to be offended by the checkout womans comment? (lighthearted)

[forbiddenfruit85]

Saw 'The Hobbit' on sale for £4.00, never read it so thought why not.

Went to pay for it along with the rest of the groceries.

When the checkout woman scans it through say "who's this for?"

I replied it was for me.

She gives me a look and says "It's very difficult to read to know?"

I guess she thinks I must look a little bit dim haha

The Hobbit is not hard to read. At all. We read it at school when I was 8/9. I re-read it recently in preparation for the film, and it most definitely wasn't difficult.

We read it in school at 10yo.

'Unrelenting, pretentious, dullness' is startlingly accurate!

For that reason I've never read LOTR and managed to avoid all the films until one terrible night when I was in the minority and everyone else wanted to watch one of them.

Thankfully it was only a DVD and we all talked through most of it but dear God, has there ever been a film more pleased with itself?

I read TLOTR when I was 22, and it's by far the best book I've ever read. I can't believe how much detail Tolkien went into to create this whole new world. I don't think I would have enjoyed it aged 10. I was gutted they didn't include Tom Bombadil in the film. That pisses me off a lot.

I started reading The Hobbit a few years ago, but couldn't be bothered as I was on our kindle and hated not having pages to turn. Tolkien books must be read with real books with real brown coloured pages.

we read The Hobbit in class when I was 11, it was fine. I tried to read LoTR afterwards but never got past Bilbo Baggins birthday party...

I don't understand, the hobbit is a childrens book.

I read the Hobbit when I was about 10 and I really enjoyed it despite English being my second language so I think the woman at the till was a bit dumb herself to be honest!

I tried LOTR immediately after and I couldn't cope with it, but it gave my an incentive to improve my English! I finally read it at 14 and went straight on to the Silmarilion, The Lost Tales and the Unfinished Tales (but I only read the latter two because I am a geek!).

Fakebook Tom Bombadil has his own book "The adventures of Tom Bombadil" if you fancy it! :)

I read the Hobbit when I was about 9.

I would just tell her that she was probably muddling it with another book.

A month after having DS I was doing a shop in tesco, there was alsorts in my trolley, what did the man on the checkouts decide would be a good conversation starter, Breastpads.

We had to read it in school when we were 9.

LOTR is just so desperately boring. All those bloody songs and the maps and family trees. Not my sort of book.

Ahh see, I love a good map and a family tree in a book. Kind of completes the whole experience for me

The songs suck though, I tolerate them as I know that they are a big part of the folklore that Tolkein was trying to create and they are cleverly written.

Tom Bombadil was blatantly a character formed when Tolkein was smoking something funny......

Have you heard the story of Tolkien giving a draft to Lewis Carroll to read and he threw it back at him across a pub and said 'I can't cope with all he bloody elves '

Everyone else enjoys it though I know. I think I just don't have the attention span required for reading it. I can't concentrate that much

Sounds like sarcasm to me. YABU you need to get a sense of humour

Bigkids- You need a good memory for names, especially names that sound very similar but slightly different.
Lewis Carroll, C S Lewis and Tolkein must have had some seriously fucked up conversations I reckon. I like to imagine them sitting around, getting stoned and seeing who could come up with the weirdest shit. Mad as a box of frogs the lot of them

I also liked the hobbit but was bored to death by lord of the rings.

What world are we living in when The Hobbit (or even LOTR) are considered a hard book to read!?

I loved it, still do and I'm 54.
Like a bit of Eco, too!

I liked The Hobbit, I read it when I was about... 14 I guess? I didn't like LOTR so much though. It's not that I found it hard to read, or that I didn't like the story (I love the movies) but my god, less of the crappy lyric poetry taking up entire chapters, please, Mr Tolkein.
Shut up, Tom Bombadil, just shut up. Thank god he got the chop from the movies.

(Sorry, Fakebook)

I love loony checkout staff. We had one recently who spotted our prosecco and asked what it was (fair enough). Once established that we were going to drink wine that night, she proceeded to tell us in great detail about here night out with her boyfriend "doing fishbowls" and how she thought she was still "away with it". She managed to keep this up for The Entire Shop and it was a big shop. Even asked me if I liked a fishbowl "on the weekend".

As I wasn't a teen / student last week, my jaw was probably on the floor. I swear I thought the checkout assistant was asking me about whether or not I did drugs because I had no idea WTF else a fishbowl would be

(DP explained that it is a disgusting sounding sugary cocktail though )

"Sounds like sarcasm to me. YABU you need to get a sense of humour"

PoppyPrincess are you for real?

I clearly stated in the title that this was lighthearted so therefore I'm obviously not offended and find it quite funny that she implied (maybe accidentally) that I was probably thick - hence the smile in the OP.

Every other single person who has commented on this thread has got that.

Therefore I suggest it is you who is the one that needs to get a sense of humour and lighten up as well.

Oh and back on topic, I'd probably be a little offended (read at 7), but I doubt in reality she meant anything by it tbh!

Not a hard read at all. Silmarillion was a bugger though