My thoughts exactly – I hate the way the man writes, but I love his material. Also, in my nerdy, geeky way, I love the languages and cultures. The feeling of “ancientness” the story has about it. The movies lift this wonderful exciting story and interesting characters free from the turgid prose he throws out. The Hobbit is more readable, but that’s like saying dropping a hammer on your foot doesn’t hurt as badly as being hit in the head with it. Great ideas, great stories, terrible writing. But that’s my opinion.
I think they should be read – not everything you read that is good for you, is good reading. If you want some awful reading, try a translation or – if you can the original – Mein Kampf it is a terrible experience to read, but educational in so many ways. By that I mean the ideas and venom educate you about how some people rationalize even the most awful of things, not that it is good for you in that it teaches you good things or ways to be. It serves as an example of the depths of evil man is capable of – but it is so like going to hell to try and read it.
Obviously I’ve lost my train of thought – perhaps I’m still scarred from reading just about everything. Of course compared to the first volume of The Dark Tower Tolkien is practically vivacious reading.
Also, if it makes you feel better, I couldn’t read it until I was in my twenties – too dense and boring. I read Bored of the Rings and found that I had to read the trilogy to fully appreciate it.
Good movies though – eh? Well, no one should feel obligated to like it, but it is worthy reading. I’m not a fanatic, but am a “sort-of” fan.
I read one of the books when I was about 13 or 14 on the insistence of my friends, slogged through it and never picked up another one. Same thing with science fiction. I read Bradbury and Asimoz about the same time and again, dropped the genre for good. Neither of them do anything for me. And I do read - fiction, non-fiction, I’m even the president of the board for my local library.
That being said, I see on this same forum a hugely viewed and posted to thread about something called DiabloII. I don’t even know what this is, I’ve never even heard of it. I am afraid to open it.
Just to note, as far as I recall the Hobbit was written as a childrens tale.
LOTR was written as an epic poem updated for modern times. Further the focus of Tolkien’s interest in the world was on the languages of each of the cultures (he spends quite a bit of time tracing the term Hobbit from the language of Rohan.) Keep in mind this guy is the professor anglo-saxon at oxford, so the evolution of languages is his thing.
from the forward to the second edition:
So it doesn’t really read like a novel, but it wasn’t really supposed to. The depth of the Appendices and the need to refer to the Simarillon to understand references (A balrog of Morgoth? isn’t that near D.C.?) bear this out.
I’m a fairly intelligent geekly person and I never had the desire to read the books and I fell asleep during both movies. Haven’t plunked down the $7 to see the third.
To my astonishment, two of my really well-read, sci-fi fan, intelligent friends haven’t read it either and were ho-hum about the movies.
My brother is also quite well read and he never read them, neither has his best friend who is even more well-read and geekly. Neither of them thought too much of the movies.
However my bro was laughing at the fact that most of the character and place names in LOTR were also names of prog rock bands he’s fond of.
So mark me down for 5 “Tolkien - take it or leave it”
That’s exactly how I feel. I started the books because I felt it was my duty to read them, because I loved the movies so much. I know there’s a whole lot of great stuff in the books, but I’m just so utterly bored by the man’s verbosity. I’ve been on page 168 of FOTR for the past three weeks.
Times change, I suppose. Tolkein was one of the later authors in what you might call the “belles lettres” school of fantasy. In this sense, you could group him with folks like Cabell, E. R. Eddison, William Morris, and Mervyn Peake. Folks like this had the benefit of a rich classical education which came through in their writing and was expected of their readers, and frankly nowadays a lot of people just aren’t prepared–or patient enough–to appreciate their works. Cabell has an interesting essay on this general topic.
You know. I have actually read “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbons.
For pleasure (I got the books from the Folio Society and figured I needed to read them).
One would think that I read “Decline and Fall…” I would be a sure thing for the LOTR trilogy.
Wrong!
I hated LOTR!!! I only forced myself to read them because I wanted to read the books before seeing the movie (to be fair, I didn’t mind ROTK, but it was a hard and horrid slug to read FOTR and TTT).
Actually it doesn’t really have much to do with the complication level of the books more so then I HATE Fantasy fiction.
Thing is I am a hard-core Sci-Fi person. My theory is, we have all this magic that can distroy worlds in these books, but no toilet? C’mon! I judge any Fantasy book I read by “the dunny factor”. (Harry Potter passes since it blends common sense with the fantasy elements… and it has loos).
Actually the only Sci-Fi I have ever liked that failed “the dunny factor” was Sara Douglass’s “The Wayfarer Redemption” saga. Then again it had an evil, morose humour in it which I LOVED.
But back on topic, I just get into a world populated by elves, hobbits, dwarfs, orc and humans with a bronze age level of technology.
imho, the best time to read The Hobbit is when you’re about 8 or 9, and the best time to read Lord of the Rings is 10+. I read the Hobbit when I was 9 and loved it. I read Lord of the Rings when I was 11 and though it took me 4 months I thoroughly enjoyed it, it was the longest book I had read by far.
I could easily pick up the Hobbit again and read it in a day or two, but Lord of the Rings is so big it would take a lot of effort.
I tried to like Tolkien, but I can’t. The books are boring, and the moviea are just as bad. I’ve seen the first and second ones with a group of friends who out voted me on what we should see. I have no desire to see the third one. I have no desire to try and read the books ever again.
(snif!) It’s so comforting to have friends like you. I simply cannot get into the imaginary world of hobbits and the like. I want to. I really want to. And I’m a very creative, fanciful person in most ways. But my mind will not go into their world. I don’t like them. They don’t speak to me (except for Viggo. I’d do him in a heartbeat). Maybe we should retreat to our own world. A world where others won’t look down on us in scorn. A world where we actually GET the books and movies that are dear to the majority of the universe. Some day…
I read The Hobbit in ninth grade and that was enough for me. I haven’t read any of the other books and have absolutely REFUSED to watch any of the movies. I won’t even watch them when Jeevmon puts in the DVDs. That is usually my cue to fall asleep.
I have tried and tried to read these books. I read The Hobbit when I was a kid and read it again a couple of years ago. But I just can’t get through FOTR. Too many names for each character - Too many names starting with the letter “E”. Just horribly confusing, Tolkien will go off on some tangent about the history of something or other, and when he returns to the story line, he uses a different name for a character.
And my husband is a huge Tolkien reader. Knows far too much about these characters. He secretly loves the fact that I can’t get through these books. Quite smug, in fact.
That’s really weird; MY dad gave me the same two series (though I was a bit older, about nine or so). Ditto on the making it through Jakes (I enjoyed him at the time but when I read some of his work as an adult thought he was a hack) but not Tolkien.
I call that the Anne Rice Syndrome ; I love her plots, but the 12 page descriptions of cicadas chirping and endless repeats of the “what is evil?” conversations and insisting on making every character (man, woman, immortal, demon, poodle or cicada) omnisexual makes her tiresome and almost impossible to read.
I first read the books (LotR then The Hobbit) just prior to the 1st movies release. I finished LotR and well, thought it sucked immensly and I could not fathom the adolation people seemed to grace Tolkien with. Convinced by friends, I read The Hobbit next and it was slightly better but I continued to strongly dislike Tolkien’s writing style. Convinced a 3rd time to try again, I read The Sillymarathon or whatever that one is called and found myself at times praying for blindness so I’d not have to read any further.
Now that I’ve seen the movies, which I enjoyed immensely, my recollections of the books has improved in a sense. It is as if the movies filled the gaps that Tolkien’s writing left in my mind. I re-read LotR recently and found myself annoyed by the same issues in Tolkien’s writing style but my movie image helped flesh it out.
Reasons I’ve Given Lord of the Rings Fans For Yet Failing to Read the Books/See the Peter Jackson Movies
Verbally abusive uncle named Frodo
Once sat at adjacent restaurant table to Viggo Mortensen; after spending more than fifteen minutes extolling the subtleties of his interplay with Sylvester Stallone in Daylight, was met only by a continuous, polite nodding and several earnest thank-yous
Doing so would fly in the face of lifelong campaign to replace ring with “Angel Holding Puppy” decorative pin as traditional symbol of eternity/source of cosmic power
Have learned that J.R.R. Tolkien described aspects of his singular universe in a language of his own making—lazy, lazy, lazy
Resentful of “plagiarist” charges by friends and family after self-publication of own fantasy epic, The Partnership of the Understated Hand Accessory (first of a projected trilogy)
My favorite Renaissance Faire story is from The Sandman comics. One of the recurring characters, is a 14th century Englishman who was given, not entirely of his own free will, immortality. In the late 20th century, still appearing 35, he attends a Renaissance Faire in the Mid-West with his African-American girlfriend (who has no idea of his true age). He complains about everything: the lack of stench, the costumes (“That’s not a tunic, it’s a 4 XL sweatshirt over a pair of tights!”), the “Ye Oldes” (“The Renaissance was over for centuries before anyone in England ever heard of it!”), and tips a barmaid $100 to NOT call him “milord” and speak in an affected accent. (Meanwhile his girlfriend politely asks him to stop talking about the slave trade [he has major guilt because he was involved in it]- “I’m guessing you haven’t dated that many black women… it’s really not high on our list of conversation topics.”)