I am currently halfway through The fellowship of the Ring, and am finding it boring and really slow (doesn’t help that I’ve been reading it for 4 months), I started reading it cause I read that it was similar to dune and I loved that book, but so far I have not found the similarities and can’t seem to get into it.
Also The lord of the rings movies are considered one of the best movies of all time so I always feel like that experience would be comparable to reading the book.
by sdqsd19
12 Comments
Omg thank you for this. I read The Hobbit this year and found it really boring. The story is great, don’t get me wrong. This might sound blasphemous to fans, but the way it was written made me sleepy all throughout. Each and every time. And because of that it took me a few months before I could finally finish it.
Lately, I was thinking of giving it another shot and try reading The Fellowship of the Ring. Now I think I will not read it at all.
I’m surprised that you liked dune but not lotr
From my memory I found both of them to be a slog at times
But I absolutely hated all of the songs on lotr
Not for me no.
But they can be for you.
“Boring” is an opinion not a fact.
No they are not boring.
However it is an almost 70 year old book and the pacing is maybe not comparable with more modern books that try to appeal to younger readers.
I love to sit down and enjoy a good slow adventure. It is a good way to personally slow down after a work day.
No, they aren’t boring. They just aren’t fast paced. The movies have a completely different pacing than the books do. The focus on the books is the journey, and not on hewing orc heads.
You have to understand that it’s a Saga, an Epic. Try reading it aloud and immersing yourself in the journey.
If you are looking for fast paced action I’d suggest not reading it since it won’t deliver the same feel as the movies. Well, except for Theoden’s and Aragorn’s speeches.
I’m getting close to the end of The Two Towers right now. The rather robust nature descriptions can be a slog for sure, especially in Fellowship from what I remember.
Anyway, once I got into Two Towers, I found there to be more momentum because you are reading about events happening over days rather than years and months.
EDIT: I saw the bit about reading half of Fellowship over 4 months. I think a steady pace of at least 10-15 pages a day would make for a better experience.
Depends. When I first read them, I found myself skip-reading. And when things picked up, I didn’t want to follow Frodo’s story, so picked the pippin path, and just read that all the way through. Then picked up from a while later, after finishing the pippen/merry story.
That’s what happens when you grow up reading choose your own adventures, I guess.
When I grew up, I reread the book, and still found myself jumping around. This is why I don’t get the hate for the LOTR movies or the new rings of power stuff. It is good source material, and good literature, but it would make a boring film taken straight from the books.
Famously so.
A lot may depend upon how childlike you are. Essential to enjoying LOTR, I think, is an ability to fundamentally identify with the Shire and the hobbits who inhabit it. If you see that is the best of all possible ways to be-in-the-world then the rest of the adventure unfolds around and in relation to that starting point. But, to identify so closely with hobbit-ness you must yourself have some hobbit-like qualities, such as innocence and a belief that the good and the right will prevail, and such qualities are rarer now than they were back in the day.
>I am currently halfway through The fellowship of the Ring, and am finding it boring and really slow
I agree.
I read the Hobbit over a weekend.
Then I took *years* to read Fellowship because I found it dull and meandering. I kept starting it over thinking “Maybe this time I’ll enjoy it.”
I didn’t.
But I eventually pushed through it and read Two Towers and Return of the King in about a week each. They are excellent. Fellowship sucked.
That is my opinion on them.
Also: the Fellowship movie cuts *a lot* out of the book (because the book is full of a bunch of inconsequential fluff) and actually includes quite a bit of stuff from Two Towers (because way more stuff actually happens in that book and the movie needed a climax)
I found it boring when I was reading it. But the audiobook version is super entertaining
I mean, to me, Tom Clancy is achingly, deploringly boring. Not a single compelling word in the whole shebang. Boring is very subjective.