I don’t know what to call it. John Muir is awesome. So poetic, interested in all the things I’m interested in, inspires me to get out there and go hiking (as if I needed more motivation?) – yet, his work is… I don’t know what to call it… “heavy”… the opposite of light reading. I’m just slogging through it. I don’t know if I really like it, but it’s definitely beautifully quotable. It’s leaving me with so many mixed feelings.
Don’t hate me… But Tolkien, Lord of the Rings. It’s very flowery with descriptions and nice little poems that I just cannot get into. I guess it doesn’t help that I picture all the characters and locations from the movies, so reading extended descriptions of things I’ve seen feels superfluous.
And the poems, while nice, are distracting from the really interesting stuff and I tend to just gloss over those too.
Then there’s The Silmarilion…
He’s a great author, and quite the poet, but I fell in love with the movies he inspired more than the source books. I think I’ve only read LOTR once or twice so maybe I just need to give it another go…
I have the same relationship with Tolkien. I love the stories but the descriptions and language lose me. I have considered listening to the books - sometimes I can get through dense writing more easily that way.
I like the idea of tolken, but I think he’s actually a shitty writer. He should have left over 50% of his work in the editing room floor. So many extra details that just take away from the reading experience. I feel like he actually wanted to write a dnd module for his world rather than a novel. It reads like an encyclopedia.