Soo after the Gatsby thread- anyone care to convince me about LOTR?

[littlelamb]

Because I looove the Great Gatsby, can't see why anyone wouldn't want to finish it but on the occasions I have tried with Lord of the Rings I have found it to be the most tedious wank and have given up after a few chapters. Is it really worth persevering with? I know so many people who love it but I just don't 'get' it. Does it improve?

I like LOTR very much. I like the tone of sadness and inevitable loss.

And I have nerver read any writer who describes locations so vividly. That is why it is a shame to have seen the films and to have had my own views of Rohan, Gondor, etc wiped and overwritten.

Thread, if you didn't enjoy the first film, why did you watch all three of them? Are you a hobbit addict?

I do like it, lamb

I did enjoy the films. I resisted seeing them for a long time. But they are good films.

But the books are better.

Try this one too:

is a bit sweary though

I finally dragged myself through it about 4 years ago, having read the first book at least twice, the second book about halfway through once - I found it got progressively worse. It starts off quite chatty and fun and light-hearted (heck, I liked Tom Bombadil!) but by the end it's all King James-style prose and endless gloomy battles where the characters all speak with archaic inversions.

I get the point about it being influential, and I was interested in it for that reason. I don't regret the time I spent reading it but I never want to have to pick it up again.

Has anyone read "Bored of the Rings"? One-joke parody, not half as funny as it thinks it is.

yes to "bored of the rings" years ago. The funniest bit is on the covers re our hero being frisked by an ethereal elf, as I recall. the rest was pretty lame.

no not a boy or a nerd. My mother was much enthralled by tolkien and was caught up in a buzz about it in the late 50's early 60's - thinking about it, she must have been late teens - a good age to read it. She adored reading and wanted me to be able to understand that my imagination is so much brighter than any movie could ever make any book.

and that is why fans always said - it couldn't be done.

but it was and apart from boromir it was really good.

anyway, my mother read to me - the hobbit when i was about 8 or 9. ..Yes i know i was spoiled only child who had a mother who read to her!

and she did the voices, and changed her tone for the exciting bits - and i can remember wanting to find out what happened next.

and i read it to my children - the hobbit that is.

Also, A very long story cut short, my very dear friend was doing Eng lit at Oxford in the mid 70's and met Tolkien as he was a friend of my friend's tutor.

On this meeting, Tolkien asked my friend "go on, ask me the question everyone wants to know. 'Why did you write The Hobbit?'"

Friend says no. I want to ask you.."What was CS Lewis really like?".

The Big T dualy obliged.......

Hello again littlelamb. It's been fun reading the pros and cons. And pointydog in particular did make me laugh.

It occurred to me that there is something to be said about "how" we read books, if you're to be "seduced" into reading LOTR.

For a start, I don't think it's going to matter, really, if you don't. Or if you decide you really can't bear the experience of reading it.

But, in the interests of seduction ... .

There are lots of diferent ways to read books. they're so fascinating, in that books tend to demand a different way of reading each one and tend to set things up to get you to read them in certain ways.

So "The Great Gatsby" is, I think, amazingly seductive; it allures with its beauty, it aims at seduction. You're never, really, going to get going on it unless you allow yourself to be at least a little seduced by the propensity of money to morally corrupt, to gild, to allure. You have to allow yourself to expereince the glamour of youth and beauty and wealth, and yet sense that there is an undertow of doubt. If you resist all that, you will really not be inclined to read on, or to feel the full effect of the ending, when it comes.

Similarly, with LOTR what you need most is time (as others on this thread have pointed out). I'm sure there's a really good reason why so many adolescents enjoy it, and it's not simply that its moral and character reach is not deep, even immature. I'm sure it's because they have so much time, so can really immerse themselves in the imaginitive experience. And they are also able to put aside demands for modern sexual politics and deeper insights, at least temporarily, just for the pleasure of the story-telling experience.

I think the way to read LOTR is actually quite innocently, in the same way I used to love "Noggin the Nog", and I think it would be sad to think there isn't a place in our reading experiences for such an important pleasure.

Now, if you're on mn, I suspect that you have (young?) dcs. So maybe now is, perhaps, not quite the right time for LOTR. Alice Munro, perhaps? Or Jamaica Kincaid?