I have a dark and horrible truth I must admit...

[sidious618]

I absolutely hate the Lord of the Rings books was a passion. I love the films but the books are utter shit. The plot is virtually non-existant, the characters are shells, the story takes forever to get anywhere, the description is over the top, the songs are tiring and the final book goes on and on and on. Hell, they all go on and on and on.

Am I the only one? Am I some sort of genetic freak?

 

[Kegg]

It's not a book for everyone, but it's definitely the best fantasy novel I've read by a ludricously wide margin.

It is, however, very informed and structured by myth, which is pretty alienating to a lot of people - it's archaic and antiquated even when it was published, an antimodern novel. Hence the approach to character, plot, and the primacy of song and so on - though this generally does aid the worldbuilding enormously, as a consequence.

 

[Kibbin]

Preaching to the chorus brother. At least with me anyway.
I even like The Hobbit Books and Children of Hurin when I read it but LOTRjust feel like a dull guided tour of middle Earth than containing much of a real story. We take such huge meanders with characters like Tom Bombadil.
Can anyone tell me the point of him and what he serves in the story? Gandalf even says a few chapters down the road in Rivendell that that scene was a bit pointless.

Frodo: What about Tom, he can guard the ring for us.
Gandalf: Nah, forget about him.

Each to their own and I do intend to re-read the books to see if I've changed my mind but I doubt it.

 

[Greg Cox]

I confess I never finished the books. I got bogged down in Book One, a twenty-page term paper loomed its ugly head, and I never felt compelled to pick them up again.

Loved the movies, though. And I'm not much of a High Fantasy guy.

 

[WillsBabe]

Well, I have a dark and horrible truth too; I haven't read the books, but I didn't like the films. At all.

 

[Dick Whitman]

Well, I have a dark and horrible truth too; I haven't read the books, but I didn't like the films. At all.

Same here!

 

[RJDiogenes]

I like the trilogy a lot, but I do find it overlong. It could have benefited from a bit of editing. This is one reason I like Hobbit better than LOTR; it's a much tighter story.

 

[Checkmate]

I don't dislike the books, I actively hate them. Absolutely dreadful storytelling. If Tolkien were alive today, I'd be completely behind him for creating a game world for an RPG or MMO or something. But for telling an actual story? Give me just about anyone else.

 

[Greg Cox]

I like the trilogy a lot, but I do find it overlong. It could have benefited from a bit of editing. This is one reason I like Hobbit better than LOTR; it's a much tighter story.

I remember enjoying THE HOBBIT, too.

Fantasy-wise, though, my tastes always ran more to sword-and-sorcery: Conan, Elric, Fahrd and Grey Mouser, etc.

Good stuff.

 

[Ward Fowler]

I'm not a big fantasy guy myself, but I really did like LOTR. I probably liked The Hobbit more, but I thought they were all a breeze to get through and very enjoyable. Recently I started reading the original Robert Howard Conan stories and I'm really enjoying those, but like I said, fantasy is really not my thing.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

I LOVED The Hobbit to death when I was younger. Read it multiple times. When I finally got to reading the trilogy, probably in early high school? I quit halfway through the THIRD book. I could see the finish line. I was basically there. But I just couldn't go through the effort, it wasn't worth it to me.

I think explaining the lineage of every blade of grass, and who stepped on that particular blade throughout the ages really put me off of the world so much so that I've only seen the first movie, and I saw it once when a bunch of friends (with an open mind, hoping it wouldn't be as dull as the book.)

 

[LitmusDragon]

I haven't read the books in nearly 20 years, but I did like them, more for what they represented than for the actual quality of writing.

The impression I got of them was more like "wow, this guy has an incredible imagination" than "this guy is an excellent writer".

 

[Orintho]

There has always been people who don't 'get' Tolkien - quit worrying about it. Not every writer (even one of the great ones) is going to appeal to all tastes.

If it helps, remember that Tolkien is always more about the journey rather than the destination. You are not going to get a simple 'Point A to Point B' kind of plot structure.

Tolkien was a historian, a linguist - his writing obviously reflects and revels in his chosen disciplines. Tolkien is also about all the details. And to the fantasy genre as a whole, Tolkien is the ultimate world builder. I can't think of another writer that quite matches his level of scholarship in this regard. And it is true, this kind of writing will not appeal to everyone.

 

[Starbreaker]

I read FOTR, but struggled to make it halfway through The Two Towers. Now that I haven't seen the movies in a couple of years, I might retry the series.

 

[Checkmate]

There has always been people who don't 'get' Tolkien - quit worrying about it. Not every writer (even one of the great ones) is going to appeal to all tastes.

No, people "get" Tolkien. They just don't like Tolkien. And just because someone does, that doesn't make them more enlightened or cerebral. It simply makes them people who like his style of writing.

And like you said, Tolkien wasn't an entertaining writer. He was a historian and linguist who wrote historical tomes that just happened to take place in a world he created from real world mythology. While that is technically fiction, he portrays it like a schoolbook rather than something to be read for entertainment.

 

[Trent Roman]

I LOVED The Hobbit to death when I was younger. Read it multiple times. When I finally got to reading the trilogy, probably in early high school? I quit halfway through the THIRD book. I could see the finish line. I was basically there. But I just couldn't go through the effort, it wasn't worth it to me.

While really enjoy reading the Hobbit and LOTR... like you, I don't think I've ever read it the whole way through. After Sauron has been defeated, I kind of start skimming through the remaining chapters. After the epic scale at which most of the text works, I really don't care about the petty happenings in "Scouring of the Shire", or seeing Saruman turned into some kind of small-time mob boss who goes by the name of "Sharkey" . The tone of this part always felt odd and tacked on, and I generally bypass it to get to the very end.

EDIT: Checkmate, have you never read a textbook just for the fun of it? If they're well-written, and on interesting subjects, I have no objection to that kind of reading.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Kegg]

^
I liked that, actually. It's very English. Tolkein lived through World War I, they went out, did their bit for King and Country, slayed the Hun, and returned to... well, a nation irrevocably changed and not necessarily for the better. That's what that bit of story struck me as being about; you can save the world but that doesn't mean you've ushered in paradise.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I agree with the OP - what little I've tried to read of the books, I haven't much liked. That kind of stilted, romanticized fantasy BS just isn't to my tastes, and it's hard for me to get into any novel without solid characters and a plotline with a strong direction. I have no sympathy for any author who is pining for "past glories" - there's never been any past glories, just mud and blood and ignorance. I'm surprised at how much I liked the movies considering my indifference to the source material.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

The plot is virtually non-existant, the characters are shells, the story takes forever to get anywhere, the description is over the top, the songs are tiring and the final book goes on and on and on. Hell, they all go on and on and on.

The Lord of the Rings is very weak on plot, and that's by design. Tolkien wrote it, with no idea of where it was going, and it developed into what is essentially a medieval romance. If you can read Chaucer or Malory, you can read Tolkien. If Chaucer or Malory make your eyes glaze over and dulls you into a stupor, you're probably not going to be able to read Tolkien.

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

I agree with the OP - what little I've tried to read of the books, I haven't much liked. That kind of stilted, romanticized fantasy BS just isn't to my tastes, and it's hard for me to get into any novel without solid characters and a plotline with a strong direction. I have no sympathy for any author who is pining for "past glories" - there's never been any past glories, just mud and blood and ignorance. I'm surprised at how much I liked the movies considering my indifference to the source material.

There are many things that one could say about "The Lord of the Rings". The tone is inconsistent, the structure is awkward, the pacing is all over the place, there are things that are said that should have been shown, and things that are shown that should have been said, etc... Claiming, however, that the characters are not "solid" or that the plotline doesn't have a "strong direction" is preposterous. I'd wager that plot and characters are, in fact, among the reasons why people enjoyed the books and the movies.