Does nobody read the Lord of the Rings any more?

[Dukasaur]

It used to be you could go anywhere, anytime, and if you didn't know anybody you could start a conversation about Lord of the Rings and soon everybody would be jumping in. Even after society moved from the pubs to Usenet, still there was always a thread about LotR, and even if there wasn't one, you could still get one going without much effort.

Then came the movies. For a while there was a big rise in interest, but it didn't last long, and when it went, it took everything with it. I haven't seen any conversations about LotR in years, and when I try to start one, it falls dead.

In a way, I see this like the life and death of a sun. For billions of years it gives light and heat. Then for a little while it bursts out in a nova, brighter than ever before, but afterwards it falls dead, a crushingly lifeless dark ember.

Did the movies kill the books? Or is the making of a movie the natural tragic ending in the life cycle of a book?

[riskllama]

hmm...good question, duk. did you have a particular topic you'd like to discuss?

[jimboston]

Ever see the graphic novel versions?
Drawn by artist David Wenzel...



Beautiful stuff.

The movies were too long... Hobbit was 3 movies?! Really!?

The movies may have taken the wind out of the sail but they will rise again.

I think people just don’t read as much in general.

Reading fantasy novels takes up “free time / entertainment time” and books now have much more competition.

When I was a kid there were 3 network channels, a public funded channel or 2, and 4 local channels.
VHS came later and was expensive. Pong was the big home video game.

Reading books and comics was my main source of indoor entertainment.

When I read now it’s a choice versus a bunch of shows que’d up in my Favorites list.

[jonesthecurl]

I liked the LoTR mvies. The 3 Hobbit movies were a seven-league-boot step too far.
I dislike the way generally that once there's a movie/TV series, people forget the book. If you say "Peter Pan", "Winnie the Pooh", James Bond", "Starship Troopers", Gone With the Wind", "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest", "Game of Thrones", "Tarzan", "The Avengers"or a thousand others, almost everyone will assume you're talking about the screen versions and not the print ones. It's a shame - dramatisations should add, not take away..

[saxitoxin]

It used to be you could go anywhere, anytime, and if you didn't know anybody you could start a conversation about Lord of the Rings and soon everybody would be jumping in.

What kind of geeks are you hanging out with?

[Dukasaur]

Ever see the graphic novel versions?
Drawn by artist David Wenzel...



Beautiful stuff.

I saw those. They were too expensive to buy at the time, and now I'm kicking myself. Should have made the sacrifice and bought them anyway.

The movies were too long... Hobbit was 3 movies?! Really!?

I don't think they were too long per se. What was too long were the battle scenes. A friend of mine summarized The Two Towers movie as, "they cut out everything in the book that wasn't a battle." While that may have been a bit of an exaggeration, it's largely on point. When you read The Two Towers, yes of course it's about the war, but the fighting takes up very few of the words in the book. What takes the bulk of the writing are all the human-level stories: the Coming of Age of Merry and Pippin, the Descent Into Madness of Saruman, the Salvation of Theoden, the tragic story of the Ents and the Entwives, the bromance of Legolas and Gimli, the great unrequited love story of Eowyn and Aragorn, the unbreakable loyalty of Sam, etc. Each of these stories in the movie get about a 30-second scene, and then we cut back to the fighting.

I dislike the way generally that once there's a movie/TV series, people forget the book. If you say "Peter Pan", "Winnie the Pooh", James Bond", "Starship Troopers", Gone With the Wind", "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest", "Game of Thrones", "Tarzan", "The Avengers"or a thousand others, almost everyone will assume you're talking about the screen versions and not the print ones. It's a shame - dramatisations should add, not take away..

Yeah, absolutely!

Starship Troopers is such an amazing book about philosophy, morality, politics, duty, personal development. They turned it into Black Hawk Down (Outer Space Version).

[jonesthecurl]

I do love the movie, but it has nothing to do with the book, And the fact that they didn't get the power armour as described - well, it's like making Top Gun without the planes.

[HardAttack]

It used to be you could go anywhere, anytime, and if you didn't know anybody you could start a conversation about Lord of the Rings and soon everybody would be jumping in. Even after society moved from the pubs to Usenet, still there was always a thread about LotR, and even if there wasn't one, you could still get one going without much effort.

Then came the movies. For a while there was a big rise in interest, but it didn't last long, and when it went, it took everything with it. I haven't seen any conversations about LotR in years, and when I try to start one, it falls dead.

In a way, I see this like the life and death of a sun. For billions of years it gives light and heat. Then for a little while it bursts out in a nova, brighter than ever before, but afterwards it falls dead, a crushingly lifeless dark ember.

Did the movies kill the books? Or is the making of a movie the natural tragic ending in the life cycle of a book?

It is its nature Duka,
it should get buried for centuries than should come back again
again, it is when most unlikely human, Razorvich, finds the ring again
the ring, it may consume razz or not to stay aside,
that is how the nature of LoTR works Duka, it is not something on the market everyday, it should sleep for a long while in the deeps of Mount Doom.

[KoolBak]

Nerd. Bet you played dungeons and dragons too. Lol

I read them...45? years ago. Enjoyed, but not enough to read twice. Movies gargled tartar sauce. My brother occasionally made reference to them...my friends didn't...think it's just your crowd, dude

And I read a LOT. Still read several books a week....kids definitely don't read now like they used to as a go to entertainment. There will always be the occasional book lover though. One of my sons reads like me, one hates it...lol

[DBandit70]

[Dukasaur]

If you could be any character from Middle Earth, who would you be?

My early favourite was always Beorn.

After I read the Silmarillion I found a whole pile of new characters to want to be, but in the early days it was always Beorn.

[HardAttack]

If you could be any character from Middle Earth, who would you be?

My early favourite was always Beorn.

After I read the Silmarillion I found a whole pile of new characters to want to be, but in the early days it was always Beorn.

so, you are unpredictable,
sometimes one who is reasoned with, sometimes a dangerous woodland monster
you hate dwarfs, but you hate orcs more

well, i believe i would loved to be the queen of the lights, Galadriel i guess

[Cookster]

Thanks, u just convinced me I should probably go and read the books again - I can only remember the main characters from the films and wouldn't really want to be any of them. The films were certainly too long and yet hopelessly shallow at the same time (yes I am a snob). The books aren't really much fun to read either tbh, worth the effort would u say? There are soo many other books out there afterall and Tolkien is really dated and just plain padded out in many places (imo).

[jimboston]

If you could be any character from Middle Earth, who would you be?

My early favourite was always Beorn.

After I read the Silmarillion I found a whole pile of new characters to want to be, but in the early days it was always Beorn.

I just could not get through that book. Granted I haven’t tried that book since I was 16yo, even though I’ve reread the trilogy and the Hobbit a few times each. I also tried to read some book written by his son, supposedly based on his notes, and it just didn’t flow for me.

One thing about Tolkien’s writing... he made a lot of proper nouns very similar, both place names and characters. It makes it harder to identify and keep separated different characters. I know this is true in real life... try reading books on Medieval English History. Names are very similar for lord’s and Kings... and often they use titles which pass from one person to another, so you need to be cognizant of which “Duke of York” they mean based on the year. Tolkien’s books can be like that at times which slows down the reading.

I like Tom Bombadil. I don’t know if he’s my favorite... but he’s my favorite “non-primary” character.

[Doc_Brown]

I read through the LOTR series every year or so several times prior to the movies coming out. Since the LOTR movies, I think I've only read through the books again once. I'm not entirely sure why I haven't picked them up again and have likewise wondered if the movies killed the enjoyment of the books. I'm really not sure. It may also be because I graduated college, got married, and started having kids in the years following the LOTR movies. Priorities change at that point in one's life.

My kids are getting old enough to read through the books. My oldest actually finished his first read through of the series earlier this year. I did tell my kids that I would not let them watch the LOTR movies until they had read through the Hobbit+LOTR series at least twice. And I'm not planning to make any effort to show them the movies that borrowed the title of "The Hobbit" since they have little to do with the book.

[riskllama]

twice, DB? once seems pretty fair to me, making them read it twice would likely constitute child abuse is some places, these days...

[Doc_Brown]

twice, DB? once seems pretty fair to me, making them read it twice would likely constitute child abuse is some places, these days...

Yep. Twice.
For the Harry Potter series, I told them my kids they had to be at least two books ahead of any movie they wanted to watch (e.g. they got to watch the first movie after finishing the 3rd book, 2nd movie after reading the 4th book, etc...)

[riskllama]

well, don't come crying to me when child services shows up for a wellness check...*shrugs*

[jonesthecurl]

I used to read my boy bedtime stories. Amongst other stuff, he had the whole of LoTR, without me doing a "Princess Bride" and cutting bits out. He also had the whole of the Harry Potter saga up to that point, which I think was all but the last two books.
We also did some Tarzan, though I did edit that for racism, and used the Bowdlerized PG version.
Also "Wind in the Willows", one of my all-time favourite books.

[jonesthecurl]

He doesn't read a whole lot himself, being dyslexic, but he told me that when he does read, he still hears my voice reading the words. He wants to read more, I just gave him Andre Norton's "Beastmaster" which I think is the right level, and a damn good book too.

[riskllama]

after (finally) getting around to reading "the grapes of wrath" mid lockdown - huge mistake reading arguably the most depressing book i've ever read during a quarantine... - i decided to go the "light & breezy" route & re read a couple dragonlance novels, which i hadn't read in at least 20 years & was glad i did. the first 20-30 books were really good, imo.

[jonesthecurl]

I just re-read Robert Sheckley's Game of X. I recommend it.

[DoomYoshi]

after (finally) getting around to reading "the grapes of wrath" mid lockdown - huge mistake reading arguably the most depressing book i've ever read during a quarantine... - i decided to go the "light & breezy" route & re read a couple dragonlance novels, which i hadn't read in at least 20 years & was glad i did. the first 20-30 books were really good, imo.

Who would win in a fight? Raistlin or Tom Joad?

Or to try to keep it on-topic Tasslehoff vs. Meriadoc?

[Dukasaur]

I read through the LOTR series every year or so several times prior to the movies coming out. Since the LOTR movies, I think I've only read through the books again once. I'm not entirely sure why I haven't picked them up again and have likewise wondered if the movies killed the enjoyment of the books.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Hallelujah! I'm not the only one!

<big relief>

And I'm not planning to make any effort to show them the movies that borrowed the title of "The Hobbit" since they have little to do with the book.

Thanks, u just convinced me I should probably go and read the books again - I can only remember the main characters from the films and wouldn't really want to be any of them. The films were certainly too long and yet hopelessly shallow at the same time (yes I am a snob). The books aren't really much fun to read either tbh, worth the effort would u say? There are soo many other books out there afterall and Tolkien is really dated and just plain padded out in many places (imo).

What do you mean by dated? Non-fiction might become obsolete as the state of knowledge changes, but why would fiction? A fictional tale should, in theory, be accessible forever. The Canterbury Tales are 600 years old, le Morte d'Artur is 800 years old, the Odyssey might be 2500 years old, and all of them still have their fans.

I re-read Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar not too long ago. It's still a fun read.

Anyway, not sure why you didn't enjoy LotR. I used to re-read them a lot, and was probably more enthralled later than I was at the beginning.

One thing about Tolkien’s writing... he made a lot of proper nouns very similar, both place names and characters. It makes it harder to identify and keep separated different characters. I know this is true in real life... try reading books on Medieval English History. Names are very similar for lord’s and Kings... and often they use titles which pass from one person to another, so you need to be cognizant of which “Duke of York” they mean based on the year. Tolkien’s books can be like that at times which slows down the reading.

Yes, among my few complaints about Tolkien is the ambiguity of too many similar names.

Also, the resurrection of Glorfindel has always rubbed me the wrong way. Seems to me to reduce Middle Earth to something DC comics would put out. Other than gods, once you're dead you should stay that way. It's a cringeworthy stain on what is otherwise brilliant work.

[hotfire]

The Silmarillion told the entire six films LOTR saga in about two pages. And with this book, good lord, try to keep all of those names straight. Never was interested to read any of the others after I read this. I did sort of enjoy the Silmarillion and I could see how they laid out the framework for maybe 200 different story books with it. It is hard to write that many postmortem; a few, sure.