I've read the first few pages at least a dozen times and still can't get past it. I know it's supposed to be one of the great ones, but I find the language impossible.
What made me happy today?
- Thread starter big soft moose
- Start date
I just opened and re-read the first few sentences of the prologue, and yeah, the language is a bit difficult there, at least for me.
What do you mean with impossible language?
I can't say the whole book is like the first few lines in the prologue, at least where I'm at now, nearing the end. Descriptions may be a bit crazy sometimes, and I have to look up some words, but one can still paint an image in the mind with what's going on.
Also, the sex scenes are very good.
I don't remember exactly. Only that I couldn't read it for the life of me. Don't remember if it was verbose, vague, or clunky or whatever.... only that it irked me to no end.
I've never been able to plow my way through Tolkein. Read The Hobbit about forty years ago. Waded halfway through the first book of the trilogy before leaving it under the front seat of my truck and forgetting about it. People get so much pleasure from Tolkein, tomatoes, and beer that I'm sorry I don't like any of the three, but oh, well.
I'm happy at this moment because Dayquil works pretty well.
I'm happy at this moment because Dayquil works pretty well.
I tried reading the first LOTR book and got sick of it early on. I respect Tolkien as a worldbuilder and as a pioneer of the fantasy genre, but my favorite writer he is not.
For that matter, I also never cared for any of Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien's work. Honestly, the only Peter Jackson movie I like is his King Kong remake, and even that did not need to be three hours long.
You had to experience it at the right time in your life. Usually as kid or a teen in the pre-Internet years when fantasy was difficult to come by. It was one of my favorites growing up, but when I reread it maybe 10 years ago, I found the writing difficult and stodgy. Not sure I'll read it again.
My problem with it was the first story, that of the priest and cruciforms, was outstanding, but never got to that height again. I won't spoil it for our chum but you don''t find out many things, and what the point of Kassad was. Wouldn't rate it high as Canticle for Leibowitz or Dune.
Glad to hear it!
Hope you feel better soon.I read The Hobbit as a child and didn't understand much of it. I came back to it as a young adult and enjoyed it much more.
I tried reading LOTR (in Hebrew, no less) after watching the first Peter Jackson film, and read it through in English much later, and enjoyed it. It's a long read, no doubt, but the descriptions of the places that the company passes through are wonderful. Some of the dialogue is sentimental, and some is old-fashioned, but that doesn't matter to me.
LOTR wouldn't be the same if the characters started speaking like people speak today. For instance, Aragorn meets the hobbits in Bree and starts off by saying "Yo, what up, dawgs?"
I never finished LoTR. I stopped at Sheol, and have never felt an urge to pick it up again.
Louanne Learning
Active Member
Member
New Member
Role Play Moderator
Winner: 4th Contest August
Winner: June Flash Fiction
I hit over 5,000 posts!
I switched teams at work so now I'm working the evening shift. I have so much time before work to do stuff, so yesterday and today, I did some batch cooking and made a red lentil curry with some flatbread. I won't insult a culture by calling it roti, which is what I was aiming for. But this is one of the best things I've ever made. Kind of made up the recipe a bit, so I doubt I'll ever make it the same way again, but it's very good and I have leftovers in the freezer.
I was quite unhappy with the appearance of AI driven Flock cameras, monitoring every car entering or leaving our city. That degree of oversight bugs me, even if getting uninsured cars off the road is a good thing.
Then I realized I just needed to get on board the fully monitored society bandwagon.
City wide drug use surveys are already being done in some places with sewage testing.
We need to take that to the individual homes. Drug tests need to be run on individual sewer cleanouts, starting at the homes of the City Council members who voted to buy the Flock cameras.
Surely none of them would ever toot up, using "toot" in the context of drug use, not the sonic signature one might associate with sewage creation.
I'm also certain, because I'm as naive as they come, the city council wouldn't mind anyone digging through their crap.
Interestingly, there's probably no search warrant needed to collect what you've already flushed.
Maybe I shouldn't be so unhappy about those Flock cameras. Maybe I should just push for biochemical monitoring of council members.
Then I realized I just needed to get on board the fully monitored society bandwagon.
City wide drug use surveys are already being done in some places with sewage testing.
We need to take that to the individual homes. Drug tests need to be run on individual sewer cleanouts, starting at the homes of the City Council members who voted to buy the Flock cameras.
Surely none of them would ever toot up, using "toot" in the context of drug use, not the sonic signature one might associate with sewage creation.
I'm also certain, because I'm as naive as they come, the city council wouldn't mind anyone digging through their crap.
Interestingly, there's probably no search warrant needed to collect what you've already flushed.
Maybe I shouldn't be so unhappy about those Flock cameras. Maybe I should just push for biochemical monitoring of council members.
Call me an anomoly. I first became aware of LOTR in 1967 when I was the only kid in 7th grade who didn't grab a chance to scribble Frodo Lives on the blackboard in Mr. Wood's history class. Over the next six decades, I made multiple attempts to read it without notable success. In September of 2024, I bought a copy of The Hobbit in Glascow, thinking I'd be forced to give Tolkein an honest chance if I was stuck on a plane with nothing else to read for upteen hours. I ended up writing a lot on my own novel instead, so I suppose having nothing to read worked in my favor after all.
I am happy to announce my official retirement from trying to read Tolkein. Please have a piece of cake to help me celebrate.
Being aware of body of work existing somewhere on a literary landscape. A mountain of time, at the distance, a cultural claim on a mental space of hoards of forever young adult readers. It gives a warm feeling of belonging, even if never read in person. And also, there is movies
I discovered The Hobbit at around 5th grade, and obsessively collected the maps at the front of the LotR volumes for a while. And somehow, that all made me think all fantasy starts with a whole load of exposition (even though LotR doesn't).
I made it all of one page through the Silmarillion.
My roommate had a collection of LOTR paintings decorating her room. When a friend saw them, he said he didn't need pictures to show him what Middle Earth looked like: he knew every inch of it by heart.
I decided I must've experienced a mutation on my Tolkein gene.
I decided I must've experienced a mutation on my Tolkein gene.
I hate bananas.
I read LotR when I heard they were making the movies. Only one chance to imagine the world and the characters for yourself before you see it on screen. At times it could be a bit of a slog. Especially all the random poems that can go on for pages.
This. Ten thousand stanzas this.
