Amazingly, I managed to get a library copy of LOTR onto Libby as one of my holiday choices and, unable to get much sleep on the flight home, I started to read it.
And so I found myself, mid-air, at the long-expected party, with Bilbo at the grand age of eleventy-one (and Frodo sharing a birthday and coming of age at thirty-three), and his rather unwise party trick. Despite this, somehow being able to give up his burden voluntarily, even if it did require some encouragement from Gandalf.
Then, amazingly, seventeen years passed, and we find that Frodo didn't set off on his own perilous journey until the age of fifty, with his trusty friends determined to accompany him. Getting lost in the forest, and getting rescued by the rather bizarre Tom, twice, once from trees and once from the Barrows, before making it to Bree and finding Strider/Aragorn to help them on their way.
Then the attack at Weathertop and the dreaded wound, before Elrond's scout finds the party on the road and only thanks to his white horse does Frodo make it across the river before the surge of water washes the Black Riders away, just as Frodo "heard and saw no more."
Still no sign of Gandalf.
And so ends book 1.
