Last December, I was one of those folks who eagerly anticipated the first installment of Peter Jackson's version of The Lord of the Rings. I hadn't read the books since I was 12 or 13, (and in fact, I had a better recollection of the Rankin-Bass animated versions of The Hobbit and The Return of the King than the actual books), but I'm a sucker for good fantasy movies. And since there hadn't been one since, um, maybe The Dark Crystal, I've been waiting a long time to give my fix succor.

If you didn't catch it in theaters, rent The Fellowship of the Ring when it arrives in your local video store. Get the widescreen version. The effect won't be as all-encompassing as theater immersion, but I think you'll be impressed nonetheless. A Beautiful Mind was a finely-crafted, all-too-earnest Lifetime movie--think Forest Gump, another well-meaning and frighteningly superficial "best picture" winner--but in terms of acting, sound, scope and overall use of film as an artistic medium, Fellowship is far superior.

A lot of my friends re-read the trilogy last fall in anticipation of the movie's release. Yes, we're geeks. Get over it. Some of the re-readers actively wanted to nit-pick at the film, but others simply wanted to reacquaint themselves with the original. I waited for my return to Tolkien until this summer. I planned on reading the books during my week at the beach. But one week before vacation, I finished up a couple of books early and didn't have anything in the pipeline. So I figured I'd get started on Fellowship.

Even before we headed to Emerald Isle, I was 100 pages into the third book, Return of the King.

Everything the critics say about J.R.R. Tolkien's writing is true. His dialogue is wooden--at best. He occasionally detours into pages of minutiae that have no bearing on the tale at hand. There are so many characters and places and ideas going on that it can be hard to follow what is going on on a given page.

But what those folks leave out is how readable the books are. I expected a chore, that there would be times I would feel like I was slogging through required reading. The Simarillion (and anything else Tolkien's son touched) is like that. The original trilogy (as well as its predecessor, The Hobbit) is breezy and a joy to read. Yes, Tolkien was a linguist, and he does a character's language as a way of defining the person. Some might call that literary genius rather than obsessive.

I wouldn't go that far. Tolkien set out to tell a splendid tale, an epic of good allied against evil. A story of how the smallest of people can make a difference in the events of an entire world. A morality play discussing the seductive nature of absolute power. He succeeded. Yeah, I cringed every time a character started a conversation with the exclamation "Behold!" But the sheer pleasure of the tale as told by Tolkien outweighs all of the drawbacks.

For those curious (and who somehow haven't seen the movie or don't remember the book), here's how Jackson changed the first book. He compressed time: In the book, twenty or more years passed between Bilbo's disappearance and the beginning of Frodo's quest, while maybe a few days pass in the movie. Jackson completely omits much of Frodo's journey to Rivendell, including the encounter with Tom Bombadil (this is the part I heard the most bitching about from purists). The reforging of Elendil--the sword that shattered as it separated Sauron from the one ring--isn't shown or mentioned in the movie. Also, the movie ends after the first chapter of the second book, The Two Towers. This last was done for dramatic reasons, and to be honest, I think the story works better with its intermission following the sundering of the fellowship.

There are also countless smaller details omitted. Still, Jackson balanced small details and the grand scope of the novel exceptionally well. His use of computer graphics and other special effects is so seamless that it puts anything George Lucas has done to shame. At only one point did I see the effects of blue screen use (on the trek through the mountains), but most often the real and digital are fused without a scar.

Most importantly, Jackson created a movie that is as engaging and breathless as the book. It's not superior; indeed, I would hesitate to compare the film and the novel at length. They belong to two different mediums, and they are both exceptional examples of each. Yeah, the movie clocks in at three hours. But it feels like an hour at most. Likewise, the books are long and filled with arcana. And yet I was able to fly through them, enjoying myself every bit of the way. When I finished, I wanted more.

I'm not one of those people who would call The Lord of the Rings the great literary work of the 20th century. That would be silly. It is, and shall remain, the standard by which fantasy novels are judged. A perch no novel of Faulkner--or Morrison or Marquez or Amis, for that matter--could hope to attain.

I wasn't expecting to enjoy the books nearly as much as I did. In fact, I think I was more swept away this time around than I was some 20 years ago. The best books (and movies and albums and paintings, etc.) always reveal more on subsequent reviews. And by that count, the Rings are, indeed, immortal.

Jon Worley will not be purchasing The Fellowship of the Ring when it hits the shelves in a couple weeks. He'll wait for when the kick-ass three-movie DVD set is released in a few years.