<span class="spoiler">I read the trilogy recently and it was honestly, for all its cleverness, poorly structured and dull. Most of the words of inspiration familiar from the movie actually occur before the adventure even starts, rather than at the impactful moments they do in the films. After reading the books I now agree whole-heartedly with the ways the films were restructured and most of the omissions. Tom Bombadil adds literally nothing to the plot and I'm glad that most of his interesting interactions with the hobbits and the natural world were given to Treebeard, instead. I don't however, agree with cutting the inter-class dynamics of the story. It robbed Saruman of his truly sinister and subtle soft power and relegated him to throwing whimpy fireballs like some Grug's dnd PC. <|endoftext|> 