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Post by Ironnerd on Jul 23, 2022 15:29:33 GMT
I have read the Lord of the Rings books. I found them to be a good story but the pacing was way off. Like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, LotR really drags. It feels like a book made of fluff and padded with story. Maybe there should be a New International Version of the books  Basically, if it were more story and less world building it would have been great, but I just did not enjoy learning the lengthy and complete history of the culture of a character we just met, and who will never be heard from again after the next paragraph. Yeah, I get what he was trying to do (and what he succeeded in doing), but I prefer the movies... Even with all the changes they had to make. Conversely, I liked The Hobbit book, but not the movies. |
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Post by hengest on Jul 23, 2022 22:41:05 GMT
I have read the Lord of the Rings books. I found them to be a good story but the pacing was way off. Like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, LotR really drags. It feels like a book made of fluff and padded with story. Maybe there should be a New International Version of the books Basically, if it were more story and less world building it would have been great, but I just did not enjoy learning the lengthy and complete history of the culture of a character we just met, and who will never be heard from again after the next paragraph. Yeah, I get what he was trying to do (and what he succeeded in doing), but I prefer the movies... Even with all the changes they had to make. Conversely, I liked The Hobbit book, but not the movies. I thought the movies were the NIV of the novel!  But seriously, at risk of repeating what I said on the other thread...I admit, I have a moderately strange relationship with LOTR. I didn't read it as a kid. I wasn't especially into fantasy lit as a kid. I absolutely love LOTR. I generally don't have much of a taste for world-building. I find it hard to care about the extended universe of this or that franchise or even this or that fantasy or sci-fi novel. These people are from this planet which is strange because it has a green sun and...I'm sure there's good stuff. My mind just can't get a grip on it. Your remarks about LOTR remind me of my feeling about a lot of books and media. I'm trying to think of exactly what kinds of passages you mean when you say "I just did not enjoy learning the lengthy and complete history of the culture of a character we just met, and who will never be heard from again after the next paragraph" so I can know what I'm responding to. Maybe you mean some of the exposition around Faramir? Or do you mean more minor characters, like maybe Farmer Maggot? I guess one big difference between LOTR and a lot of fantasy literature, to me, is this: - a lot of times, the worldbuilding is very on display and seems to be directed at the reader
- in LOTR, it seems to come up naturally (YMMV) and seems directed at the characters, often but not always the hobbit characters, who are the first ones you sympathize with
Tolkien didn't invent that technique, but I think he uses it really masterfully.
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Post by Ironnerd on Jul 24, 2022 19:11:45 GMT
Ugh, I would have to go back through the books to point out the passages where we met someone who got a full workup, but played no real part in the story. I mean, not like Tom Bombadil or anything... He actually made sense. The thing is I really like the story, just not the telling. I also liked A Wizard of Earthsea and most of the Narnia Books (I kind of grew out of them as I was reading them). When I was a kid, I watched the LotR and Hobbit animated movies and LOVED them (even with the unmistakable voice of Mister Slate as Bard the Bowman). I tried to read the books and just could not get past the first chapter. What Tolkien did was create an amazing feast for our imagination, but he made us eat it all at once and read all the recipes as we went. I think if LotR were written today, it would be a series of books that would build out from the Story of the Ring (and the Hobbit), to include some background stories on the Rohirrim, The Men of the Dale, Gondor, Rivendell, Lorien, Mirkwood, the Shire, the Iron Hills, Ered Mithrin, and so on. Also, I moved our previous conversation to this board because it made sense to do so. |
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