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I need to re-read it. I probably finished the last book 20 years ago. Then I saw the films. And in the intervening years my opinion and attitude towards it, and
by mberning 3y ago
I need to re-read it. I probably finished the last book 20 years ago. Then I saw the films. And in the intervening years my opinion and attitude towards it, and the genre as a whole, has shifted toward the negative. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just from getting older.
- stevenwoo 3y agoI’m old and tried re-reading it recently and the low number of female characters and voices is really jarring now. YMMV. There’s so much I haven’t yet read I just moved on.
- slibhb 3y ago[flagged]
- defrost 3y agoThat's exactly right Bertie, the University of Oxford Literary circles famously consisted of nothing but straight white school chums who gathered together to butter crumpets placed in toast racks while talking at length of fairies and such things. Such well adjusted literary Dons were incapable of writing coded tales of unspoken love.
- astrange 3y agoNot a very close reading there! Frodo lives with his committed bachelor uncle who's famous for collecting outfits, he goes on a journey with his male best friend, they actually kiss 4-5 times (on the hand and forehead), they move in together at the end and Frodo never marries or has children. …And the narration calls Bilbo and Frodo "queer" several times and goes on about them comforting each other in their sleep in Mordor. (Yes that word meant the same thing it does now, and yes he knew what it meant.)
- morelisp 3y agoI agree with the sibling commenter that Bilbo is very gay-coded, to the point I cannot imagine it to be an accident, but even explicitly within the text - https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FE5bMUoIXoAAAo9I.png https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FE5bMUoIXoAAAo9I.png
- stevenwoo 3y agoI have fond memories of reading this when I was a teenager, it's a pretty grand story and universe. To further elucidate and paraphrase what other commenters have said about the other article posted about reading, it's just not what I am ready to read now.
- bombcar 3y agoIt can certainly be an acquired (or reacquired) taste. If you want a different type of Tolkien story - the children of Hurin is tragic as anything the Greeks wrote.
- shrubble 3y agoHave you read The Silmarillion, by chance? It gives a great deal of the background mythology of LOTR.
- propter_hoc 3y agoI have to say it's massively unlikely that someone who read LOTR and disliked it would enjoy the Silmarillion.
- bombcar 3y agoI usually dump to the Children of Hurin first, because that's more "readable" - the Silmarillion is very Old Testament and takes some heavy archeology to get the stories out.
- lizardking 3y agoThe audio book helps with this a lot imo. I prefer the original to the recent Andy Serkis recording, but both are great.
- mberning 3y agoI got about 1/3 through it.
- lizardking 3y agoThe last 2/3 of the book are the best part!
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoTo give a sense of scale, the entire plot of the Hobbit and LOTR is given in at most 2 paragraphs of the entire Silmarillion.
- Scarblac 3y agoAs for the genre as a whole, here's Pratchett on considering fantasy "genre": https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/lvoi3t/the_late_sir_terry_pratchett_on_why_fantasy_isnt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/lvoi3t/the_late_si... (I didn't quickly find a more readable form than the image uploaded to Reddit) Maybe it helps you to reconsider.
- mouse_8b 3y agoI get it. I was really into fantasy as a teenager, but now I'm on the wrong side of 35 and nonfiction is all I'm interested in. I feel like there is so much stuff that has happened in real life that fantasy seems hollow.