Ugh, Jane Eyre was one of the banes of my existence in high school English class. I so wish Thug Notes existed back when I was a student, because this actually made Jane Eyre make sense to me and actually made it seem kinda interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPlN_HIU55U (Go figure, Thug Notes does in 3 minutes what my high school English teacher couldn't do in 3 weeks.)
Anyway, I'm a short ways into the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire" in Return of the King. Man, that is a totally "Aww Yeah!" righteous chapter and I'm loving it! If I didn't have to keep to my bedtime (I go to bed early because I have to be up at 5AM to get ready and get to work on time) I would have stayed up to finish the chapter and the book, because it rocks. I love when
the Shirriffs are admonishing Frodo's company for breaking a whole bunch of new rules and Merry and Pippin are all like, "Fuck yeah, bitch! And we're gonna break a whole bunch more shit too!" It's like when Bugs Bunny says, "You realize, this means war!" And you know it is on and fools will not be suffered gladly.
UPDATE: I finished Lord of the Rings last night (2/28/2018). The Silmarillion is definitely on my list for future books I want to read, because this and The Hobbit were wonderful (in spite of all my griping). What I loved about them is that the true heroes weren't the proverbial "Aragorn type" of hero, but rather ordinary and rather schlubby-seeming folk in Sam and Frodo. I also found the dynamic of the final chapter interesting in that
The Shire was more ga-ga over Merry,
Pippen, and Sam than Frodo (to Sam's dismay), even though Frodo's errand was what started this whole butterfly effect. Frodo was so secretive of his errand in The Shire that none of them really "got" the gravity of it the way Aragorn's realms or the elves did, though the Battle of Bywater was a direct showcase of Merry's, Pippen's, and Sam's true mettle.