The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit (Cliffs Notes)

Cliffs Notes is no substitute for reading any actual great work of literature. However, Cliffs Notes are indeed quite helpful to anyone who takes the reading of Great Books seriously; it can be especially helpful for the serious, first or many-time reader of a detailed and deeply meaningful work. Particularly when there are numerous names, events, and ideas to keep straight and thus, may act as a helpful memory trigger for the serious reader or student. It can not be stressed enough that Cliffs Notes is an absolutely poor substitute for actually reading a book carefully from cover to cover, especially a very great work of literature, like the Lord of the Rings (LOTR).It is well worth noting too, that the reader does himself a great disservice when skipping a thoughtful and careful reading of Tolkien's forward and introduction in all his books. An even bigger mistake, is to skip the Appendix, at the end of Return of the King (LOTR).While I'm on a soapbox, I will say that Cliffs Notes need to clean up a few very minor, yet annoying, errors in an otherwise excellent edition. Furthermore, it is a real shame that there aren't any Cliffs Notes for the Simarillion in particular, which can be a quite difficult read for both young and inexperienced Tolkien and Great Literature readers. Likewise, there should at least be Cliffs Notes for the Lost Tales, vols. 1 & 2, plus the recently released masterwork, The Children of Hurin.

Well, Cliff notes are cliff notes, they're the lazy way of reading a book that you have absolutely no interest in reading. This edition provided the needed points of the original book for my son to get a B. I'll take that!!

I wanted to get into this story without having to spend a lot of time reading it. I wanted to be able to discuss it with my grandson in an intelligent manner. This was just what I needed for the objective.

This is a good guide for a starting point, and will help your first read through of The Lord of The Rings be a little easier. It doesn't make up for reading the books on ANY level though.

Cliff Notes are the best resource guide to help understand the literature one is reading for a subject.The other brand of Notes are not as comprehensive.

Only a few pages on The Hobbit, otherwise the content is decent.

USED AS A SCHOOL BOOK. NO ISSUES.

DVD would not play

See also the review on the book, Lord of the Rings. Not my cup of tea