Lord of the Rings progress remains slow

Having started reading Ottawacker Jr. the Lord of the Rings trilogy on an apparent whim, and with no real idea of how long it would take to read a 1,000+ page book out loud, with different voices for each of the main characters, the odd moments of comic interlude (usually when Aragorn speaks with Sam Gamgee’s broad Devon accent instead of his normal Sean Bean-inspired Yorkshire one or during one of Treebeard’s more pronounced Hoom-hmmm-huoum utterings), three things have come to my attention.
 
1) Ottawacker Jr. has managed to maintain his astounding oral memory. We tried to do it deliberately – delay his reading till around 6 or so – so that it could fully develop. I based this on a CBC documentary I heard about Somali children in Ottawa learning the Quran in Arabic, and managing to recite it perfectly by the age of 5 or 6. I read up on the theory behind it afterwards, and there is apparently a switch in kids’ brains that goes off at around that age. When they learn how to read, their aural comprehension and retention skills wane significantly. It seems to have worked. While we have not forced him to learn the Quran in Arabic – or indeed any other text – his powers of recall are incredible. Today, at dinner, after the latest LOTR extravaganza, he told Mrs. Ottawacker of an incident in Chapter 3 of the novel – an incident some 600 pages and three months ago – in such precise detail that I was forced to sit at the table with my mouth open for a couple of seconds. When I was at university, a friend of mine who came from Belfast would never take a pen or paper to a lecture. He would sit there, staring at the lecturer for the full hour, while I tried to take down every word being spoken. We would then go to the pub where I would lose my notebook and not remember a thing; he would then recite whole passages of text verbatim, adding in details to jog my numbed mind such as “but, do you not remember, yer man was wearing that hideous brown tie with his orange shirt when he said it.”
 
2) I read LOTR some 30 years ago. There are whole sections of it I do not remember. Not just the odd incident… I couldn’t remember Treebeard and the whole Forest of Fangorn thing. How can that be? I am usually a quite careful reader.
 
3) I know I have written this already, but Tolkien – as much of a genius as he undoubtedly was – writes like a constipated mule. Large parts of his text are unreadable – and I wonder if he would get published today. It’s the JK Rowling verbal diarrhoea syndrome. Never miss a chance to pontificate on the etymology of a pointless piece of rock. (I like Tolkien and Rowling, and admire and am envious of their talent – but…)
 
Anyway, the reading continues a-pace, despite the fact that he told me today that he actually checked the end of the story to see who died as he wasn’t sure he wanted the unpleasant surprise.