This week, Lucy and I finished ‘Flight to the Ford’ for bedtime reading. Lucy was getting genuinely tense about it, but not overly scared. To aid her in the rather dense (at times) prose, she’s been flipping through Fonstad’s atlas as we go and I’ve been showing her appropriate artwork from a variety of sources (nothing from the films) along the way.
Now that Frodo has woken up in Rivendell, and Gandalf has begun to give out the hints of explanations that Frodo (and we as readers) so greatly desire, we have had a great discussion about how the world and the “other side” are perceived, with reference to both Glorfindel and also the Black Riders.
It is noteworthy that the Black Riders are only now confirmed as Ringwraiths. It is foreknowledge I often take for granted on subsequent readings. Lucy says she expected the Black Riders were Ringwraiths all along, and I believe her. I think it is well forecasted by Tolkien. Still, it’s easy to forget that we’ve not always “known” this.
I asked Lu what some of her favourite parts so far have been.
- Favourite Chapter: ‘In the House of Tom Bombadil’
- Favourite character: Pippin
- Favourite Scenes: the Black Rider ‘sniffing’; Pippin interrupting Frodo’s eating and thinking the morning after meeting Gildor; the white horses at the Bruinen;
- Some things she likes about the book in general: “He [Tolkien] describes it really well. It sounds very pretty. And I love the sound of the food.”
The Mathom-house 
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