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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5797122" data-attributes="member: 58197">Dude, Tolkien was long-winded. Extremely freakin' long-winded. I cut my fantasy teeth on the Lord of the Rings, I'd read the Hobbit and LotR and the Silmarillion and half of the Lost Tales-type stuff before the movies were a gleam in Peter Jackson's eye, but I can well see why people might not like Tolkien, and it's got nothing to do with them not being smart enough or refined enough. One reader's lyrical and entrancing prose is another's pretentious bloviating. And the Catholic theology underlying the story could be a real turn-off for many.That's not to say there are not many things to love about the Lord of the Rings, and I do still love it. But I'm not at all sure I would like it if I were reading it for the first time today. They spend a third of the first book just getting out of the Shire, for Pete's sake.(I will add that the older I get and the more I think about history and politics and the way the voice of privilege drowns out other points of view, the more Tolkien's romanticizing of medieval life in general and monarchy in particular grates on me. Feudal monarchy is great if you're one of the aristocracy. If not, it sucks hardcore, and I find myself less and less able to gloss over that fact as I read.)</blockquote>