LOTR...Yes or no?

So I'm thinking of reading the 3 over the next month or so...

Good idea? I've never seen the movies or anything and the references to LOTR are getting annoying. ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY WALK INTO MORDOR HURR and I have no idea what that shit is about.

Do I read them? Is it worth it? Also going to college next month, any books I MUST read before I leave?

Also, I'm gonna read Flowers for Algernon because I remember a loonnnng time ago (like at least 8-10 years ago)I read an excerpt/short story and I was really interested in it. I want to read the whole thing.

Whenever I come to /book/ I feel like I'm entering a secret underground room full of book nerds discussing literature in the dark.

I like how I have to check "show text boards" then I come here and there's a red brick background like we're in a hidden place.

Anyways, I'm going to the library to pick up LOTR.

It's more than "worth it".  There are so many references because it's one of the most important literary works of the 20th century. 
Flowers for Algernon was originally a short story and was novelized later.  Reading the short story is enough.

>>3
There are so many references because it's one of the most important pop culture works of the 20th century. 

fixed that for you buddy!!

>>4
>> There are so many references because it's one of the most important literary and pop culture works of the 20th century.

Final version.  Thanks for the help, pal.

>>5
Nope. Don't think so.

>>6
No, I agree with >>5. The movies are more of pop culture, but few outside the 'literary world' (meaning the avid book lovers) read the novels, which are fantastic.

>>7
Maybe if you are a huge NERD

>>8
Guilty as charged there.  Welcome to the Information Age.  Social skills are great, and should never be neglected, but in an age that values the ability to analyze uncertain, conflicting, and sometimes hazardous information above all others, the Pop brigades will be at a distinct disadvantage.  But don't worry.  We'll maintain the bread and circuses.  Everything's gonna be okay.

You should read The Hobbit first.  It's a quick and easy kids book, fun, and a nice prologue.

The Hobbit is a really fun read, and it would be smart to read it first to see if you are into Tolkien's world.  As for LOTR itself, it is a great series with an amazing story, BUT it can be a chore to read at times.  Tolkien describes like every 3rd tree they pass in several lines of detail.  He lists entire family ancestral lines like they do in The Iliad.  But if you can get through all the crap (most of which is in the first book which is the slowest moving) then you should really enjoy it. 

But reading the books won't really help you with the references.  All of those are quotes from teh movies with takes several liberties with the story.

Well its gonna take a while to get through all the books. I think maybe I'd like the movies so I'm gonna try and see them.

I thought only nerds liked stuff like star wars and LOTR, but watching star wars changed my mind. Maybe I'm a nerd. But fuck it, maybe I'll like LOTR too.

>>9
that post is completely random and irrelevant wtf

>>13
No, they were saying they're proud to be a nerd.

Which I usually am too if I'm accused as such.

>>12

If you've made your way to 4chan, chances are you're some degree of nerd.

>>12

are you sure that it's college you will be starting and not high-school? that sounds like an incredibly juvenile attitude for even an 18 year old to have.

>>14
and the stuff THAT POSTER posted has nothing to do with LOTR. THAT POSTER doesn't realize why I called LOTR nerdy and not real literature

The thing about LotR is, you have to enjoy how slow and meandering it is. A few times, for literally five or six  pages they'll detail a completely unrelated story or a song or poem.

It's still a great book.

It starts off slow as fuck. It takes Bilbo 70+ pages just to leave the damned Shire. Then he goes to a 70+ page council meeting that is boring as fuck. You have to power through the slow start to get to the good parts which begin about halfway through the Two Towers. From the Battle of Helms Deep onwards you'll be hooked. And when it's over you'll wish there was more.

>>17
THAT POSTER was responding appropriately to foolishness in the thread.  THAT POSTER doesn't care why you "called LOTR nerdy and not real literature."  THAT POSTER understands that there could only be two reasons for such an assertion.  You are a troll, or you have no concept of literary merit.  Either way, you're an asshole.  Now go ahead and compose another weak response, then let it go boy.

Dynamics people, dynamics.  LOTR was written before video changed the way our minds were accustomed to processing information.  The slow parts are there to introduce us to the world, the characters, and the authors chosen voice and language.  They also provide contrast to, and respite from, the more intense parts.  Ultimately it's the wealth of information provided in these slow parts that make the fast parts really matter.  I used to have a music teacher who was fond of saying "If everything's loud, then nothing's loud."  Otherwise you end up with shit like Lost and Prison Break.  Stories that just get bigger and more convoluted until they reach a point where there's no way out, and the resulting resolution is anticlimactic.  A great book is like a Symphony, not a jam, and only the greatest can conceive and compose a work of epic proportions, like LOTR.  Hell, Tolkien wrote several books worth of back story just to prepare to write LOTR.

Honestly the only really slow part that I didn't like in the books is the Elrond's Council.  The rest of the books are amazing.  But that 30-50 pages almost made me quit.

I really should read it again.

Alright, well thanks for those that contributed real comments. A lot of people on this board are complete faggots.

>>24
Alright, well then: no u r

I've read it 6 times now, over the course of maybe 7 or 8 years? (First read when I was like 9 or 10, I can't remember); i still love it.

I don't think there is another book on the planet which so vividly and convincingly describes a completely fictional world. The story-line is of course outstanding. So I say, what's not to like?

Everyone should read it at least once, if only to be able to judge it properly

>>26
I don't think there is another book on the planet which so vividly and convincingly describes a completely fictional world.
That's a huge stretch. Surely Foreigner or Anathem (off the top of my head) has a good go at it. Good book though.

>>27
Or The Bible LOLZ

>>28
Uh... that world isn't fictional.

>>27

Though I don't agree that either of those books are as good as LOTR, I do agree that it's a huge stretch to say there isn't another book on the planet.

>>30
I didn't say they were as good (although I personally believe they're better and as good, respectively), I just said they described completely fictional worlds as vividly and convincingly as LoTR does.

From my perspective, the criticism of "slow" sections - especially the council at Rivendell - seems somewhat strange (not wrong or peculiar;  just alien to how I've always viewed LotR):  these sections set the scene, create the world, and in the case of the council speeches fill in crucial bits of the background that we need to understand what is happening "now" (i. e., in the time of the narrative).  Same with the appendices (which I always read in full every time I re-read the books), and with the poems and stories >>18 calls "completely unrelated".  All of these elements fill in parts of the overall world and history of which The Hobbit and LotR are just the best known and most popularly successful parts.  Reading The Silmarillion and Christopher Tolkien's series of books containing unpublished writings will show just how extensive and complex (and evolving) those were for Tolkien.

As to style, it's worth remembering that Tolkien was a scholar of mediaeval literature (from which he drew many elements of his stories and the languages he invented), and that is the proper frame of reference for LotR (and the reference made by >>11 to the Iliad is spot on too);  not modern fiction, and certainly not breathless modern cinematic narrative.  Read LotR as mediaeval heroic epic with some modern sensibilities thrown in, and you'll be closer to what Tolkien was doing.

I problem with the council is that Tolkien had to introduce each character like they do in the Iliad:  by detailing his entire family tree back for hundreds of years.  The only reason it was in the Iliad was because people listening to that story were actually related to those people and cheered at their names.  But with the LoTR they are just random, hard to pronounce names that take up space.  I bet if you took out all those names you would shed like 15 pages from the books.

>>33

I think this is largely a matter of taste and interests:  for me, coming from a background steeped in Greco-Roman mythology, the style of the council seemed and seem perfectly appropriate (and I may say that it remains one of my favourite passages).  The Iliadic comparandum is appropriate here too:  some have seen the Catalogue of Ships (Bk 2) as tedious, long-winded, etc.;  to others it is a vital part of both the oral formulaic heritage and the structure of the epic.

One point that is open to dispute is the idea that the Homeric audience would have been interested due to personal connections.  This might be true to a limited extent, but it doesn't explain the interest overall;  and I think that has more to do with a cultural interest in genealogy (just look at the complexity of mythical genealogies as presented by Apollodoros, Hyginus, and the scholiasts [ancient annotators of ancient literature]), with the importance to oral cultures of keeping records in verse as it were, and with traditions of catalogue poetry (Hesiod, and Apollonios Rhodios' catalogue of Argonauts, for example - which is a Homeric-influenced catalogue in a poem written in and for a highly literate milieu).

Again, I think one has to read the council and such in light of Tolkien's narrative influences and agenda.  He viewed Middle Earth and its narratives not as an ad hoc fictional creation, but more as a series of histories and tales that revealed themselves and evolved as he worked on them;  and that is how the works are written.  In the same way, he did not just create names and words as needed, but had whole linguistic systems (again evolving) underlying his world - and these had the same stages and inconsistencies as natural languages.

Of course, one might understand all of this and still feel some sections to be tedious, unnecessary, etc.;  however, it is important to understand the genesis of Tolkien's style and what he was trying to achieve - for him, LotR was in some senses a diversion from his serious writing, which he set into its context, and into which he put elements that point to the wider world, histories, languages, mythologies, etc.

>>34
Thank you.

>>34

Well said. 

I have a question.  I haven't read the series since I was 14, but I was wondering if Tolkien mentions Knights in any form.  I can't seem to remember anyone referred to as Sir Whatever.  They were plenty of esteemed warriors but I don't remember anything that resembled a knight as we know it.

>>36
Don't think so.

>>36

Tolkien is drawing on different medieval traditions;  and another thing worth remembering is that the "knights and castles" view of the middle ages as a whole is largely a much more modern construction (as late as Victorian or after), or at the very least a conflation of the military, political and other features of different periods and regions.  Tolkien's academic interests and influences were more Germanic and northern European (incl. Scandinavian);  the legends in which knights are prominent tend to come from the Romance languages (i. e., mainly southern European).

Just a clarification on >>37.  Probably the best known medieval traditions featuring knights in the English-speaking world are those surrounding Arthur. Such a figure and stories about him first appear in writers (mainly Latin) in and on the British Isles, but only really begin to be developed to the forms in which we know them after the Norman conquest by British and French writers (beginning especially in the 12th century), and only then appear in German, and during this period become associated and elaborated with various other elements (legends of Merlin, for instance).  Tolkien worked in this period, of course (editing and translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example), but his linguistic and literary interests and expertise as a scholar, and his influences as a writer, extend back into earlier periods and languages, including Old English (whose period ends in the early to mid-12th century) and the Norse material that survives in the Eddas (but parts of which are thought to go back centuries earlier).

>>39
>Just a clarification on >>37.

Uh, make that >>38.  Damn fingers.