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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   4195 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What's the appeal in Lord of the Rings?

I've recently been press ganged by my friends into joining a Lord of the Rings book club and it's one of the more significant Ls I've taken in a long time. We've finished the Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Rings and I'm actually not sure I've ever read fiction this boring. Gargantuan amounts of the plot are just them wandering through the woods. The characterization is borderline nonexistent and the dialogue is so stilted that I have trouble keeping the characters apart - why are there even two characters for Mary and Pippin when as far as I can tell they're the same character? Every page feels like a slog, the only decent part is Tolkien has nice descriptions of scenery.

I'm not trying to be a dick though, I want to enjoy these books, everyone tells me they're great. What am I missing? What should I be looking for / trying to get out of them?

read fiction this boring

The LOTR books are boring stories set in an amazing world.

Lord of the Rings is great because so much great fantasy fiction was written after LOTR, and all those worlds owe Tolkien for doing the heavy lifting.

Tolkien drops the façade of writing a novel all together with the The Silmarillion, finally doing what he loves best : writing encyclopedias.

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