Poll: How many people have actually read The Lord of the Rings?
- Thread starter Oliman43
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I have and damn I loved them. Great movies, great books, now we need a great LOTR game, this gen. Hopefully the War in the North game will be it.
I attempted to read Fellowship, but the beginning didn't spark my interest at all. I did read about halfway through the Hobbit, though, but I stopped reading halfway and just turned it in back to the library anyway.
I have read pretty much all of tolkien's works, but this was way before the movies... though I did re-read the LotR books before watching the respective movie.
have you yet read "The Children of Hurin"? "The Books of Lost Tales"?Aetera said:
each of these are extensions/alternate versions of stories written in the Silmarillion, more specifically The Books of Lost Tales which is like the Simarillion as told around acampfire-esque setting
While I did bought the Fellowship of the Ring pior to the film release but sadly no I didn't read all the way through. I read the first few chapters but I just found it too boring to read and gave up on reading the rest of it.
Wow... two pages of responses and not a single reference to Christopher Lee.
Anyway, I do like our dear Saruman (once a year)... OK, maybe not that often but it's one of those books that I pick up for a leisurely read.
However, while the Hobbit was fun, the Silmarillion was soooooooooooooooooooo dull. As for LotR itself, it was a good read (I write like that, after a fashion, except with more violence) but right down to it, it's a book about one really really long hike.
FotR = 'Oh, let's go for a walk'... they walk.
TT = 'They've gone that way, but we need to go this way'... they walk some more.
RotK = 'Oh, it's just over there'... they finish their walk, and then walk back home.
... is the whole story in three lines.
Anyway, I do like our dear Saruman (once a year)... OK, maybe not that often but it's one of those books that I pick up for a leisurely read.
However, while the Hobbit was fun, the Silmarillion was soooooooooooooooooooo dull. As for LotR itself, it was a good read (I write like that, after a fashion, except with more violence) but right down to it, it's a book about one really really long hike.
FotR = 'Oh, let's go for a walk'... they walk.
TT = 'They've gone that way, but we need to go this way'... they walk some more.
RotK = 'Oh, it's just over there'... they finish their walk, and then walk back home.
... is the whole story in three lines.
I read it when I was ten, after reading The Hobbit. Never managed to finish the Silmarillion though. Just too much like a history textbook to get into. Knowing that Galdalf is an immortal was enough for me.
Addendum
I see a lot of complaints about excessive descriptions of nature in these comments. I know a lot of people consider LoTR as allegorical of the world war occurring at the time of writing and I'm not going to argue that it had no influence. The basis of this fable is;
The triumph of simple men, with their love of nature and honest labor, over the tyranny and self-interest of industry.
His personal love of nature prompted him to write the manuscript, so it is no surprise that it's description dominates the text. It was his belief that fables and mythology increased our connection with the natural world, and the lack of them put the environment at risk.
I think he was terribly clever.
The Hobbit is much easier to read because it was written for children, whereas LoTR was written for a more adult audience (war being a reasonably mature topic) and Silmarillion was written basically as background to give LoTR context, and to amuse his academic peers.
Addendum
I see a lot of complaints about excessive descriptions of nature in these comments. I know a lot of people consider LoTR as allegorical of the world war occurring at the time of writing and I'm not going to argue that it had no influence. The basis of this fable is;
The triumph of simple men, with their love of nature and honest labor, over the tyranny and self-interest of industry.
His personal love of nature prompted him to write the manuscript, so it is no surprise that it's description dominates the text. It was his belief that fables and mythology increased our connection with the natural world, and the lack of them put the environment at risk.
I think he was terribly clever.
The Hobbit is much easier to read because it was written for children, whereas LoTR was written for a more adult audience (war being a reasonably mature topic) and Silmarillion was written basically as background to give LoTR context, and to amuse his academic peers.
I read the entire trilogy and when I was finished I had one thought run through my brain. "How the fuck is this guy considered the be all end all of epic fantasy?!"
i've read the lord of the rings and most of the silmarillion and other mythology books of that universe. i was obsessed with tolkien when i was about 11, and read almost all of his works over the summer between grades 5 and 6. that was an awesome summer...
I read The Hobbit a looong time ago and I don't remember much about it, and I read the Lord of the Rings two years ago I think. I thought it was a very good book, but that being said, they were incredibly dull at some points.