The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

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Tolkien is for people that think they love literature, but can't be bothered to read real books.


.....I'll see myself out now.

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(but not really; Tolkien is literature...of a sort...)
 
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I realized I didn't actually care for The Lord of the Rings on my second read-through. There's a point in The Two Towers, where Tolkien is describing the Pelennor Fields, and he starts talking about the flowers, and the mythology behind the flowers, and at some point, teenage me just sighed and skipped ahead to somewhere in the first half of The Return of the King. I've not been able to reread the trilogy without skipping through that part; I just don't have the patience to read all that again. “But that's so important because it foreshadows—,” I hear the Tolkien mega-fan start to scream. I cut them off: “Don't care. Ain't nobody got time for that.”
I actually had trouble around the same bit when I first read the books at 10, but much like my experience with coffee I acquired the taste for it with persistence.

The Lord of the Rings is now what I would consider a pithy and on the ball read, though.
 

Ah. Snobbery about books and what people like to read. Can’t wait for that to die in a fire.

As an aside, there are incomplete story fragments by Robert E. Howard that are more interesting, entertaining, and better reads than anything Tolkien wrote.
 



My partner was telling me about how there are Lord of the Rings Graphic Novels and my first thought was about how I didn't realize they made Graphic Novels that short.

Someone: A picture is worth a thousand words
Tolkein: Challenge accepted
Just the Hobbit, as far as I know.
 

I can completely understand people not finishing the LotR (although I never imagined my 5th grade class that seemed to all be reading it on our own was precocious. I will always remember how crushed one was when
Boromir
died).

The Silmarillion is one of my all time favorite books though. (My paperback fell apart from re-reading long ago. My second hardback copy was still in good shape, but I've replaced it with the new illustrated edition).

I wouldn't argue it is great literature anymore than I would argue either pot roast or my grandma's chocolate chip cookies were high cuisine. But if forced to be on a desert island, I think I'd take favorite comfort food over high cuisine any day. Although I'm guessing we'd all have very different choices of favorite comfort food. Just like we would for books. It feels like similar things could be said of movies and songs.
 


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