h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you are interested in fantasy works and should NOT have read Tolkien yet, then I have a quest for you: settle out and read the whole work!!! I don´t want to shove other writers off the shelf, but, in my humble opinion, even the voluminous works of Frank Herbert can´t beat the fun, the sorrow, the love and the fear you face when you step in to join the company of characters depicted with a dedication seldom encountered even in fantasy writing.

Okay, okay, I let go now...but thanks for the biography, anyway.

Sorry, I double-clicked!

SPOILER WARNING
A superb work as long as you don't mind:- over-use of the word "suddenly" as in "a stream suddenly appearing round a bend in the track"; gaping holes in the plot, such as why they went to all the bother of walking the whole way to mordor when they could have stuffed the ring in a bag and given it to one of the eagles to drop in Mount Doom; No explanation as to what makes the rings so powerful they're just assumed to be powerful; No apperent rules to magic Gandalf at times seems to be able to do anything and at others nothing; Loads of superfluos details about people and places which have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot; Characters being reincarnated and no one asks how?; rather muddled and confused terminology regarding orcs (one moment they're goblins the next they're half orcs and the next just ordinary orcs, but not one explanation to the difference, tolkien doesn't seem to know himself.); and lastly loads of poems and songs but no description of the rythem or ryhme.

I'd have to agree...honestly, I'm not a big Tolkien fan.. (I confess.. I skipped book 2! And I didn't feel like I missed much..) if you're looking for that kind of genre, complete with slight celtic flavor, I'd suggest Guy Gavriel Kay's series "Fionavar Tapestry"...

Actually, what I'd really suggest is Pratchett.. but he's my favorite fanatasy author.. so I'm a bit biased.

Pratchett is the best, I agree. Tolkien did lay the groundwork though. I'm finishing lord of the rings right now.

There are gaping holes I admit....but it is still quite an exceptional story.

I read the Hobbit when I was six and then proceeded to devour anything else he ever wrote. Although, as I've grown up I've discovered far more fulfilling writing (mainly due to the work I did at university), Tolkein is the reason I started reading, so I owe him a debt.

I not so much read all books of Pratchet than devoured them, so I must agree with you. But it´s always hard to compare Pratchet with any other kind of literature - I guess that´s one point of many that makes him, literally, un-match-able. What I wanted to point out with Tolkien is his dedication to his work. One has to keep in mind that he wrote bits and pieces of it over a long period of time and had to assemble all of them later on. That´s why there are some holes in logics, but he never claimed his work to be perfect. He always spoke of it as a kind of "tree", that grew into dimensions too big to be kept in a shape. Have you ever tried to construct a timeline out of Pratchet´s work - BUGGER!

I have read all of Pratchett's work as well but I find that half of it is sublime and the other half is the most irritating drivel I've read since "Gulliver's Travels". When he doesn't try to be too serious e.g "Intresting times" he's great and actually gets across many important issues, when he trys to say something meaningfull it ends up muddled and confused with a whole host of little problems that TP hasn't thought of e.g. in "Hogfather" the monsters in kids dreams are real, so why hasn't anyone noticed their kids being gruesomely murdered in their beds?
As for Tolkien I didn't say he was bad (the hobbit is a bloody good book) just that the Lord of the rings is poorly thought out. The lord of the rings is OK just as long as you have the patience of a sloth on sleeping pills and the enquiring mind of a rock.

I have yet to read the Hobbit (next on my list). I neglected to read LOTR until now and I'm toward the end of Return of the King and am finding myself horribly bored. My patience is nearing a breaking point. Years ago I refused to to read LOTR out of principle. Everyone else I knew was reading it and I wasn'tgoing along. There are great parts such as the battle at Minas Tirith.

As for Pratchett I don't like several of his books. The early discworld stuff is weak and I couldn't get myself interested in it. I don't like any of the Rincewind books. The "Gaurds" storyline seems to be is strongest. "Jingo" being my favorite so far.

Hogfather was uninspired. I don't think he was sure as to what he was trying to say. The same goes for The Last oninent.

I will admit that Tolkien seemed to take a great deal with time actually shaping the world he created.. developing anew language and so forth.. and he did, in my opinion, start the bloody genre...

But beyond that he's overrated. However THAT works.

I think the difference with me is that I think of the Lord of the Rings as a childrens book. I suppose that if I'd encountered it as an adult it wouldn't have made such an impression. My mother gave me the Hobbit to read because, as an adult, she found it painfuly boring to read and couldn't make it to the end.
The fact that a recent poll in Britain voted it in as the best book of the twentieth century came as a bit of a surprise to me too, but I think that if it made that kind of an impression on such a large group of people, then the majoriy of its readers must have found it gripping in some way.

I think you'll find that most of the people that voted in that pole hadn't read it. It depends how you read the books whether you enjoy them or not, they should be read as if you were reading them to your kids while your all sat round a roaring fire.(Thats how Tolkien came up with the Hobbit anyway.)

On the subject of being near the end of Return of the King and bored. I can't remember the exact structure, but is it the bit in Mordor? Because, if so, I found that breathtakingly tedious the first time I read the book (when I was about 10, I think) and actually stopped reading it. A couple of years later, I re-read it and loved it. Afterwards, I decided that it was a tedious part to read because Mordor is a tedious place!

Yes. That's exactly where I am in the book. I'll probably pick it up again in a couple of months. There are other things I'm more interested in reading right now.

Thank God I'm not alone! I have a friend that very nearly crucified me for saying something along the lines of "It seems a jumbled, and boring... I hope it gets better." when I was about halfway through the trilogy. And the only other people I've heard of that couldn't (or wouldn't) finish it were mental midgets fresh from reading 'The Baby-Sitters' Club'. It's entertaining to look back on, (if you only remember the good parts, like me,) but I don't fancy reading it again!

I didn't find the Lord of the RIngs jumbled or boring, I'm afraid. The first time I read it, it only took me about three days. Couldn't put the thing down. I've never had any trouble revisiting it, although I admit, I don't re-read it very often - every four years or so maybe (and occassionaly I do give up when the reach Lorian, 'cos I can't be bothered with all the subsequent traumas).

The one Tolkien Book I have never managed to re-read is the Silmarillion. On my first attempt it was devoured in two days. I found it totally riveting. Recently though, I decided to go back to it and got the fright of my life. It seemed incredibly dry stuff - more long-winded than the Bible - and I barely managed to plough through the first few pages. I reckon I've become lazy as I've got older. I go for writing with quick sound-bites and snappy plots - a symptom of the constant presence of television in my life I suppose.

I suppose we have to remember that he wrote nearly a century ago, so his prose style is going to be closer to Thomas Hardy than to Terry Pratchett - he's bound to come across as long-winded and overly -drawn-out. To all intents and purposes 'though, what he created with the LOTR was a vast experiment. I don't think it was ever something he planned. It happened because the Hobbit was so successful that people demanded more. So he obliged by padding out the original story and adding in bits from what was his real magnum opus - the Silmarillion and all the atttached bits of invented folklore that went with it. In the end it inevitably wasn't as coherent as it could have been.

If anyone finds reading LOTR just too much of a chore, the BBC radio production is fantastic. Yes it's 13 hours long, but it does cut some of the 'dead wood' out of the plot - which adds to the coherency level. Purist Tolkien fans dislike it because it does just that, but I think it's great..

The first time I read LOTR, It was relatively easy. I could put the book down, but I'd want to pick it back up as soon as it was convinient.

On an unrelated note: One interesting fact I found was that 'newspaper' authors like Charles Dickens, who had their stories printed in heart-wrenchingly small installments in their own column in the paper (or a literary magazine) were often paid by the word and had to have their contracts renewed at the end of each story (which a talented author could keep going for months, and still keep the audience rivited).

This led to a very wordy (dull?) writing style that was still very much in the vouge during Tolkien's time, dispite the hey-day of literary magazines passing nearly fifty years before. I imagine that his stuff seemed fast-paced and exciting compared to 'David Copperfield'.

Don't get me wrong. I love LOTR. I read about ten books at a time. I think I just hit a very dull part of the story. I prefer a more fast paced story. It's the way that I write myself (when I have time for it). I'm not much of a fantasy fan, if I was I'm sure I would have an easier time finishing it.

Since I'm the person that started this debate I should point out that I didn't find the STORY boring. What I found boring was the constant irritations of unexplained details and the lack of any sort of rules/principles for magic. If you compare the magic in Tolkiens work with that of Pratchett, you will relise that Pratchetts is far more accomplished despite Pratchett being considered by many to be lightweight.
When I started reading TLOTR I expected Tolkiens work to be similarly well thought out, unfortunately I was completely disapointed.

I agree. Orderly little rules make things more interesting. That's why games like Twister have rules. What fun would it be if anyone could put any appendage wherever they saw fit? And what if the person spinning could just say "Okay, you lost." without a reason for it? (But, then I know little kids who play Twister in just that manner, and love it.)

LOTR is fantastic, but many things go with no rhyme or reason to them, (unless maybe you read all of Tolkien's work, then most of it might make sense... but I wouldn't know).

A streamlined version of the story would move better, but I think Tolkien fans would rebel en masse.