Just come across this in a list I'm reading through and I've already read and reviewed each of the four volumes collected here, so this is basically for my own records, and backdated to when I finished the last of them. Well, when I last finished the last of them, anyway, because I've read these books a lot over the years, and I'll no doubt be reading them a lot in the future, even though I don't bother to log rereads on Goodreads.

Fantasy is one of my favourite genres, but admittedly I'm not always delighted by epic fantasy. It waffles too much and goes on too long for my taste. But every so often comes a series so good that I just don't care about the monster page count, and that's the case here. One of my absolute favourites. Gollum is such a wonderful creation - creepy little shit that he is, he's one of the great fantasy antagonists - and how both Bilbo and Frodo relate to him remains genuinely touching, I think.