and the page with balin's tomb to translate balin, son of fundin, lord of moria. tbh im not completely clear on any of the ancestry of men or the mock "translation" stuff that tolkien did from westron to english but i think ill probably do some more reading about that. I JUST WISH THERE WAS MORE THRANDUIL IN THE BOOKS.... I LOVE THRANDUIL AND THE SILVAN ELVES... i did see in one of the appendices that talked abt what was going on in mirkwood/the north during the war of the ring that dain named his son after thorin which i thought was super sweet but very sad. im a big fan tho

pg 600 onward is frying me it's giving when ppl are like "you should totally read this series but also it only gets good at the 5th book out of 9" like oh okay.

also it says ur reading this for the 3rd time are u counting each book as a different reading?