I read The Hobbit to my daughters as betimes story. Never boring. If you have an opportunity to foster imagination that is priceless.

you might want to try the audiobook on a faster speed i have trouble with the hobbit as well as i love the movies

I mean, to me, Tom Clancy is achingly, deploringly boring. Not a single compelling word in the whole shebang. Boring is very subjective.

Yes, and I say that as someone that loves the books and has read them probably half a dozen times since I was a kid.

If you want the LOTR books to move at a better pace, skip all of the poems and songs. Also the whole fucking section with Tom Bombadil.

The Silmarillion is infinitely more tedious and isn’t really a book imo.

I loved the hobbit more than the lord of the rings. But I never found them boring. Admittedly, Tolkien was a very wordy writer.but his attention to detail and explanation is part of the books appeal. If you’re having trouble keeping interest. Take a break and go back to it later.

Fellowship has a slow start because there’s a lot of worldbuilding going on. I felt like the book got much better once the journey actually started. The latter two are much better paced.

i definitely thought they were boring when i was a kid but now i love them! i think the movies set people up to think the books have a lot more action than they do, but the events in lotr are only a part of tolkien’s whole vision of “history” and world-building for middle earth and reading through the notes and songs can really take forever.

Maybe it’s just not for you. There are people that love the books and there are people that hate the books. We can’t all like the same things…that would be boring.

Put the book away and move onto reading something you’ll enjoy.

I don’t think it’s boring, but Fellowship is much slower than the rest of the novel. Once you get to the Council of Elrond in book 2 the pace starts to gradually pick up and continues to do so all throughout Two Towers and into Return of the King.

I found them boring & difficult to get through, they’re very slow paced.

if you like dense expository and glacial pacing, they’re great books!

First time I read “The Hobbit” I hated it, while first time I read LotR I loved it.

Second time around, a few years later, I loved “The Hobbit” and I couldn’t finish LotR - not because I didn’t like it, but because it doesn’t suck me in anymore - although I periodically re-read parts of it I love. Go figure.

The Silmarillion is the only one that has remained consistently great for me.

All this to say: not only it’s subjective, but it’s also time-varying. Try again in a few years :)

Not to me; I literally can’t put them down (which becomes something of a problem with a story that long!). On the other hand, Dune is the most sleep-inducing audiobook I’ve ever had the misfortune to force myself to finish, so maybe liking one suggests you won’t like the other?

I second skipping Tom Bombadil if you’re struggling; he seems to trip up a lot of people.

Look up the Phil Dragash version of the audiobook. Full soundtrack and soundscape accompaniment, plus the acting is fantastic.

I think you already know the answer to this question.