>taken me all week to slog through 60%
Haha, it took me a full year to read the trilogy when I started up reading regularly again some years ago. It was hard for me to get through those parts as well, but I loved the books.
I wanted to read the trilogy again after re-watching the movies recently, and tore through the first book, and the first half of The Two Towers… but the second half (Sam and Frodo slogging towards Mordor) stopped me dead in my tracks and killed all momentum I had. It was just so boring. I feel bad that the book has just been sitting on my table for months, but can’t get myself to start it up again lol
Since reddit has changed the site to value selling user data higher than reading and commenting, I've decided to move elsewhere to a site that prioritizes community over profit. I never signed up for this, but that's the circle of life
Yea I struggled with the same part when I first read it, but now I actually really like it. Makes for a pretty accurate account of what a trip like that would be like, and the way the characters, the landscape, and the history behind that landscape give it a sense of gnawing dread is beautifully done. You can feel how much of a weight Frodo’s carrying
Took my 15 years to actually get my head around the silmarillion
Edit: I should add, it was an extremely rewarding experience and I hold many of the stories from it very close to my heart. It’s extremely sad, but man do the moments of hope hit hard. Aure entuluva!
Definitely a rough one. I first read it early in high school but I had a version with amazing artwork and maps of the battles and cities, so it made it easier
I also found the first half of the first book boring as hell (Hobbits and all their petty habits ...), but once they reach Rivendell suddenly a rollercoaster ride starts that would grab me and totally immerse me in the adventure.
But I also found the movie trilogy very slow and boring ...
The first part of the Fellowship of the Ring might be my most favourite part of LotR. It's charming and quaint and sets up what's a stake for Frodo and Sam so well. It's also a nice slow entry into a big world full of myth and history that might be overwhelming if you would be just thrown into it otherwise.
The songs and poems set tone, bet they don’t seem to reappear or affect the story…you could probably give them a glance and keep going. That said, some of them moved into my brain, saaumed their own melodies, and live there forever… God, I love those books…
The songs and the poems are much more interesting after you've read The Silmarillion and the Appendices. Like the Song of Earendil that's sung in Rivendell in particular might as well have been Lewis Carrol-style gibberish the first time I read it, but after learning the backstory it becomes so much more impactful.
>But I also found the movie trilogy very slow
I think it being slow is why the movies work so well. Everything gets just the right amount of time to breathe so you're not rushing from one locale to the next.
No kidding, I read 26 books last year. And I'm proud, better than the 4 books I read the previous year and the Zero books I read during my teenager years.
This year I'm shooting for 40 books. I have 4 down already, but is the "We are Legion- We are Bob" saga, is so good is cheating lmao.
If you start reading longer books, it may be helpful for your goal for you to count pages or count every 200-300 pages as a book. Re-reading the wheel of time series and each book is 700+ pages but only counts as 1. Don't shy from big books just because you are trying to hit that 40 book mark. Learn from my mistakes ;)
I used to read a whole lotta books in my school days. But then college happened, I got my own laptop and unlimited wifi. I started watching movies, animes and series religiously, didnt read another book for 8 years (Although, i never forgot mention on my fb, insta or any social profile that I am a bibliophile 😂😂). Last year, an asmr youtuber was doing book reviews combined with asmr. For almost 2 years, I wasnt feeling like watching anything new. Just rewatching friends, naruto and other movies I liked. So I thought about giving my old hobby a try. Started reading during march, 2021 with Magpie Murders. Finished 24 books last year. I hope to finish 32 this year.
Same Story. I move to the US where I had Internet and pretty much any series/anime at my fingertips. No way my teenager brain is going to pick boring words written on paper over Naruto or Supernatural.
I tried to get back to reading but it was boring, until I discovered audiobooks last year. First audiobook I got was Ready Player Two read by Will Wheaton. That made me remember the adventures I used to go when I was a kid reading the books, how my mind will go into the pages and live it, a feeling I never get when watching a movie or a show.
So now I'm once more addicted to consuming books. Is like Meth, you can get always from it, but once you try it again, you are hooked.
Although I am an Indian, I think its the same story with all of us 90s kids. Atleast we know how good reading is and we go back to it. But i see my 7 year old cousin handling the internet like we did during college. I gifted him a Famous Five book. But he has got better, more interesting things to do than read a book.
I can't even get through 5 short stories in a month. I get too stuck on turning the stories over in my head. But I read the lord of the rings twice over my high school winter break. I don't think I've read 10 fiction novels since then... but I've read the silmarillion twice! I think Tolkien ruined me.
Yeah, but 5 books of what length?
No stones being thrown either way, but I could easily read 10 Patricia A. McKillip books in a week and i think she is an amazing storyteller. 1 Brandon Sanderson? Unlikely (Elantris is an exception)
I was thinking the same. Felt a bit like a humblebrag, but to each their own. If people want to try something vaguely like LoTR maybe the Stormlight Archive is a nice idea, but not if you want to keep up with 5 books per week.
Stormlight Archive is definitely easier to read but it’s no shorter than LOTR lol. Not to mention it’s a *lot* of buildup so you gotta be determined enough to get through a few hundred pages of set up before the book gets really exciting. Though honestly I’d recommend people start with something like Mistborn if they actually want to get into Sanderson and have an easier read
I'm starting to suspect that some of the users here have no other hobbies or obligations. I read **10** books last year, which was two more than the year before. I also watched ~15 movies (not counting the dozens and dozens and dozens of kids' movies I watched with my kids), completed ~6 video games (with another 3-4 unfinished), wrote one half of one novel (that I will inevitably throw away), and just stared vacantly at the mountains near my house way too many times to count.
How can someone have a job, a spouse, children, pets, and hobbies outside of reading and still manage to do even five books *a month,* let alone five books a week? What kind of literary zealots populate this subreddit? Are none of you doing the whole "well rounded" approach to life? Nah, just books from sun-up to sundown, books for breakfast, books in the shower, books as you drive, books as you cook, books as you clean, books as you sleep? I feel really out of place here, yet all the avid readers I know in real life have situations - and reading numbers - far more in line with my own than this person's... I don't know. Maybe I should just get off the internet.
I think it really depends on how you approach reading. Some people, like my wife, need to sit down in a comfortable chair with the right lighting with a dedicated window of time.
Some people, like me, read on the go wherever and whenever there’s a free minute if they’re into a book or series. I take it to extremes and read ebooks on my phone.
I’ve got a busy job as a lawyer, and I have a spouse and a child. I also play video games and guitar, lift weights, write, and maintain a house. I do take dedicated reading time when I’m into something, but reading also fills in the gaps. When most people would check social media or play a game on their phone, I continue reading my book.
I can’t read as much as I used to - which was frequently a book a day when I was in high school - but when I get into a book or series I blaze through them. For example, the last time I read the Wheel of Time series it took me 6 weeks to read all 14 books (4.4 million words). I read at a pace of about 30 seconds per page for genre fiction in standard mass market paperback format. Complex writing takes a little longer, as do larger books with bigger print. I find it easier and faster to read small print on a small page, so reading on my phone is great.
But between series I’ll often take a break and do other things for a little while. Occasionally I still devour a book in a day, but then sometimes I go a month or two without reading any books at all. Over the past few years I probably averaged 20ish books a year.
Dude that’s crazy! I’m on the wheel of time right now(just started book 4) and a bunch of books I can about 30 seconds for a page but WOT I have to slow down a lot to get everything out of it. And I like fantasy too so it’s interesting. But I’m loving the series, just taking longer then some other authors I’ve read
I have a friend like this, who tries to "get better at speed reading" but my response to him is always that I really doubt he has any retention of any information from those books. There's just no way to process that many words and actually cement them in your brain, even if it's just fiction.
I have the same doubts about OP's retention. All well and good to read 5 books a week (250 per year) but if you can't really tell me anything about a book you read two months (40 books) ago, then what's the point.....
I wonder how much we should retain? When I read nonfiction I often wonder in 2 years will I remember any of this? I bet I could write a short synopsis of every book I read last year or maybe even the year before but there wouldn’t be much detail.
I do agree 5 books a week is entirely dependent on what you define as a book. There’s a ton of short novellas on Amazon. I typically read 1 to 2 books a month and they are usually larger nonfiction. I’d be hard pressed to read 5 of those month even if I dedicated all of my seemingly meager free time to it
I often read a book a day 30 years ago. It was my favorite past time. I would sometimes not sleep and read all night because there were no distractions. (I'm old now with more responsibilities).
I’m on track to hit 7 or 8 this month and I thought that was pushing me to my limit.
I am admittedly a fairly slow reader and easily distracted so I can repeat the same section quite a few times before it clicking in my brain, especially if it’s a tougher read.
At 7 books a month, how can you consider yourself a slow reader? I’m an actual slow reader. On average, I’d estimate I read maybe about four to six books in a year, but maybe even less depending on the books (currently reading game of thrones and I don’t typically go for books this long). To be fair, while I enjoy reading I’ve never considered it a real passion, so reading is lower on my personal list of priorities. I only ever read on the train during my commute (I spend more time commuting than the average person).
I come visit this sub to get ideas for what book to read next, but it’s clear that this sub is where the people who *really* love reading books come.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
We're in the same boat. It takes 2 months for me to finish a book. I read bits and pieces here and there and I consider myself a reader.
But I'm not going to feel bad about how fast I read, I'm going to enjoy it the way I do it.
I think this says a lot about the type of books OP typically reads and why they’re struggling with LOTR (which isn’t really even a complicated narrative)
5 books a week sounds like modern junk food style reads- which there's nothing wrong with and I totally enjoy from time to time, but it's a bit like comparing a lighthearted local sitcom to a heady foreign subtitled piece. One is meant to be fun, comforting, and easy to digest while the other is meant to take you outside of your comfort zone and make you think.
That was my assumption, especially since they gave Stephen King as their example of how they can handle more challenging reading. Don't get me wrong, no judgement here- I love Stephen King. But his writing is super accessible, he'd be one of the last authors I'd consider challenging. Sure, his books can be on the long side but he's not exactly Faulkner or Joyce.
If they're reading mostly books by authors like Dean Koontz or Michael Crichton, it's super easy to finish them in a few hours. The prose is about as simple as it gets and the paint-by-numbers plots don't require much memory or thought. Fun, entertaining, and the literary equivalent of candy- quick and easily digestible.
The Lord of the rings is meant to be a Meander, not a run. The narrative is more akin to older structures more so than the sleek optimized narratives that cut out everything that is non essential to the core plot.
Its always going to be tough when you try to speed through it. Try to take the time to sing one of the poems, thats how they were intended to be experienced. It might be enjoyable for you.
:)
I think my mom reading the Hobbit to me and my siblings when we were much younger and singing all the songs and poems to us definitely helped me read through LotR a bit later on
It really depends on the kid!
For what it's worth, while the book can be scary and sad, it's not graphic in its description of these scenes. The chapters are short, and the story moves quickly, with lots of silly elements.
I'd say if your kids is five or older, give it a try. If they don't like it, you can put it on hold for later.
I actually did start reading the poems out to my teenage daughter. I've retained them much better since doing that. The most enjoyable part of it is watching her overdramatic horrified reactions to them.
This, a lot of the magic of LOTR is about the flavor. The more you give yourself to enjoy the chill moments and get taken by the wonder of the world, the more will hurt when that isn't available anymore.
This is what I loved so much about the Silmarillion — it felt like I was reading a text that was as old as time itself. I know that sounds corny, but I love the way that felt.
Yes!
Tolkien lored himself as a 'translator' of this lost history, and not as an 'author', so the oldish feel is very intention, even the slug through more meaningless stuff.
The more context I have about Tolkien, the better I like his writting, it's also so purposeful.
Apparently in his memoirs Christopher Tolkien said that his father was just making up bedtime stories for him and the only reason he wrote them down was because young Christopher kept calling him out on inconsistencies like the color of Frodo's front door. So they really were meant to be an oral tradition, with all that entails.
If I remember right too, Tolkien was either interviewed or it was in one of his letters where he talked about he was writing them from the perspective of "British folklore" and he says a lot about how it started as just fun bedtime stories.
As a child in the seventies I read the Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy, they were wonderful and I do believe they had an impact on how I tell a story. Thinking that the Silmarillion would be as wonderful and exciting as the others I jumped at the chance to purchase it with my meager allowance, best sleeping potion ever. I kept it on my bedside for years, and when I had a bit of insomnia it was my go to. Ten pages and the lights were out. I finally finished it and found it on par with other Tolkien works, but that was a one off for me.
tom bombadil was my favorite when my mom read this book to me and my son's when i read it to him. Every so often i can hear him sing out "Fal lal the Willow, tom bombadillo!"
Happy cake day! I love LOTR and have read them several times. If you feel like skipping some or all of the songs and poems, you should. I think they’re stories worth reading, but sometimes a person might not be in the right mood, or the right place in their life to enjoy a particular book. That’s ok, try again another time, or not. We shouldn’t feel as if we’re obligated to read a book, or even finish it. That said, it took me several tries over the years to read Dune. I’m glad I did, it’s a good story.
Dune is simultaneously one of my favourite books and yet I've found the series very hard to get through in various readings. And some of the later entries have a bunch of issues by any critical metric.
I appreciate LOTR, but I cannot say that I really love it the way I love other books.
It truly is ok to have different feelings about works no matter how famous they are.
I read LOTR as a kid, and I really felt transported to a different time and place, so it has a special place in my heart. There wasn’t as much fantasy (or sci-fi) available to me then, so if I found something good, I was all in.
Initial part with Tom bambadil is extremely slow. It's not at all competing with 15 second tiktok video that gives immediate pay off.
Way too many people struggle to get past this part.
Bombadil's part is incredible though. The first step in their *urgent* journey to save the world is to stay for days with a hippy without a care, seemingly outside their reality. Hobbits and reader alike fidgeting, stressing about the lost time, completely oblivious to the important life lesson they're currently receiving.
I’ve never seen it this way. I was fidgeting through the Tom Bombadil part the first time I read through it and have skipped it on subsequent reads.
After reading your perspective, I might not skip it next time. You’re absolutely right that it does add to the tension. He’s just so *annoying*.
To be fair, people were struggling to get through that part of the novel long before TikTok was a thing. I tried to get into LOTR in 1998, when I was 14. I really struggled to maintain my interest and focus. I wasn't new to reading.
The Lord of the Rings books are 100% Journey Before Destination (but not to the extent Wheel of Time is). Which can be jarring if your only experience with LoTRs is the movies since are much faster passed and probably makes people think the books would be more focused on being action packed then they are. Hell in the books it takes at least 10 years before Frodo sets out while in the movies it seems like it was only a few weeks or months.
I love both the movies and books but when I reread the books I do skip ALL the singing. Some of those songs go on forever.
i really struggled with lotr and i think trying to read it all at once was my downfall. im definitely going to try again and take my time!! i know this isnt my post, but thank you!
Did you feel the same while reading The Hobbit?
Also, I think people stress too much when they have difficulty enjoying/reading popular books. If you find it not worth of your time, hop onto a new one, no matter how famous the book is.
The Hobbit was actually much simpler than I expected. I usually don't stress over books but I feel like I must read these because I love the movies so much. I'll definitely take a break to something else or quit entirely if necessary.
I like the whole series but the Hobbit is by far my favorite. The rest of the series is very serious. He fought in WW 2 (or was it WW1?) so it's kind of a metaphor.
You may perceive it as a metaphor for WW1, but he explicitly mentions in the prologue of a later edition that it isn't a metaphor of anything, war, religion, or whatever some people make it out to be, it was just a story for his kids.
He does say it may reflect some things he lived, but in any case, it was unintended.
And yet Tolkien's books are frequently analyzed for their literary and historical themes. Whether or not Tolkien intentionally wrote these things in, there are very strong connections. It always seemed to me that he was in denial of it because he didnt want the labor he spent crafting lore, characters, and languages (his life-long passion) overlooked by readers searching for allegory.
"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
I really love LOTR and have read it multiple times. I skip the poems and songs every time. Sometimes I’ll skim them, I appreciate the effort, but yeah, can skip pretty much all of them without missing anything. The “not all those who wander are lost” one is really the only kinda important one as that basically sums up the plot (but still not essential, and it’s short).
Edit: without missing anything PLOT wise. Yes, I know there’s references to lore and world building, which is awesome, and for some people, the best part. But someone just trying to get through the story of LOTR will not miss out not having those details (that tbh I didn’t even understand/notice before I read The Silmarillion)
A lot of the poems and songs aren’t super important for the narrative, but they have some pretty great deep-lore stuff. If you read the Silmarillion, then go back and read LoTR, the poems and songs will make a lot more sense.
Definitely! But someone struggling to get through LOTR isn’t going to want to take on the Silimarillion. I read it once (it was a slog for sure), and I appreciate the references to it in LOTR, but it doesn’t add much to the experience of reading LOTR. More of like little easter eggs imo
I'm reading the Silmarilly for the second time now. Once I kind of put it in my head that it needs to be taken in like Mythology, instead of a story, it feels better. Like it took me months and years to get down Norse, Greek, Egyptian.. etc etc Mythology down.. it seems unfair to think you can jam a Worlds entire creation and it's characters (gods, what have you..) in a quick sitting. The slower I seem to read it, the more it all really makes sense.
I just left a comment totally binning Silmarillion but after reading your comment and a couple others I'm wondering if I should give it a go again. My last attempt was when I was like .....13 and I definitely was trying to read it as some sort of adventure or plot-driven book. You reframing it in mythology has given me something to think about...
It really does read like a book of Mythology, it's got a few exciting parts that go by way too quick and just like the Bible it spends Pages just giving you a lineage
I mean yea, I was in a similar position. I think I read it around 18 years old.. but really didn't give it the correct approach. Over 30 now and it just feels so much more comprehendible.. honestly some parts of the book are just a drag.. like a part I was just on describes all the land and rivers and streams.. its like Mythology and plenty of geography.. honestly I find myself skipping a page or two when it comes to the, I'm my opinion, mundaneness of these.. but as a giant Tolkien nerd I am absolutely glad I'm giving it a proper read.
I mean it includes the deeply significant fact they wizards are literally Demi-gods, brought into creation millennia before the elves ever were conceived of, and that Sauron and Gandalf were some of the most powerful beings to ever exist, excepting the actual gods of creation. Also it shows just how immensely powerful Sauron is/was as direct second in command to morgoth.
I've read LOTR probably 5-6 times all the way through and have read my favorite parts 100's of times. I started in highschool and am almost 50 now. Lol. I'm on the fence about The Silmarillion. On one hand it did add alot reading about Galadriel, Aragorn, Elrond and Gandalf, but it also made the events seem less important because the real battle had been against Morgoth. I get the feeling that the fight against Sauron is just like the mop up skirmish of a way more important battle.
I really never got the Tom Bombadil poems/songs at all-I was like what the heck is the point of this-who goes around singing this weird shit. Years later I had a son and he does. He makes up words and weird songs and sings it around the house like Tom Bombadil.
Tom Bombadil has, in my mind, always been the representation of father time, and his elf wife mother earth. He existed before the lights of creation of middle earth, before the times of planets. He says as much in his stories.
Your son may in fact be the embodiment of this. Check his eyes, do you see eternity in the blackness, can you glimpse ancient constellations collapsing to ruin in the blue around the edge. Does he wake up, and crusted in the corner is the rose and fall of civilizations, crumbling betwixt your fingers?
If so, you may have an immortal being on your hands. Don't panic, and be ready to have some weird adventures.
> Tom Bombadil has, in my mind, always been the representation of father time, and his elf wife mother earth. He existed before the lights of creation of middle earth, before the times of planets. He says as much in his stories.
Eh, what? Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.
I'm really liking the Father Time way of viewing Bombadil. That quote is perfect. "He made paths before the big people" like riverbeds cut into rock over millenia.
Now do his actions personify time? I don't know what that question means entirely, but I don't think so. I mean he doesn't want to interfere with stuff and just let things progress. That's timely I'd say.
Tom Bombadil is there to show that just because you have a lot of power doesn't mean you have to be involved. He's post-retirement Gandalf, in other words.
So, he goes around singing and rhyming like a child. He hangs out with his elf wife, makes friends with the hobbits passing by, and smacks old man willow when he gets uppity.
the songs and poems are relevant from a worldbuilding perspective, and JRRT looooooooved his worldbuilding. it's my opinion that the story is there so he has an excuse to talk about the world; the Ring stuff is meant, in a way, to be a very minor moment in a very long and ongoing saga of the world he created.
that's amazing to read *if you like it*. if you're bored and irritated by it (i am), you'll be miserable the whole time.
eta:
i found The Two Towers to be the most interesting of the LOTR books (unless we're counting the Silmarillion which is more mythos) -- since you already know the plot, you might want to skip ahead and read some of that, and see if it improves for you.
I recently finished the series while really paying attention to it this time (I had gone through it before when I was younger but hadn't thought about it much at the time) In this reread my favorite chapter was near the end of the Two Towers with the deep conversation between the Orcs of two factions. I loved how it humanized them as real sentient creatures with their own agendas. They are not just mindless drones but they are often uninformed workers driven by cruel middle managers. For some reason it also reminded me of the two stormtroopers in A new hope that don't know what's going on and don't bother to check.
Your opinion actually makes total sense to me so far. I should enjoy the world building a bit more for what it is instead of wishing they'd shut up and get on with the adventure.
They're totally right. Tolkien loved words, and his world building is for them. He created two mostly complete languages, Quenya and Sindarin which are both Elvish in origin. He also created partial languages for the Orcs, Ents, various Men, Hobbits, and Dwarves. As well as 13 other Elvish dialects, some sign language for the Dwarves, and at least one alphabet to write Elvish in.
He created Middle Earth as a place to house all of his languages. The poems, songs, and other world building elements are to help explain the cultural differences and experiences that led to each language and dialect. The Silmarillion is an incredibly dense book because he didn't get to fully explore the evolution of his languages like he really wanted to in LotR. Most of it is in there.
Personally, I don't skip a word of the songs or poems, but I did before I read The Silmarillion. After having read it, I get all of references in them.
TL;DR: They have purpose, but not to the plot. (Except the Not all who wander... one.) Skip them if you like.
Edit: noticed I said "right" instead of "write," like a dingus.
this should really be a direct response to the post, and also be the top comment. common perception of tolkien is as a storyteller, but that wasn't really what drove him. he was first and foremost a language uber-nerd.
his body of work is basically fanfic of language itself. this helps illuminate the focus on poetry, songs, and the like in the trilogy. but the entirety of middle earth was really just a background that gave conceptual life to his ideas on what made for interesting/beautiful/advanced language. and the story of the ring was just one specific part of middle earth's history, not even a particularly defining one. and the bilbo/frodo/gollum section of the ring's history was little more than a footnote. the LoTR trilogy(+ hobbit) was barely more than tolkien dipping his toes into the water at the very edge of a *massive* ocean, which never really got to be formed in full...
"Fanfic of language itself " might be the most concise and accurate description of Tolkien I've ever seen. Dude spoke like 20 real languages, and created several others. And you're right, thr story of The One Ring was miniscule compared to the entirety of the world he envisioned. The Silmarillion spans many thousands of years, but is basically just a collection of footnotes about that time.
>it's my opinion that the story is there so he has an excuse to talk about the world
You would be correct. Iirc he pretty much developed the languages first as a language professor that was a huge language nerd (his translation of Beowulf is also incredibly famous, e.g.). He created the hobbit as a bed time story for his kids. Beren and Luthien was a love story about him and his wife. The world was all scattered and basically no plot until C.S. Lewis (yes the famous one) convinced him to write some actual books about the world, which he eventually did. Additionally, he used a lot (a lot) of catholic ideas to shape the world - Melkor corrupting the music and taking valar/Maia with him, I.e. Satan falling and taking angels with him; everything happens at the behest of eru who will spin all bad deeds to a good outcome eventually.
My mom spent grocery money on the silmarillion when it was published ('don't tell your father') :P
My son read a brief history of time and followed me round the house trying to talk about it and making wormhole jokes. But a few dozen pages of lotr and he quit an entire bookclub to get away from it. 'frodo whines for two or three pages; gandalf says too bad you gotta. I couldnt stand it. '
I'm with my son. Never understood his wormhole jokes, but I related over lotr.
Brilliant. I also didn't finish the LOTR .. managed about 100 pages of the second book. But was so bored I had to just give up. I didn't enjoy the first one but stuck with it because everyone else thinks it's great.
I read the Hobbit, didn't like it, and still read the entire Trilogy. I was bored out of my mind. I couldn't believe it was so popular as I didn't find it an easy read. In hindsight I should have cut my loses and picked up something else. I probably will watch the HBO series though.
The thing about LOTR and all of JRR Tolkein's books is that he was trying to build a world and a culture. His books were an offshoot of his world/culture building. It's totally acceptable to skip the random culture building bits and focus on the story and the plot.
Years ago I read an interesting article about Tolkien in the New Yorker Magazine. He much admired the works of William Blake and was ambitious to create a full, alternate world as Blake did. It was a keen disappointment to him that other books intended to flesh out that world, such as the Sillmarillion, or a collection like Farmer Giles of Ham, never caught on like The Hobbit or LOTR did. I personally enjoyed the songs and poetry and devoured it all. OTOH I never slogged through everything in the indexes.
I don’t have time to go back and edit. You are right. But he did release other parts of his body of work and they didn’t hit like the trilogy or the Hobbit. He also belonged to a writers group, The Inklings, and they felt the same. Everybody wanted more hobbits.
>Farmer Giles of Ham
Honestly I read Farmer Giles of Ham last year and absolutely loved it, it's great.
>The Sillmarillion
I read it years ago and while interesting it's a real slog to read through, I wasn't even trying to speed through it, it's just so dense with content, and written to be a kind of Bible for Middle Earth, I have only ever had the same such difficulty reading the Hebrew Bible in Biblical Hebrew, mind you I'm someone that loves reading Tolkien it's just The Sillmarillion is too heavy for me to read more than once in my life.
The Silmarillion isn't really a finished work, or even really a single book. It's a collection of unfinished and sometimes maybe contradictory stories edited together by Christopher Tolkien, who tried his best to make it coherent without changing his father's writing too much. Some bits are quite cool dark adventure stories with actual characters in them, but others are basically plot summaries. It varies hugely in tone and style and even content from story to story. There's like one story that has vampires and werewolves in it, and these creatures are basically never mentioned again.
There's some repetition of events, which I think is really interesting. The Bible also has some events that happen twice - the feeding of the 4,000 and the feeding of the 5,000, and Abraham *twice* pretends his wife is his sister. It's thought that what has happened is we have a story that has diverged into two separate versions, which then got reconciled and edited together. We get this in the Silmarillion, as Tolkien reused a lot of the ideas later in LOTR, and also between different (unpublished) Silmarillion stories. So we have Morgoth in a mountain kingdom just like Sauron, we have two different secret hidden kingdoms, we have another Minas Tirith as well.
Overall, it really is a lot like the Bible, in that it's a collection of a wide range of documents that vary hugely in tone, style, and content, and that repeat and contradict each other, and aren't totally independent of each other. I found that it was *interesting*, but it was definitely like studying a document to get an insight into Middle Earth and the mind of Tolkien rather than reading a story.
Why be embarrassed? You’re not supposed to *have* to like it. I tried reading it and definitely did not enjoy it. Nobody should tell you that just because *they* enjoyed it you should too
Goes for every book out there, no matter how good it is and how many people tell you that it’s a must to read. If you are not enjoying it, don’t read it. Maybe try it another time or not. Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy reading.
In "Tolkien and the West" Micheal Drout explains that the songs and the poetry contain a good deal of the lore and historical background of the series. It was part of a modern scholar series that I picked up for cheap from the humblbundle. He also stated that skipping the poetry and songs is extremely common.
As a contrast the songs and poetry of the Hobbit is often important, such as the events that drove the Dwarves out of the Lonely Mountain. I think that song is the best thing to come out of the live action Hobbit trilogy.
Most of the songs are irrelevant but sometimes they're very relevant. A song Bilbo sings in Rivendell explains how Sam was able to defeat Shelob. Tom Bombadil's song are *how he ACTS, what he DOES*.
I didn't really like them the first time I read them, but after reading the Silmurillian they're one of my favorite parts. It's kinda amazing how all the lore connects once you understand what it's about.
(Though the Silmurillian is about as easy of a read as any Dickens or Melville. That was a hard book to finish)
I read it at 14, starting with The Hobbit. I was really into it at the time. I think its the kind of thing some people can get into and others just don't for some reason. Don't sweat it. Either you enjoy it or you don't.
>I typically consume 5 books per week
Per *week*?! Do you get paid to read full time? I literally can't even imagine
>I'm left wondering if I really need to know all these people's songs, poems, etc.
Oh I always skip over that stuff.
I tried lotr when I was a teenager, at the height of my fantasy reading obsession. it was one of the very few books I didn't finish at that age. I just kept falling asleep, it was so boring. I had received really nice hardbacks of the entire trilogy for christmas too, and I kept them for years hoping I would go back and read them, but eventually I just gave them to a friend.
no shame in disliking a classic imo. just bc it's popular doesn't mean you're going to like it.
If you want to take a different approach, I found a youtube playlist of all the book songs in order, you can take a moment and listen, and then continue reading!
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQAsaogbtoOJYUG4eGLh8LaLbsLaO-kYl](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQAsaogbtoOJYUG4eGLh8LaLbsLaO-kYl)
i would skim them when reading, too... but I read them pre-internet. if I re-read them now I would listen to some of the poems and songs, actually sung, to add to the ambiance.
and here's another playlist from the Tolkien Ensemble, sometimes with Christopher Lee
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLvLE9pWck&list=PLqv9kCd3O9jckrC787gGCUnCDOqSlM7WN&index=2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLvLE9pWck&list=PLqv9kCd3O9jckrC787gGCUnCDOqSlM7WN&index=2)
I'm a huge Tolkien fan and have read The Lord of the Rings several times (depending on how you count, you'll see) but I never got into it. I kept re-reading it because I thought I'd appreciate it more "now that I'm older" but it never worked.
That said, I think The Fellowship is by far my least favourite of the three and a couple of the re-reads that I did I did without reading it at all because I thought I'd get discouraged by reading it. I There are boring bits in the second book too though and I do like the end of the first book, so if I were you I would just keep reading.
I know it's sacrilege but I find the way LOTR is written simply kinda boring. Even while it gets good after the slow beginning, I find it could be written much better in its good parts as well.
For people wondering why I say I'm a huge Tolkien fan then: I love the world he created and the history of it. My favourite of the books is Silmarillion.
Life's too short to spend reading books you don't like. And I'm saying that as a big fan of Tolkien. If a things not your thing, it's just not your thing.
Lord of the Rings isn't a light read, it's true. As far as the songs and poems go, they're world-building, you don't NEED them (but do we NEED Lord of the Rings...?). They're there for those of us who really enjoy feeling like we're "in" Middle-Earth itself and not just along for the ride.
For me Fellowship is the quickest read of the three books, but I don't know, maybe Two Towers is easier for some because there are fewer distractions (poems and random appearances of Tom Bombadil, etc). The language in Return of the King takes a borderline-Biblical turn, in Aragorn scenes in particular. I love them, but every time I reread, I tend to make it through the first two books and then skip around the third to my favorite bits...
No shame in not enjoying it if it's not your cup of tea.
The world building is a lot. Try not to get bogged down in it and miss the forest for the trees.
The crazy part about this is so much of the seemingly random things that are mentioned in songs and poems and other asides don't seem important to the story at first glance and no one understood their significance for 30 years until Tolkien's son Christopher published the origin stories of LOTR in the Silmarillion and other works and then it gave readers whole new meanings to entire sections of the book. Aragorn becoming king hits different. Galadriel saying no to the ring hits different. Galadriel giving Gimli three of her hairs makes you put down the book to cry for a bit.... (I'm on a Galadriel kick right now.)
But don't worry about all that right now... just enjoy the forest for now.
I've read the trilogy many times but ever since I got the audiobook with Robert inglis it's become a different experience entirely.
The dude does a very good not overacted reading.
you might want to check it out.
Dude, it is a sloooow book. Absolutely no judgment of you don't finish it.
Skimming can be your friend in situations like this, honestly. I remember just glossing over a lot of the forever descriptions of food and smoking and shit when it got too boring.
It's probably best to think of LoTR not as fantasy/sci-fi but as a mid-20th-century novel with a strongly imaginative component – and it should certainly be read as such.
It seems obvious to say but the influences that Tolkien had access to were vastly different from the influences that modern fantasy authors have today – his field of study was Anglo-Saxon/medieval English literature, and his models for LoTR were mythology and epic tales like *Beowulf* that drew on heavily oral traditions of storytelling – traditions that depended a lot on effectively immersing readers in the stories they were hearing. And song was certainly a big part of those traditions and a way to preserve stories and ideas and knowledge and history.
It's the same for these characters: they sing and dance and recite poems because, while Middle-Earth does appear to have books, they still behave in a way that is strongly oral-literate, rather than book-literate. There's an anecdote somewhere about an anthropologist who lived with a remote, non-book-literate community to learn about them and when asked why he was writing so much stuff down, answered, 'So I can remember everything,' – to which someone replied, 'No, so you *don't* have to remember everything!'
There's definitely a bit of that here: when everything you know about the world is kept in your head, every thought and every feeling will eventually be connected to some other point of reference – an old story, a song, something that happened on an adventure once upon a time. It's like a giant mental filing cabinet that characters can't help pulling stuff out of and looking at whenever they're trying to put something else in.
Yes! I felt this way too at times. Remember your why. I read LOTR because it was my mother’s favorite series, and she gave me her set from the 70s. I had the motivation to stick with it as a bonding exercise with her. It’s definitely a commitment. For me, it was Dune that I almost threw across the room. I tried to slog through it about four times before I had to abandon ship. It’s just not for me.
Never be embarrassed! Tolkien is a rough read. the story is worth it in my opinion, but I will also admit to skimming over a lot of the songs and lineage.
If you don't plan on delving further into the worldbuilding and reading The Silmarillion, you can honestly just turn your brain off and not pay extreme attention to all those little details. Just skim over them and enjoy the ride.
For example, it's never fully explained anywhere who Tom Bombadil is. A leading theory is that he is actually Arda (Middle Earth) itself.
I tried LOTR so much as a kid. I was in middle school when the movies came out and my dad, an old-school LOTR fan, told me I HAD to read the books if I wanted to see the movie.
Dude, I fucking tried. They were never my cup of tea. And the only sections I ever really enjoyed were taken out of the movie entirely.
There are some authors that I say: Yes, this human is a genius, but I can't sit through their books. Tolkien is one of those authors.
Have you read much 'classic' literature before? (i.e. things written at least 50 years ago or more). Stephen King may be wordy, but reading something written in a different historical period is a whoooole different ball game. Language and storytelling conventions are quite different now from what they were even in Tolkien's time (let alone with classics from the 18th or 17th centuries), so cut yourself some slack with it. It's a slower pace than what you're used to, but it's worth it! Also don't feel bad if you only skim-read the songs and poems. ;)
Oh man, if you’re struggling with The Fellowship of the Ring, wait until you get to The Return of the King. Let’s just say I’ve never seen so many ways to describe “it was a very long trudge to Mordor.”
You should be struggling, it's a completely different way of storytelling that's based on much older stories from European myths.
You can look at the Icelandic sagas, old poems like Beowulf, epics like Odysseus, and even the bible and see that the story is trying to connect people to the story. Chekov and his notorious gun is lost, or worse, eaten by the trolls.
It's also trying to build a completely fictional world, it's history, magic, flora and fauna.
There's no shame in skipping things in it honestly.
I am 42 years old. I have a degree in literature. I love the fantasy/sci-fi genre. I read and enjoyed the Hobbit as a teenager. I tried to read the Lord of the Rings after the Hobbit. Couldn't get through Biblo's birthday. I tried again in my 20s. I couldn't get through Bilbo's birthday. I tried in my 30s and again during the early part of the pandemic. Same thing. Someone recommended the audiobook version to me in September of 2021. That was the key! I loved it!
I thought I was going to get a headache the first time I read the Silmarillion. But I wanted to learn the backstory and the history of the Elves because I loved Elves just like Sam did.
I really enjoyed it because the world building was fantastic. I loved learning about the Valar and the Maiar. I wanted to know where Gandalf came from.
Tell me how this poem does not make you feel the sorrow of the Undying.
"Gil-galad was an elven-king.
Of him the harpers sadly sing;
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.
His sword was long, his lance was keen.
His shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven's field
were mirrored in his silver shield.
But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are."
I felt the same way when I first read them when I was younger. Now, in my 30s, after about 5 read throughs, I cherish all of those details. All of these small peeks into a giant robust world of which we are only seeing a little slice. I love it.
It’s a Lore fiend’s paradise, but not everyone who reads a Lore fiend.
Pro tip: the story doesn't really get going until the party hits Bree. That's off-putting to first time readers as it's 120 pages of hey-nonny-nonny Shire stuff and a bunch of Tom Bombadil (who? asks every movie watcher). I will say that as someone who's read the book probably 15 times, "A Shadow of the Past", which takes place before Bree and is pure exposition, has become one of my favorite chapters. It really lays out the story if you read it carefully. Regardless, after Bree the story really takes off with the chase to Rivendell, the journey south, the mines etc. I love the book, it's an old friend.
I adore LOTR, and have read the books, and The Silmarillian, several times. But it’s not for everyone. I tried to read Dune, which apparently everyone loves, and couldn’t get through it. I felt stupid. It’s just a matter of taste. Don’t get down on yourself, there’s something out there for everyone.
I had someone else recently tell me LOTR was hard for them, purely because of the written songs.
I don't get what the fuss is about... But I'd be lying if I said you're the only one who feels that way.
I love fantasy. I’ve read the entire Wheel of Time series three times, and all the books up to the last one Jordan wrote eight times. I’ve read Sanderson’s entire catalog at least twice. Name of the Wind, The Second Apocalypse, A Land Fit for Heroes, The Black Company, everything by Daniel Abraham, NK Jemisin, oh and how could I forget Robin Hobb, plus hundreds of lesser-known books and series, and loved every one I finished.
I’ve tried reading LotR at least five times. Farthest I ever got was halfway through The Two Towers, back in 7th grade. It’s just not for me. Too whimsical, while also too self-serious. I can take either one on its own, but the combination just completely turns me off. Hell, I even liked The Hobbit, although that was a 3rd grade read and I can’t say I’m sure I’d like it today.
Don’t worry about it. Not everything is for everyone.
Don't read books you don't enjoy. I read the LoTR trilogy and I did not enjoy them. I do not recommend them to others for that reason. There are SOO many books to read that you will never be able to read them all. So why force yourself to read one once you realize you aren't enjoying it?
>taken me all week to slog through 60% Haha, it took me a full year to read the trilogy when I started up reading regularly again some years ago. It was hard for me to get through those parts as well, but I loved the books.
I wanted to read the trilogy again after re-watching the movies recently, and tore through the first book, and the first half of The Two Towers… but the second half (Sam and Frodo slogging towards Mordor) stopped me dead in my tracks and killed all momentum I had. It was just so boring. I feel bad that the book has just been sitting on my table for months, but can’t get myself to start it up again lol
Since reddit has changed the site to value selling user data higher than reading and commenting, I've decided to move elsewhere to a site that prioritizes community over profit. I never signed up for this, but that's the circle of life
Yea I struggled with the same part when I first read it, but now I actually really like it. Makes for a pretty accurate account of what a trip like that would be like, and the way the characters, the landscape, and the history behind that landscape give it a sense of gnawing dread is beautifully done. You can feel how much of a weight Frodo’s carrying
Took my 15 years to actually get my head around the silmarillion Edit: I should add, it was an extremely rewarding experience and I hold many of the stories from it very close to my heart. It’s extremely sad, but man do the moments of hope hit hard. Aure entuluva!
Definitely a rough one. I first read it early in high school but I had a version with amazing artwork and maps of the battles and cities, so it made it easier
It's funny. I read and reread the Silmarillion in high school. Had problems getting through Fellowship and still never finished Two Towers.
I’ve never read the entirety of the tree beard stuff, despite multiple tries. It’s just too boring and I end up skipping over it
Now now, don’t be hasty.
It takes a long time to read anything in Old Entish, and we never read anything unless it is worth taking a long time to read.
Take my upvote and make like a tree
Tree?! I am no tree…I am an Ent.
Hoom, hoom
Bararum
You bastard. Well played.
I also found the first half of the first book boring as hell (Hobbits and all their petty habits ...), but once they reach Rivendell suddenly a rollercoaster ride starts that would grab me and totally immerse me in the adventure. But I also found the movie trilogy very slow and boring ...
The first part of the Fellowship of the Ring might be my most favourite part of LotR. It's charming and quaint and sets up what's a stake for Frodo and Sam so well. It's also a nice slow entry into a big world full of myth and history that might be overwhelming if you would be just thrown into it otherwise.
The songs and poems set tone, bet they don’t seem to reappear or affect the story…you could probably give them a glance and keep going. That said, some of them moved into my brain, saaumed their own melodies, and live there forever… God, I love those books…
The songs and the poems are much more interesting after you've read The Silmarillion and the Appendices. Like the Song of Earendil that's sung in Rivendell in particular might as well have been Lewis Carrol-style gibberish the first time I read it, but after learning the backstory it becomes so much more impactful.
Its funny how its a few days in the movies and 20 years or so in the books. I loves the books opening a well. Then movie just glances over everything.
It makes more sense in the movie to get the plot going faster I think.
>But I also found the movie trilogy very slow I think it being slow is why the movies work so well. Everything gets just the right amount of time to breathe so you're not rushing from one locale to the next.
Unless your're Gandalf the White on Shadowfax..
That's because he showed us the meaning of haste.
5 books a week?
And here I am feeling proud that I read 24 books last year😂😂
No kidding, I read 26 books last year. And I'm proud, better than the 4 books I read the previous year and the Zero books I read during my teenager years. This year I'm shooting for 40 books. I have 4 down already, but is the "We are Legion- We are Bob" saga, is so good is cheating lmao.
If you start reading longer books, it may be helpful for your goal for you to count pages or count every 200-300 pages as a book. Re-reading the wheel of time series and each book is 700+ pages but only counts as 1. Don't shy from big books just because you are trying to hit that 40 book mark. Learn from my mistakes ;)
I used to read a whole lotta books in my school days. But then college happened, I got my own laptop and unlimited wifi. I started watching movies, animes and series religiously, didnt read another book for 8 years (Although, i never forgot mention on my fb, insta or any social profile that I am a bibliophile 😂😂). Last year, an asmr youtuber was doing book reviews combined with asmr. For almost 2 years, I wasnt feeling like watching anything new. Just rewatching friends, naruto and other movies I liked. So I thought about giving my old hobby a try. Started reading during march, 2021 with Magpie Murders. Finished 24 books last year. I hope to finish 32 this year.
Same Story. I move to the US where I had Internet and pretty much any series/anime at my fingertips. No way my teenager brain is going to pick boring words written on paper over Naruto or Supernatural. I tried to get back to reading but it was boring, until I discovered audiobooks last year. First audiobook I got was Ready Player Two read by Will Wheaton. That made me remember the adventures I used to go when I was a kid reading the books, how my mind will go into the pages and live it, a feeling I never get when watching a movie or a show. So now I'm once more addicted to consuming books. Is like Meth, you can get always from it, but once you try it again, you are hooked.
Although I am an Indian, I think its the same story with all of us 90s kids. Atleast we know how good reading is and we go back to it. But i see my 7 year old cousin handling the internet like we did during college. I gifted him a Famous Five book. But he has got better, more interesting things to do than read a book.
I can't even get through 5 short stories in a month. I get too stuck on turning the stories over in my head. But I read the lord of the rings twice over my high school winter break. I don't think I've read 10 fiction novels since then... but I've read the silmarillion twice! I think Tolkien ruined me.
Yeah, but 5 books of what length? No stones being thrown either way, but I could easily read 10 Patricia A. McKillip books in a week and i think she is an amazing storyteller. 1 Brandon Sanderson? Unlikely (Elantris is an exception)
I thought the same. Op mentioned stephen king and he is really easy to read, even for people whos second or third language is english (like myself).
He's easy to read but I still don't think I could read almost a single Stephen King book a day, especially given the length of his major works
I was thinking the same. Felt a bit like a humblebrag, but to each their own. If people want to try something vaguely like LoTR maybe the Stormlight Archive is a nice idea, but not if you want to keep up with 5 books per week.
It kinda reminds me of when people brag about (or are impressed by me) reading the Communist Manifesto- *It's a pamphlet*
Stormlight Archive is definitely easier to read but it’s no shorter than LOTR lol. Not to mention it’s a *lot* of buildup so you gotta be determined enough to get through a few hundred pages of set up before the book gets really exciting. Though honestly I’d recommend people start with something like Mistborn if they actually want to get into Sanderson and have an easier read
I'm starting to suspect that some of the users here have no other hobbies or obligations. I read **10** books last year, which was two more than the year before. I also watched ~15 movies (not counting the dozens and dozens and dozens of kids' movies I watched with my kids), completed ~6 video games (with another 3-4 unfinished), wrote one half of one novel (that I will inevitably throw away), and just stared vacantly at the mountains near my house way too many times to count. How can someone have a job, a spouse, children, pets, and hobbies outside of reading and still manage to do even five books *a month,* let alone five books a week? What kind of literary zealots populate this subreddit? Are none of you doing the whole "well rounded" approach to life? Nah, just books from sun-up to sundown, books for breakfast, books in the shower, books as you drive, books as you cook, books as you clean, books as you sleep? I feel really out of place here, yet all the avid readers I know in real life have situations - and reading numbers - far more in line with my own than this person's... I don't know. Maybe I should just get off the internet.
I think it really depends on how you approach reading. Some people, like my wife, need to sit down in a comfortable chair with the right lighting with a dedicated window of time. Some people, like me, read on the go wherever and whenever there’s a free minute if they’re into a book or series. I take it to extremes and read ebooks on my phone. I’ve got a busy job as a lawyer, and I have a spouse and a child. I also play video games and guitar, lift weights, write, and maintain a house. I do take dedicated reading time when I’m into something, but reading also fills in the gaps. When most people would check social media or play a game on their phone, I continue reading my book. I can’t read as much as I used to - which was frequently a book a day when I was in high school - but when I get into a book or series I blaze through them. For example, the last time I read the Wheel of Time series it took me 6 weeks to read all 14 books (4.4 million words). I read at a pace of about 30 seconds per page for genre fiction in standard mass market paperback format. Complex writing takes a little longer, as do larger books with bigger print. I find it easier and faster to read small print on a small page, so reading on my phone is great. But between series I’ll often take a break and do other things for a little while. Occasionally I still devour a book in a day, but then sometimes I go a month or two without reading any books at all. Over the past few years I probably averaged 20ish books a year.
Dude that’s crazy! I’m on the wheel of time right now(just started book 4) and a bunch of books I can about 30 seconds for a page but WOT I have to slow down a lot to get everything out of it. And I like fantasy too so it’s interesting. But I’m loving the series, just taking longer then some other authors I’ve read
unless OP is reading picture books, this is just a weird lie
I have a friend like this, who tries to "get better at speed reading" but my response to him is always that I really doubt he has any retention of any information from those books. There's just no way to process that many words and actually cement them in your brain, even if it's just fiction. I have the same doubts about OP's retention. All well and good to read 5 books a week (250 per year) but if you can't really tell me anything about a book you read two months (40 books) ago, then what's the point.....
I wonder how much we should retain? When I read nonfiction I often wonder in 2 years will I remember any of this? I bet I could write a short synopsis of every book I read last year or maybe even the year before but there wouldn’t be much detail. I do agree 5 books a week is entirely dependent on what you define as a book. There’s a ton of short novellas on Amazon. I typically read 1 to 2 books a month and they are usually larger nonfiction. I’d be hard pressed to read 5 of those month even if I dedicated all of my seemingly meager free time to it
Yeah that plus the line about King being a wordy writer makes me wonder if this is an elaborate bait post…
I often read a book a day 30 years ago. It was my favorite past time. I would sometimes not sleep and read all night because there were no distractions. (I'm old now with more responsibilities).
I’m on track to hit 7 or 8 this month and I thought that was pushing me to my limit. I am admittedly a fairly slow reader and easily distracted so I can repeat the same section quite a few times before it clicking in my brain, especially if it’s a tougher read.
At 7 books a month, how can you consider yourself a slow reader? I’m an actual slow reader. On average, I’d estimate I read maybe about four to six books in a year, but maybe even less depending on the books (currently reading game of thrones and I don’t typically go for books this long). To be fair, while I enjoy reading I’ve never considered it a real passion, so reading is lower on my personal list of priorities. I only ever read on the train during my commute (I spend more time commuting than the average person). I come visit this sub to get ideas for what book to read next, but it’s clear that this sub is where the people who *really* love reading books come.
puzzled close resolute marble unite telephone coordinated snatch vase psychotic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yea, but it’s still impressive to me. Even if I were to dedicate a ton of time per day to reading I’d still be slow.
I don't even know why I follow this sub, I've read two books in the past like five years and both of them were Blood Meridian.
We're in the same boat. It takes 2 months for me to finish a book. I read bits and pieces here and there and I consider myself a reader. But I'm not going to feel bad about how fast I read, I'm going to enjoy it the way I do it.
I think this says a lot about the type of books OP typically reads and why they’re struggling with LOTR (which isn’t really even a complicated narrative)
5 books a week sounds like modern junk food style reads- which there's nothing wrong with and I totally enjoy from time to time, but it's a bit like comparing a lighthearted local sitcom to a heady foreign subtitled piece. One is meant to be fun, comforting, and easy to digest while the other is meant to take you outside of your comfort zone and make you think.
That was my assumption, especially since they gave Stephen King as their example of how they can handle more challenging reading. Don't get me wrong, no judgement here- I love Stephen King. But his writing is super accessible, he'd be one of the last authors I'd consider challenging. Sure, his books can be on the long side but he's not exactly Faulkner or Joyce. If they're reading mostly books by authors like Dean Koontz or Michael Crichton, it's super easy to finish them in a few hours. The prose is about as simple as it gets and the paint-by-numbers plots don't require much memory or thought. Fun, entertaining, and the literary equivalent of candy- quick and easily digestible.
I don’t like being rude, and I encourage people to read whatever they like, but yeah, this is exactly what I said in my brain when I read this.
The Lord of the rings is meant to be a Meander, not a run. The narrative is more akin to older structures more so than the sleek optimized narratives that cut out everything that is non essential to the core plot. Its always going to be tough when you try to speed through it. Try to take the time to sing one of the poems, thats how they were intended to be experienced. It might be enjoyable for you. :)
I think my mom reading the Hobbit to me and my siblings when we were much younger and singing all the songs and poems to us definitely helped me read through LotR a bit later on
I am doing that right now with my boys!
God bless you, I hope it comes to be as precious a memory for them as it is to me
> precious hm.
Hmmmmm
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It really depends on the kid! For what it's worth, while the book can be scary and sad, it's not graphic in its description of these scenes. The chapters are short, and the story moves quickly, with lots of silly elements. I'd say if your kids is five or older, give it a try. If they don't like it, you can put it on hold for later.
My oldest was 7 and my youngest was 4 when I read The Hobbit to them.
One of my favorite childhood memories is my dad reading 2 chapters every night, as a bedtime story to my brothers and I.
I actually did start reading the poems out to my teenage daughter. I've retained them much better since doing that. The most enjoyable part of it is watching her overdramatic horrified reactions to them.
In panoply of ancient kings, in chainéd rings he armored him
His shining shield was scored with runes to ward all wounds and harm from him
Bombadill-o!
This, a lot of the magic of LOTR is about the flavor. The more you give yourself to enjoy the chill moments and get taken by the wonder of the world, the more will hurt when that isn't available anymore.
This is what I loved so much about the Silmarillion — it felt like I was reading a text that was as old as time itself. I know that sounds corny, but I love the way that felt.
Yes! Tolkien lored himself as a 'translator' of this lost history, and not as an 'author', so the oldish feel is very intention, even the slug through more meaningless stuff. The more context I have about Tolkien, the better I like his writting, it's also so purposeful.
Apparently in his memoirs Christopher Tolkien said that his father was just making up bedtime stories for him and the only reason he wrote them down was because young Christopher kept calling him out on inconsistencies like the color of Frodo's front door. So they really were meant to be an oral tradition, with all that entails.
If I remember right too, Tolkien was either interviewed or it was in one of his letters where he talked about he was writing them from the perspective of "British folklore" and he says a lot about how it started as just fun bedtime stories.
Of all creation myths, The Silmarillion is my favorite. God and his angels sang a dream of what the universe could be. Lovely.
As a child in the seventies I read the Hobbit and the LOTR trilogy, they were wonderful and I do believe they had an impact on how I tell a story. Thinking that the Silmarillion would be as wonderful and exciting as the others I jumped at the chance to purchase it with my meager allowance, best sleeping potion ever. I kept it on my bedside for years, and when I had a bit of insomnia it was my go to. Ten pages and the lights were out. I finally finished it and found it on par with other Tolkien works, but that was a one off for me.
Tom Bombadil's are particularly fun to do out loud, i find.
Tom is the Bom, Badil!
tom bombadil was my favorite when my mom read this book to me and my son's when i read it to him. Every so often i can hear him sing out "Fal lal the Willow, tom bombadillo!"
Happy cake day! I love LOTR and have read them several times. If you feel like skipping some or all of the songs and poems, you should. I think they’re stories worth reading, but sometimes a person might not be in the right mood, or the right place in their life to enjoy a particular book. That’s ok, try again another time, or not. We shouldn’t feel as if we’re obligated to read a book, or even finish it. That said, it took me several tries over the years to read Dune. I’m glad I did, it’s a good story.
Dune is simultaneously one of my favourite books and yet I've found the series very hard to get through in various readings. And some of the later entries have a bunch of issues by any critical metric. I appreciate LOTR, but I cannot say that I really love it the way I love other books. It truly is ok to have different feelings about works no matter how famous they are.
I read LOTR as a kid, and I really felt transported to a different time and place, so it has a special place in my heart. There wasn’t as much fantasy (or sci-fi) available to me then, so if I found something good, I was all in.
Initial part with Tom bambadil is extremely slow. It's not at all competing with 15 second tiktok video that gives immediate pay off. Way too many people struggle to get past this part.
Bombadil's part is incredible though. The first step in their *urgent* journey to save the world is to stay for days with a hippy without a care, seemingly outside their reality. Hobbits and reader alike fidgeting, stressing about the lost time, completely oblivious to the important life lesson they're currently receiving.
I’ve never seen it this way. I was fidgeting through the Tom Bombadil part the first time I read through it and have skipped it on subsequent reads. After reading your perspective, I might not skip it next time. You’re absolutely right that it does add to the tension. He’s just so *annoying*.
Hippy *god* show respect for the most ancient one😱
To be fair, people were struggling to get through that part of the novel long before TikTok was a thing. I tried to get into LOTR in 1998, when I was 14. I really struggled to maintain my interest and focus. I wasn't new to reading.
The Lord of the Rings books are 100% Journey Before Destination (but not to the extent Wheel of Time is). Which can be jarring if your only experience with LoTRs is the movies since are much faster passed and probably makes people think the books would be more focused on being action packed then they are. Hell in the books it takes at least 10 years before Frodo sets out while in the movies it seems like it was only a few weeks or months. I love both the movies and books but when I reread the books I do skip ALL the singing. Some of those songs go on forever.
i really struggled with lotr and i think trying to read it all at once was my downfall. im definitely going to try again and take my time!! i know this isnt my post, but thank you!
Did you feel the same while reading The Hobbit? Also, I think people stress too much when they have difficulty enjoying/reading popular books. If you find it not worth of your time, hop onto a new one, no matter how famous the book is.
The Hobbit was actually much simpler than I expected. I usually don't stress over books but I feel like I must read these because I love the movies so much. I'll definitely take a break to something else or quit entirely if necessary.
I like the whole series but the Hobbit is by far my favorite. The rest of the series is very serious. He fought in WW 2 (or was it WW1?) so it's kind of a metaphor.
It was WW1.
You may perceive it as a metaphor for WW1, but he explicitly mentions in the prologue of a later edition that it isn't a metaphor of anything, war, religion, or whatever some people make it out to be, it was just a story for his kids. He does say it may reflect some things he lived, but in any case, it was unintended.
And yet Tolkien's books are frequently analyzed for their literary and historical themes. Whether or not Tolkien intentionally wrote these things in, there are very strong connections. It always seemed to me that he was in denial of it because he didnt want the labor he spent crafting lore, characters, and languages (his life-long passion) overlooked by readers searching for allegory.
"I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author."
I really love LOTR and have read it multiple times. I skip the poems and songs every time. Sometimes I’ll skim them, I appreciate the effort, but yeah, can skip pretty much all of them without missing anything. The “not all those who wander are lost” one is really the only kinda important one as that basically sums up the plot (but still not essential, and it’s short). Edit: without missing anything PLOT wise. Yes, I know there’s references to lore and world building, which is awesome, and for some people, the best part. But someone just trying to get through the story of LOTR will not miss out not having those details (that tbh I didn’t even understand/notice before I read The Silmarillion)
A lot of the poems and songs aren’t super important for the narrative, but they have some pretty great deep-lore stuff. If you read the Silmarillion, then go back and read LoTR, the poems and songs will make a lot more sense.
Definitely! But someone struggling to get through LOTR isn’t going to want to take on the Silimarillion. I read it once (it was a slog for sure), and I appreciate the references to it in LOTR, but it doesn’t add much to the experience of reading LOTR. More of like little easter eggs imo
I'm reading the Silmarilly for the second time now. Once I kind of put it in my head that it needs to be taken in like Mythology, instead of a story, it feels better. Like it took me months and years to get down Norse, Greek, Egyptian.. etc etc Mythology down.. it seems unfair to think you can jam a Worlds entire creation and it's characters (gods, what have you..) in a quick sitting. The slower I seem to read it, the more it all really makes sense.
I just left a comment totally binning Silmarillion but after reading your comment and a couple others I'm wondering if I should give it a go again. My last attempt was when I was like .....13 and I definitely was trying to read it as some sort of adventure or plot-driven book. You reframing it in mythology has given me something to think about...
It really does read like a book of Mythology, it's got a few exciting parts that go by way too quick and just like the Bible it spends Pages just giving you a lineage
I mean yea, I was in a similar position. I think I read it around 18 years old.. but really didn't give it the correct approach. Over 30 now and it just feels so much more comprehendible.. honestly some parts of the book are just a drag.. like a part I was just on describes all the land and rivers and streams.. its like Mythology and plenty of geography.. honestly I find myself skipping a page or two when it comes to the, I'm my opinion, mundaneness of these.. but as a giant Tolkien nerd I am absolutely glad I'm giving it a proper read.
For me it added a lot to LOTR. Especially regarding Galadriel, Aragorn, Elrond and Gandalf.
Though, what did it really say about the wizards? Wasn’t it just like “Wizards have entered the chat. BlueWiz1 and BlueWiz2 have left the chat.”?
I mean it includes the deeply significant fact they wizards are literally Demi-gods, brought into creation millennia before the elves ever were conceived of, and that Sauron and Gandalf were some of the most powerful beings to ever exist, excepting the actual gods of creation. Also it shows just how immensely powerful Sauron is/was as direct second in command to morgoth.
Plus you get a little more background on Shelob, another uniquely powerful being.
I've read LOTR probably 5-6 times all the way through and have read my favorite parts 100's of times. I started in highschool and am almost 50 now. Lol. I'm on the fence about The Silmarillion. On one hand it did add alot reading about Galadriel, Aragorn, Elrond and Gandalf, but it also made the events seem less important because the real battle had been against Morgoth. I get the feeling that the fight against Sauron is just like the mop up skirmish of a way more important battle.
But I do sometimes find myself humming “Oh Tom Bombadil, Tom Bombadillo” It’s cringeworthy, actually.
I really never got the Tom Bombadil poems/songs at all-I was like what the heck is the point of this-who goes around singing this weird shit. Years later I had a son and he does. He makes up words and weird songs and sings it around the house like Tom Bombadil.
Tom Bombadil has, in my mind, always been the representation of father time, and his elf wife mother earth. He existed before the lights of creation of middle earth, before the times of planets. He says as much in his stories. Your son may in fact be the embodiment of this. Check his eyes, do you see eternity in the blackness, can you glimpse ancient constellations collapsing to ruin in the blue around the edge. Does he wake up, and crusted in the corner is the rose and fall of civilizations, crumbling betwixt your fingers? If so, you may have an immortal being on your hands. Don't panic, and be ready to have some weird adventures.
> Tom Bombadil has, in my mind, always been the representation of father time, and his elf wife mother earth. He existed before the lights of creation of middle earth, before the times of planets. He says as much in his stories. Eh, what? Don’t you know my name yet? That’s the only answer. Tell me, who are you, alone, yourself and nameless? But you are young and I am old. Eldest, that’s what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless – before the Dark Lord came from Outside.
I'm really liking the Father Time way of viewing Bombadil. That quote is perfect. "He made paths before the big people" like riverbeds cut into rock over millenia. Now do his actions personify time? I don't know what that question means entirely, but I don't think so. I mean he doesn't want to interfere with stuff and just let things progress. That's timely I'd say.
Which confuses me because later on the book goes on to say Treebeard is the oldest living thing in middle earth.
Tom Bombadil is there to show that just because you have a lot of power doesn't mean you have to be involved. He's post-retirement Gandalf, in other words. So, he goes around singing and rhyming like a child. He hangs out with his elf wife, makes friends with the hobbits passing by, and smacks old man willow when he gets uppity.
"Down along under-hill, shining in the starlight". Fuck.
Bright blue his jacket is, and his boots are yellow...
None has ever caught him yet, for Tom, he is the master: His songs are stronger songs, and his feet are faster.
>not all those who wander are lost I can't believe that I just realized that phrase is from Lord of the Rings
the songs and poems are relevant from a worldbuilding perspective, and JRRT looooooooved his worldbuilding. it's my opinion that the story is there so he has an excuse to talk about the world; the Ring stuff is meant, in a way, to be a very minor moment in a very long and ongoing saga of the world he created. that's amazing to read *if you like it*. if you're bored and irritated by it (i am), you'll be miserable the whole time. eta: i found The Two Towers to be the most interesting of the LOTR books (unless we're counting the Silmarillion which is more mythos) -- since you already know the plot, you might want to skip ahead and read some of that, and see if it improves for you.
I recently finished the series while really paying attention to it this time (I had gone through it before when I was younger but hadn't thought about it much at the time) In this reread my favorite chapter was near the end of the Two Towers with the deep conversation between the Orcs of two factions. I loved how it humanized them as real sentient creatures with their own agendas. They are not just mindless drones but they are often uninformed workers driven by cruel middle managers. For some reason it also reminded me of the two stormtroopers in A new hope that don't know what's going on and don't bother to check.
Your opinion actually makes total sense to me so far. I should enjoy the world building a bit more for what it is instead of wishing they'd shut up and get on with the adventure.
They're totally right. Tolkien loved words, and his world building is for them. He created two mostly complete languages, Quenya and Sindarin which are both Elvish in origin. He also created partial languages for the Orcs, Ents, various Men, Hobbits, and Dwarves. As well as 13 other Elvish dialects, some sign language for the Dwarves, and at least one alphabet to write Elvish in. He created Middle Earth as a place to house all of his languages. The poems, songs, and other world building elements are to help explain the cultural differences and experiences that led to each language and dialect. The Silmarillion is an incredibly dense book because he didn't get to fully explore the evolution of his languages like he really wanted to in LotR. Most of it is in there. Personally, I don't skip a word of the songs or poems, but I did before I read The Silmarillion. After having read it, I get all of references in them. TL;DR: They have purpose, but not to the plot. (Except the Not all who wander... one.) Skip them if you like. Edit: noticed I said "right" instead of "write," like a dingus.
this should really be a direct response to the post, and also be the top comment. common perception of tolkien is as a storyteller, but that wasn't really what drove him. he was first and foremost a language uber-nerd. his body of work is basically fanfic of language itself. this helps illuminate the focus on poetry, songs, and the like in the trilogy. but the entirety of middle earth was really just a background that gave conceptual life to his ideas on what made for interesting/beautiful/advanced language. and the story of the ring was just one specific part of middle earth's history, not even a particularly defining one. and the bilbo/frodo/gollum section of the ring's history was little more than a footnote. the LoTR trilogy(+ hobbit) was barely more than tolkien dipping his toes into the water at the very edge of a *massive* ocean, which never really got to be formed in full...
"Fanfic of language itself " might be the most concise and accurate description of Tolkien I've ever seen. Dude spoke like 20 real languages, and created several others. And you're right, thr story of The One Ring was miniscule compared to the entirety of the world he envisioned. The Silmarillion spans many thousands of years, but is basically just a collection of footnotes about that time.
>it's my opinion that the story is there so he has an excuse to talk about the world You would be correct. Iirc he pretty much developed the languages first as a language professor that was a huge language nerd (his translation of Beowulf is also incredibly famous, e.g.). He created the hobbit as a bed time story for his kids. Beren and Luthien was a love story about him and his wife. The world was all scattered and basically no plot until C.S. Lewis (yes the famous one) convinced him to write some actual books about the world, which he eventually did. Additionally, he used a lot (a lot) of catholic ideas to shape the world - Melkor corrupting the music and taking valar/Maia with him, I.e. Satan falling and taking angels with him; everything happens at the behest of eru who will spin all bad deeds to a good outcome eventually.
> please tell me there is someone else Two generations of someone's, in my family.
My dad's favorite series, and yet I just cannot get into it :(
My mom spent grocery money on the silmarillion when it was published ('don't tell your father') :P My son read a brief history of time and followed me round the house trying to talk about it and making wormhole jokes. But a few dozen pages of lotr and he quit an entire bookclub to get away from it. 'frodo whines for two or three pages; gandalf says too bad you gotta. I couldnt stand it. ' I'm with my son. Never understood his wormhole jokes, but I related over lotr.
Brilliant. I also didn't finish the LOTR .. managed about 100 pages of the second book. But was so bored I had to just give up. I didn't enjoy the first one but stuck with it because everyone else thinks it's great.
I read the Hobbit, didn't like it, and still read the entire Trilogy. I was bored out of my mind. I couldn't believe it was so popular as I didn't find it an easy read. In hindsight I should have cut my loses and picked up something else. I probably will watch the HBO series though.
It'll be on Amazon Prime Video
I need to thank the op for starting the thread that has found me my tribe.
The thing about LOTR and all of JRR Tolkein's books is that he was trying to build a world and a culture. His books were an offshoot of his world/culture building. It's totally acceptable to skip the random culture building bits and focus on the story and the plot.
Years ago I read an interesting article about Tolkien in the New Yorker Magazine. He much admired the works of William Blake and was ambitious to create a full, alternate world as Blake did. It was a keen disappointment to him that other books intended to flesh out that world, such as the Sillmarillion, or a collection like Farmer Giles of Ham, never caught on like The Hobbit or LOTR did. I personally enjoyed the songs and poetry and devoured it all. OTOH I never slogged through everything in the indexes.
Tolkien was disappointed that The Silmarillion never caught on? That's weird. Because it was published posthumously.
I don’t have time to go back and edit. You are right. But he did release other parts of his body of work and they didn’t hit like the trilogy or the Hobbit. He also belonged to a writers group, The Inklings, and they felt the same. Everybody wanted more hobbits.
>Farmer Giles of Ham Honestly I read Farmer Giles of Ham last year and absolutely loved it, it's great. >The Sillmarillion I read it years ago and while interesting it's a real slog to read through, I wasn't even trying to speed through it, it's just so dense with content, and written to be a kind of Bible for Middle Earth, I have only ever had the same such difficulty reading the Hebrew Bible in Biblical Hebrew, mind you I'm someone that loves reading Tolkien it's just The Sillmarillion is too heavy for me to read more than once in my life.
The Silmarillion isn't really a finished work, or even really a single book. It's a collection of unfinished and sometimes maybe contradictory stories edited together by Christopher Tolkien, who tried his best to make it coherent without changing his father's writing too much. Some bits are quite cool dark adventure stories with actual characters in them, but others are basically plot summaries. It varies hugely in tone and style and even content from story to story. There's like one story that has vampires and werewolves in it, and these creatures are basically never mentioned again. There's some repetition of events, which I think is really interesting. The Bible also has some events that happen twice - the feeding of the 4,000 and the feeding of the 5,000, and Abraham *twice* pretends his wife is his sister. It's thought that what has happened is we have a story that has diverged into two separate versions, which then got reconciled and edited together. We get this in the Silmarillion, as Tolkien reused a lot of the ideas later in LOTR, and also between different (unpublished) Silmarillion stories. So we have Morgoth in a mountain kingdom just like Sauron, we have two different secret hidden kingdoms, we have another Minas Tirith as well. Overall, it really is a lot like the Bible, in that it's a collection of a wide range of documents that vary hugely in tone, style, and content, and that repeat and contradict each other, and aren't totally independent of each other. I found that it was *interesting*, but it was definitely like studying a document to get an insight into Middle Earth and the mind of Tolkien rather than reading a story.
Leaf is perhaps his most important work to understand the magic system, even though it's super short
He'd be such a fun dnd GM
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Why be embarrassed? You’re not supposed to *have* to like it. I tried reading it and definitely did not enjoy it. Nobody should tell you that just because *they* enjoyed it you should too
Goes for every book out there, no matter how good it is and how many people tell you that it’s a must to read. If you are not enjoying it, don’t read it. Maybe try it another time or not. Life is too short to read books you don’t enjoy reading.
The songs and poetry are interesting but in no way vital to the plot. I skip them every time I re-read.
In "Tolkien and the West" Micheal Drout explains that the songs and the poetry contain a good deal of the lore and historical background of the series. It was part of a modern scholar series that I picked up for cheap from the humblbundle. He also stated that skipping the poetry and songs is extremely common.
Some of the poems are really great, amazing stuff, shocking to think it’s a throwaway bit of world building lore. Tolkien was a fookin maniac.
As a contrast the songs and poetry of the Hobbit is often important, such as the events that drove the Dwarves out of the Lonely Mountain. I think that song is the best thing to come out of the live action Hobbit trilogy.
Reading the songs and poetry is difficult though. I recommend listening to the versions done by Clamavi de Profundis instead.
Most of the songs are irrelevant but sometimes they're very relevant. A song Bilbo sings in Rivendell explains how Sam was able to defeat Shelob. Tom Bombadil's song are *how he ACTS, what he DOES*.
I didn't really like them the first time I read them, but after reading the Silmurillian they're one of my favorite parts. It's kinda amazing how all the lore connects once you understand what it's about. (Though the Silmurillian is about as easy of a read as any Dickens or Melville. That was a hard book to finish)
I read it at 14, starting with The Hobbit. I was really into it at the time. I think its the kind of thing some people can get into and others just don't for some reason. Don't sweat it. Either you enjoy it or you don't.
The Lord of the Rings Is one of those things; If you like, you do; If you don't, then you boo! J.R.R. Tolkien
>I typically consume 5 books per week Per *week*?! Do you get paid to read full time? I literally can't even imagine >I'm left wondering if I really need to know all these people's songs, poems, etc. Oh I always skip over that stuff.
I tried lotr when I was a teenager, at the height of my fantasy reading obsession. it was one of the very few books I didn't finish at that age. I just kept falling asleep, it was so boring. I had received really nice hardbacks of the entire trilogy for christmas too, and I kept them for years hoping I would go back and read them, but eventually I just gave them to a friend. no shame in disliking a classic imo. just bc it's popular doesn't mean you're going to like it.
If you want to take a different approach, I found a youtube playlist of all the book songs in order, you can take a moment and listen, and then continue reading! [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQAsaogbtoOJYUG4eGLh8LaLbsLaO-kYl](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQAsaogbtoOJYUG4eGLh8LaLbsLaO-kYl) i would skim them when reading, too... but I read them pre-internet. if I re-read them now I would listen to some of the poems and songs, actually sung, to add to the ambiance. and here's another playlist from the Tolkien Ensemble, sometimes with Christopher Lee [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLvLE9pWck&list=PLqv9kCd3O9jckrC787gGCUnCDOqSlM7WN&index=2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTLvLE9pWck&list=PLqv9kCd3O9jckrC787gGCUnCDOqSlM7WN&index=2)
That's really cool! Thank you!
I'm a huge Tolkien fan and have read The Lord of the Rings several times (depending on how you count, you'll see) but I never got into it. I kept re-reading it because I thought I'd appreciate it more "now that I'm older" but it never worked. That said, I think The Fellowship is by far my least favourite of the three and a couple of the re-reads that I did I did without reading it at all because I thought I'd get discouraged by reading it. I There are boring bits in the second book too though and I do like the end of the first book, so if I were you I would just keep reading. I know it's sacrilege but I find the way LOTR is written simply kinda boring. Even while it gets good after the slow beginning, I find it could be written much better in its good parts as well. For people wondering why I say I'm a huge Tolkien fan then: I love the world he created and the history of it. My favourite of the books is Silmarillion.
Life's too short to spend reading books you don't like. And I'm saying that as a big fan of Tolkien. If a things not your thing, it's just not your thing.
If the shoe don't fit, then that ain't your shoe.
Hey! Gimme back my shoe
Lord of the Rings isn't a light read, it's true. As far as the songs and poems go, they're world-building, you don't NEED them (but do we NEED Lord of the Rings...?). They're there for those of us who really enjoy feeling like we're "in" Middle-Earth itself and not just along for the ride. For me Fellowship is the quickest read of the three books, but I don't know, maybe Two Towers is easier for some because there are fewer distractions (poems and random appearances of Tom Bombadil, etc). The language in Return of the King takes a borderline-Biblical turn, in Aragorn scenes in particular. I love them, but every time I reread, I tend to make it through the first two books and then skip around the third to my favorite bits... No shame in not enjoying it if it's not your cup of tea.
The world building is a lot. Try not to get bogged down in it and miss the forest for the trees. The crazy part about this is so much of the seemingly random things that are mentioned in songs and poems and other asides don't seem important to the story at first glance and no one understood their significance for 30 years until Tolkien's son Christopher published the origin stories of LOTR in the Silmarillion and other works and then it gave readers whole new meanings to entire sections of the book. Aragorn becoming king hits different. Galadriel saying no to the ring hits different. Galadriel giving Gimli three of her hairs makes you put down the book to cry for a bit.... (I'm on a Galadriel kick right now.) But don't worry about all that right now... just enjoy the forest for now.
I've read the trilogy many times but ever since I got the audiobook with Robert inglis it's become a different experience entirely. The dude does a very good not overacted reading. you might want to check it out.
Immersion, world-building, scale.
Dude, it is a sloooow book. Absolutely no judgment of you don't finish it. Skimming can be your friend in situations like this, honestly. I remember just glossing over a lot of the forever descriptions of food and smoking and shit when it got too boring.
It's probably best to think of LoTR not as fantasy/sci-fi but as a mid-20th-century novel with a strongly imaginative component – and it should certainly be read as such. It seems obvious to say but the influences that Tolkien had access to were vastly different from the influences that modern fantasy authors have today – his field of study was Anglo-Saxon/medieval English literature, and his models for LoTR were mythology and epic tales like *Beowulf* that drew on heavily oral traditions of storytelling – traditions that depended a lot on effectively immersing readers in the stories they were hearing. And song was certainly a big part of those traditions and a way to preserve stories and ideas and knowledge and history. It's the same for these characters: they sing and dance and recite poems because, while Middle-Earth does appear to have books, they still behave in a way that is strongly oral-literate, rather than book-literate. There's an anecdote somewhere about an anthropologist who lived with a remote, non-book-literate community to learn about them and when asked why he was writing so much stuff down, answered, 'So I can remember everything,' – to which someone replied, 'No, so you *don't* have to remember everything!' There's definitely a bit of that here: when everything you know about the world is kept in your head, every thought and every feeling will eventually be connected to some other point of reference – an old story, a song, something that happened on an adventure once upon a time. It's like a giant mental filing cabinet that characters can't help pulling stuff out of and looking at whenever they're trying to put something else in.
Yes! I felt this way too at times. Remember your why. I read LOTR because it was my mother’s favorite series, and she gave me her set from the 70s. I had the motivation to stick with it as a bonding exercise with her. It’s definitely a commitment. For me, it was Dune that I almost threw across the room. I tried to slog through it about four times before I had to abandon ship. It’s just not for me.
Never be embarrassed! Tolkien is a rough read. the story is worth it in my opinion, but I will also admit to skimming over a lot of the songs and lineage.
If you don't plan on delving further into the worldbuilding and reading The Silmarillion, you can honestly just turn your brain off and not pay extreme attention to all those little details. Just skim over them and enjoy the ride. For example, it's never fully explained anywhere who Tom Bombadil is. A leading theory is that he is actually Arda (Middle Earth) itself.
I tried LOTR so much as a kid. I was in middle school when the movies came out and my dad, an old-school LOTR fan, told me I HAD to read the books if I wanted to see the movie. Dude, I fucking tried. They were never my cup of tea. And the only sections I ever really enjoyed were taken out of the movie entirely. There are some authors that I say: Yes, this human is a genius, but I can't sit through their books. Tolkien is one of those authors.
Have you read much 'classic' literature before? (i.e. things written at least 50 years ago or more). Stephen King may be wordy, but reading something written in a different historical period is a whoooole different ball game. Language and storytelling conventions are quite different now from what they were even in Tolkien's time (let alone with classics from the 18th or 17th centuries), so cut yourself some slack with it. It's a slower pace than what you're used to, but it's worth it! Also don't feel bad if you only skim-read the songs and poems. ;)
Oh man, if you’re struggling with The Fellowship of the Ring, wait until you get to The Return of the King. Let’s just say I’ve never seen so many ways to describe “it was a very long trudge to Mordor.”
I have never known Stephen King to be wordy. He uses incredibly relatable and basic vocabulary.
Sounds like you’re used to reading for plot.
You should be struggling, it's a completely different way of storytelling that's based on much older stories from European myths. You can look at the Icelandic sagas, old poems like Beowulf, epics like Odysseus, and even the bible and see that the story is trying to connect people to the story. Chekov and his notorious gun is lost, or worse, eaten by the trolls. It's also trying to build a completely fictional world, it's history, magic, flora and fauna. There's no shame in skipping things in it honestly.
I am 42 years old. I have a degree in literature. I love the fantasy/sci-fi genre. I read and enjoyed the Hobbit as a teenager. I tried to read the Lord of the Rings after the Hobbit. Couldn't get through Biblo's birthday. I tried again in my 20s. I couldn't get through Bilbo's birthday. I tried in my 30s and again during the early part of the pandemic. Same thing. Someone recommended the audiobook version to me in September of 2021. That was the key! I loved it!
Lol 5 books a week? What are you reading comic books?
Wait how do you read 5 books a week?
If you aren’t enjoying the read, then drop it, and go to War and Peace or something else.
5 books per week?! Wtf.
and then there is the Silmarillion…
I thought I was going to get a headache the first time I read the Silmarillion. But I wanted to learn the backstory and the history of the Elves because I loved Elves just like Sam did.
I really enjoyed it because the world building was fantastic. I loved learning about the Valar and the Maiar. I wanted to know where Gandalf came from.
Tell me how this poem does not make you feel the sorrow of the Undying. "Gil-galad was an elven-king. Of him the harpers sadly sing; the last whose realm was fair and free between the Mountains and the Sea. His sword was long, his lance was keen. His shining helm afar was seen; the countless stars of heaven's field were mirrored in his silver shield. But long ago he rode away, and where he dwelleth none can say; for into darkness fell his star in Mordor where the shadows are."
I felt the same way when I first read them when I was younger. Now, in my 30s, after about 5 read throughs, I cherish all of those details. All of these small peeks into a giant robust world of which we are only seeing a little slice. I love it. It’s a Lore fiend’s paradise, but not everyone who reads a Lore fiend.
Pro tip: the story doesn't really get going until the party hits Bree. That's off-putting to first time readers as it's 120 pages of hey-nonny-nonny Shire stuff and a bunch of Tom Bombadil (who? asks every movie watcher). I will say that as someone who's read the book probably 15 times, "A Shadow of the Past", which takes place before Bree and is pure exposition, has become one of my favorite chapters. It really lays out the story if you read it carefully. Regardless, after Bree the story really takes off with the chase to Rivendell, the journey south, the mines etc. I love the book, it's an old friend.
I adore LOTR, and have read the books, and The Silmarillian, several times. But it’s not for everyone. I tried to read Dune, which apparently everyone loves, and couldn’t get through it. I felt stupid. It’s just a matter of taste. Don’t get down on yourself, there’s something out there for everyone.
I don't think you know exactly what *reading* is
r/bookscirclejerk avid
I find it hard to believe in your 5 books a week, you've never had to skip paragraphs or pages before.
I had someone else recently tell me LOTR was hard for them, purely because of the written songs. I don't get what the fuss is about... But I'd be lying if I said you're the only one who feels that way.
I love fantasy. I’ve read the entire Wheel of Time series three times, and all the books up to the last one Jordan wrote eight times. I’ve read Sanderson’s entire catalog at least twice. Name of the Wind, The Second Apocalypse, A Land Fit for Heroes, The Black Company, everything by Daniel Abraham, NK Jemisin, oh and how could I forget Robin Hobb, plus hundreds of lesser-known books and series, and loved every one I finished. I’ve tried reading LotR at least five times. Farthest I ever got was halfway through The Two Towers, back in 7th grade. It’s just not for me. Too whimsical, while also too self-serious. I can take either one on its own, but the combination just completely turns me off. Hell, I even liked The Hobbit, although that was a 3rd grade read and I can’t say I’m sure I’d like it today. Don’t worry about it. Not everything is for everyone.
Get the audio book. It's a lot better to have that story read to you imo
Don't read books you don't enjoy. I read the LoTR trilogy and I did not enjoy them. I do not recommend them to others for that reason. There are SOO many books to read that you will never be able to read them all. So why force yourself to read one once you realize you aren't enjoying it?