QUOTE : I didn’t get around to reading the Lord of the Rings until after I saw Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations, which I thought did a much better job of telling the story than the books. I know the text is legendary and deeply beloved, but it is also slo-ow. It takes forever to get going. Frodo waits something like five years between discovering the ring and leaving the shire. Many characters get little or no introduction, important things happen in flashback or get relegated to the appendices, and the villain never even actually makes an appearance. The real central message isn’t about friendship or singsongy environmentalism, but is something that the late wife of William Burroughs could certainly appreciate: never trust a junkie. Conventional