Bored of the Rings: A Parody

This is a funny book. You might not like it if you can't take someone poking fun at the The Lord Of The Rings. I can.

Ah, Bored of the Rings, the solid gilt standard for Tolkien parodies.This edition is, as far as I can tell, a faithful copy of the original, but--as my title says--it includes annotations, which is a big deal. Many of the jokes, especially the names, haven't aged well, and this edition explains many of them in footnotes. Finally I get the jokes behind "Gilthorpial", "Zazu Pits", and "Serutan". In a nice extra, the annotations also have a tongue-in-cheek bit. A good example is "Good Gulf was a premium gasoline offered by Gulf Oil, which fell out of popularity once arson became illegal."My only real complaint about this edition is that there aren't enough annotations. I had to look up names like Nesselrode, Oxydol, and Lavalier, for instance, and I still don't get Farahslax.

I read this book when it first came out, many years ago. I was a Lampoon fan, and took a chance. This was even before I'd read any of Tolkein's works. I laughed until I couldn't breathe, and read that book a dozen times or more in the 3 or 4 months I had it. I was, at the time, stationed in SE Asia. It was hot, uncomfortable, and just not very friendly. This book was so funny I could forget where I was for a while. After I'd dog-eared it beyond repair, carried it in my pocket so much it was curved to the shape of my...posterior, and had gotten it wet from the explosive rainstorms that swept across the area, I "loaned" it to one of my shipmates. Yep, last I ever saw of it. But I know it found a good home. So, anyway, now that I've read the Tolkein trilogy, seen the movies, taken my grandkids to see the movies, and even BOUGHT THE FREAKIN' DVDs, I decided to see if Bored was still as funny. I looked in Amazon, and, after a long, extensive search (almost 7 seconds), I located a...well, a couple...ok, Amazon had like 40 copies available, from a bunch of different sources, and I (of course) ordered the next-to-the-cheapest one. Got it when Amazon said I would, and read it again. OK, so I read it all once, and parts of it a dozen times. Yep, still funny. While I will admit the name-thing is hilarious, what Lampoon did with the plot, setting, and sequence-of-circumstances is mind-bending. This is an entertaining book on so many levels. While I can now compare it, as I read it, to the original "script", my grandson laughs at it, mainly because of the names of the "cast & crew", as they say. All in all, it is a good read any time. I've loaned it to my grandson, but twice, so far, he's brought it over to read parts to me that he thinks are especially funny. Good to know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I figure that if it's funny to his sense of humor, I'm alright, after all.

Okay, if you believe that certain works of art are sacred and that basing a parody on the Lord of the Rings is a sacrilege punishable by eternal damnation, then you're not going to like this book. One wonders why you would even take the time to read it, let alone review it. [And a couple of reviewers need to look up the definitions of "parody" and "satire" before complaining that this isn't Swift or James Joyce. Sheesh!]I first read "Bored of the Rings" more than 20 years ago (in high school) and I thought it was hilarious, one long belly laugh after another. At the time, I could quite easily have given it 5 stars. And one of the reasons it deserved such high marks is because it was clear that the authors loved the work they were skewering as much as I did!Now, however, it's got a lot to overcome. "Bored" was written some 30 years ago by a couple of guys who would go on to start National Lampoon. If you find the "National Lampoon" movies to be way too sophomoric or insufficiently subtle - well, this book is NOT subtle - this may not be your cup of grog. And if your experience of LOTR consists of seeing the movie rather than reading the books, you'll miss a lot. It's also dated, sometimes badly so. The political references will be completely lost on anyone under 25 and will seem remote to many who are older than that.But, here's the thing, despite all that IT'S STILL FUNNY! My 10 year old insisted on reading it because boring old dad kept chuckling over the misadventures of the boggies (who eerily resemble certain in-laws).I'd love to see the National Lampoon guys do an update on this. Perhaps they could call it "Bored of the Rings: The Rerun of the Thing".

I read this quite literally decades ago, and it is still as silly and frivolous as it was then.I loved it.

I first picked up this book in a musty secondhand store somewhere, and I remember the disdain with which I peered down from my Tolkien-loving ivory tower at this flimsy throwaway. Ha. Why do these people bother I wondered. But then I read the first few pages. And the next few. And would have read the whole thing standing right there in the shop if I hadn't been too embarrassed. See, when you read this book you're going to laugh, long, loud, and hard. I'm now buying my fourth and fifth copies and I recommend that you buy two yourself as well. One for you and one as a "loaner". Because you're going to want to lend this book out. And it won't be coming back. Whoever reads this will fall under its spell. And the more you love JRR the more you're going to love this book.If you have ever read LOTR all the way through, and you have any sense of humour at all, buy this book. It may just be the best spoof ever.

This is a terrific parody of Lord of the Rings for adults.From a time when comedy was actually funny and political correctness meant sacking whitlam!Nothing is too rude and and this cleaver work makes fun of everything.

「指輪を作りしエルフらは、そを取り戻さんとて生み母すら質に入れむ……見つけた人はソルヘッドへ（郵送料前納）」おそるべき「だいなし」の力を秘めた指輪を叔父から譲られたボギーのフリトー・バガーは、魔法使いグッドガルフに嵌められて、召し使いのスパム、双子のモクシー＆ペプシーとともに「滅びの癰（ふきでもの）」へと旅出つ。彼らの行く手に待つものは“低中つ国”の驚異、女装した黒の乗り手、謎の男ドタ夫(Stomper)……。初版1969年、アメリカでの最初のブームの最中に書かれたThe Lord of the Ringsの由緒正しきパロディ。たった149ページしかないのに、バクシのアニメでもジャクソンの映画でも削られたあの人物や、他人に役をとられたあのエルフも登場する。英語力はさほど必要としないが「指輪力」は必須。

I bought this after watching a movie called "A Futile and Stupid Gesture" which has the authors as main characters (good movie BTW). Based on the humour of the National Lampoon's movies I'd seen and the semi-biography I mentioned earlier, I thought this book would be a great idea. I was absolutely wrong.It's not a terrible book per se but it really fails to be funny, for me at least. I enjoyed the LOTR novels and this book clearly an affectionate pastiche of the source material and personally I like very broad humour so you'd assume it'd be right up my alley.That said, doing things like renaming "Bilbo" with the most obvious sex toy rhyme is only going to work if the rest of it is funny too, which it isn't. And they repeat the humourous name thing for everyone and everywhere. They throw in a few in jokes back-referencing the text, try to make some of the events in the original humourous, but that's about it. But it all fails to land for me. Pity really, was hoping for a cross of Terry Pratchett and Animal House. For such a short book it was heavy going.Your milage may vary, many people seem to have loved it, my advice is to preview the first few pages, you'll get the tenor of it pretty quickly.