Disclaimer: I’m possibly going to anger a significant portion of geek culture. And that’s because (spoiler alert) I’m going to complain about The Lord of the Rings. Now, before you grab your torches and pitchforks and track down my IP address, just know that I’m not setting out to offend anyone with my opinion here. But, also know, if I do offend, I don’t really care.* So, you’ve been warned.

Okay, let’s get to it. I never read The Hobbit. Nor did I read any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy growing up. I knew that The Hobbit existed, mostly because of strange commercials I’d seen for the animated version from many years ago (which I never actually saw, by the way). When I reached adulthood and talk of a Lord of the Rings series of movies was in the making, people scoffed when I said I’d never read anything by Tolkien. But I didn’t see the big deal. I mean, there are tons of brilliant books that I’ve never read before. There was only so much I could have done at that point, seeing as how I never actually enjoyed reading for pleasure prior to the age of 20.

Once I saw The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater, I thought it might be worth picking up the novel. So I bought a paperback copy. I think it was one of the ones with Elijah Wood on the cover, so it was obviously a new printing to coincide with the film’s release. I didn’t even make it a quarter of the way through the book. I got bored and I quit reading it.

This is the part where I expect the many rabid Middle Earth fans will start huffing and puffing and thinking of clever scathing remarks to leave in the comments section.

But I got bored. Deal with it. I still liked the movies. I mean, I thought they might be a little slow at parts for my taste, but the epic scale was pretty… well… epic. And years passed and I felt no shame for losing interest in reading Tolkien’s books. But then the rumors kept swirling about the possibility that The Hobbit would be adapted into a movie (or two three). So I thought I should at least give that one a chance. After all, it was considered a kids’ book, right? Maybe I wouldn’t get bored with that one.

Thing is, I never actually bought it or checked it out. So I never read it. Despite seeing the first two Hobbit films, I never felt compelled to read the book. Though, I’ll admit, I was curious to know how it was possible to stretch this “children’s book” into three extremely long movies.

At some point last year, I discovered Audible. Really, I’d toyed with the idea of joining up with the Audible for a while. I like audio books. And since I drive 90 minutes to and from work every day, it makes sense for me to listen as someone reads me a story. I love to read, but I just don’t have a lot of extra time to read for pleasure like I’d like.

In January, I listened to The Hobbit. And no, I won’t be giving any kind of review here. I mean, I liked it. But I’m glad someone read it to me. Also, I absolutely do not believe that it warranted making a trilogy of films. The more I think about movie studios needlessly splitting books into multiple films for a cash grab, the angrier it makes me. I’m currently listening to The Fellowship of the Ring. Again, I’m glad someone is reading to me. But I do have a complaint.

This complaint exists for both of these audio books. It’s something that I feel I wouldn’t have to deal with if I were reading the books myself and listening only to my internal voice, but since I got bored reading Tolkien more than a decade ago, I don’t want to risk getting bored and quitting again. My complaint comes with the narrator’s singing. I’m aware that Tolkien included poetic verses that were described as songs in these books. And if I were actually reading these things myself, I wouldn’t have to deal with the tune that is included with the audio book. I would just read over the lines of verse and move on, not thinking twice about trying to set them to music.

But the reader (and it’s the same guy reading all of these books) sings these songs a capella. And I’m unimpressed by his singing voice. Whenever he begins another song, I can’t help but roll my eyes, which is dangerous because I’m always driving as I listen to the thing. As I listened today, at the end of one of the songs, the narration continues by saying, “The song ended.” And when he said that, I cried out, “Thank the Lord!”

Maybe an overly observant LOTR geek can inform me, did Tolkien actually include sheet music with the songs he wrote in his books? Because I kind of feel like the producers of the audio book have just made up some tune to fit their needs. I know some of the songs are included in the movies, but the tunes are completely different than what I’m hearing in the audio books.

I really do enjoy the story and I’m sure I’ll enjoy listening to the entire trilogy overall. I just really wish I could skip over the songs because I just don’t want to hear them. Read me the poetry, I’m good with that. It’s not as if Gandalf bursts into song when he’s explaining the writing on the One Ring. If the rhyme about Sauron’s ring doesn’t need to be sung, then I don’t think any of the other poetry needs to be sung either.

*I really don’t care if I made any extreme Lord of the Rings fans upset. But I do understand if you are. After all, I’d probably get up in arms if someone made negative comments about Back to the Future. Actually, no I wouldn’t. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion. The fact that someone doesn’t like Back to the Future doesn’t make it any less awesome to me. Just like my dislike of this one tiny aspect of The Lord of the Rings shouldn’t make it any less awesome to you.