4-Book J.R.R. Tolkien Boxed Set (Paperback): The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings Movie Tie-in: The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King $12.2

Books are a dying format, I read these "books" while watching the movie..... ***turns on subtitles***....

I think this is a better box set: http://www.amazon.com/Plyometric-...t+of+boxes

I do think the films were really good, personally I can't imagine putting in over a dozen hours reading these books when I've already seen the films.

While am a BIG fan of the movies, the books are *FAR* better than the movies.
Evidently, you have no idea how much is left out/altered or only briefly alluded to in the movies.

In some ways, it is even more enjoyable to watch the movie first and then read the book. That way, you not only get to revisit what you know but you can be amazed at the depth and detail that wasn't in the movie and (frequently) enjoy an even better version of the narrative.

The appendix has some important information that was used in the new Hobbit film series. I believe there is also important information pulled from The Silmarillion.

The movies have nothing from the The Silmarillion, for legal reasons. Jackson's company acquired rights to all JRR Tolkiens' published works, ultimately stemming from his sale of these rights in 1969. The Silmarillion (and History of Middle Earth series), gathered and organized by Tolkien's son & literary executor Christopher (who followed in his father's footsteps to also become a professor of Old English at Oxford), was not published until after JRR's death, and (rightly) credited to both.

Jackson wanted to buy the rights to the rest -- and discussions were begun -- but then two things happened: 1) Chris Tolkien saw what Jackson did to the deeper themes of The LotR in the movies (in short, he threw them out, to make a CGI action flick), 2) the lawyers for the film company tried to stiff the Tolkien estate of the 6% of profits agreed to in the 1969 sale of the rights. They did this by rigging the accounting to claim that the movies never made a dime in profit. The estate took them to court & eventually won, but this obviously destroyed the trust needed to pursue new rights agreements.

In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey movie, you actually can see an "inside joke" reference to this situation: when gandalf is telling the company about Radagast the Brown, he told them he was one of five wizards. Someone asked him who the other two were besides he, Radagast, and Saruman. Gandalf replied that he either could not remember or could not say their names (forget the exact working). The joke here is that Jackson was legally barred from using the other two names, because they never appear in the text of either the Hobbit or the trilogy, just in the later texts like the Silmarillion.

for instance, did you know that galadriel is elrond's MIL and arwen's grandmother? the books have much more depth that the movies.

See that! You saved me about 12+ hours of VERY boring reading to find that out. lol

All reading is boring, that's what I meant to say. I've never yawned more than reading every day for my college degree. Reading is yawn inducing... which means I will be taking a nap shortly.

Now give me a link to an audio book of all four books and NOW you're talking. Because at least I can multitask with an audiobook... go on slickdeals and not miss any deals while listening to a story. I'm good at that

i thought you had to read slickdeals. not aware there is an audio format. does slickdeals put you to sleep too?

Don't buy this, get this instead: http://www.amazon.com/The-Lord-Rings-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0618640150/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1359656540&sr=1-1 It's even cheaper than this, as well as better.

The fiftieth anniversary edition is the definitive text. It doens't include the hobbit, but pay another $5 for that.

The best idea, BTW, is to buy the all-in-1 I linked above on kindle, if you have one, or a tablet (nexus 7, whatever). Not only for the usually convenience of digital content, but also because the very nice integration of the amazon "x-ray" feature. you can click on things to see where else they are mentioned in text, link to wikipeida articles, look up in dictionary (Tolkien was an Oxford professor of old english, and sometimes uses some wonderful, but obscure, vocabulary), and so on (you can highlight, leave notes, see what others highlight, etc). The only way to go IMO. And it's only $9, for the complete 3 books of text

Do these books explain why there was one movie for each of the three LOTR books, but three movies for the one Hobbit book? It seems to be some sort of geometric problem.

I was going to take my son to the hobbit movie until I found out it was 1/3. Now I'll just wait for the box set. Stupid. No reason why they couldn't have made one movie out of it.

it's extremely difficult for a movie to do a book justice but maybe by making the movie longer they can get more of the details and character development in.

i read the hobbit, the lord of the rings and the silmarillion albeit 30+ yrs ago, and the hobbit is a really good movie, exp in 3D imax, for the casting, special effects, etc for a movie. depends on what you are seeing the movie for. i think a lot of movies don't really warrant 3D including the last harry potter, but this one really made a big difference.

seeing it made me want to read the book again to see how true to the story it was and if they'd left anything out. which i'm sure would happen even if it had been in 6 parts. it's extremely difficult for a movie to do a book justice but maybe by making the movie longer they can get more of the details and character development in.