Bored Of The Rings - The Harvard Lampoon

For years, a friend of mine kept going on about a book that was a parody of "The Lord of the Rings". At the time it was out of print, but he would quote one of the lines from it at every opportunity and bemoan the fact that he never had a copy of his own. Fortunately, the surge of interest in the original books when the films were being made resulted in a republication of the parody and so he was finally able to own his own copy of "Bored of the Rings". Intrigued by years of his going on and on about it, so was I. Following rather loosely the plot of "The Lord of the Rings", Frito Bugger is charged with a quest to travel ...

Bored of the Rings is, unsurprisingly, a parody of Lord of the Rings, by The Harvard Lampoon. (The authors later went on to establish National Lampoon). It's apparently been around in America for three decades and more, but has only fairly recently been widely available in the UK (off the back of the films' success, no doubt). I’m sure there are some Middle Earth fans who may view this book as tantamount to blasphemy, but quite frankly they should chill out. This isn’t satire at its absolute best, but it is done with a deep knowledge (and according to the preface, a deep love) of the great book itself. A neat little paperback weighing in a £6.99 ...

I have possessed this book for several years now without actually realising it wasn't available on these shores - until, of course, the huge brou-ha-ha about the film last autumn (and for the next two to come). The Harvard Lampoon as a body was always credited with the authorship, but in this volume we at last can read it was actually by some chaps by the names of Douglas C Kenney and Henry N Beard. Well, silly names are prevalent in fiction, both in characters and authors/actors. As you are advised above, in dooyou's introduction to the tome, all names here have been changed to protect the innocent. Therefore we are here concerned with ...