Three tries.
Three battles against mind-numbing tedium. Three times I thought "other people rave about this, it must be worth a try". Three attempts, each one weeks long, getting slower and slower as I wait for something, anything interesting to actually happen.

Three times I have utterly failed to get past the first 300 pages of Lord of the Rings.

Thank you Peter Jackson. Now I don't ever have to.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Thu 24 Jun 2010, 16:41, 6 replies)

^What she said.

( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 24 Jun 2010, 16:45, closed)

Believe it or not, it gets harder to endure
I love the book and have probably read it almost every year since I was 11 or something, but it really does get fucking tedious in places
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 24 Jun 2010, 16:47, closed)

Read it as a kid
and liked it.

Started reading it again in my twenties when the films came out. Really couldn't. The prose is awful at times.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 24 Jun 2010, 17:19, closed)

I read the whole thing, three or four times, thoroughly
and so badly does Tolkien's navel-gazing Oxonian scholarly drivel drag on, that I still watched the films and went "Huh. So that's what he was talking about." because I had no idea what the actual story was until it came out on film.
(Falstaff's Spiritual Successor, Thu 24 Jun 2010, 17:29, closed)

I
can just about stomach it til Tom "CoCO the Fucking Clown" appears and then I just vomit.
(kitescreech still here, Thu 24 Jun 2010, 19:32, closed)

The trick is not to worry about reading all of it.
I only got through by skimming long sections, or even just flicking through pages until I hit an interesting-looking word. I don't think I read any of the songs past the first one, and mostly got to read about exciting battles and silly hobbits. If it didn't make sense, I skipped back a page for some basic context.

The book I probably read least of was The Two Towers. Yes, I get it, they're walking! And it's a really long way! For God's sake, they even start talking about the fact that they've been walking for much longer than should have been necessary, and at that point I skipped forward a couple of chapters.

The appendix on Ents was quite interesting.
(Skittlemcfluff ......................, Sat 26 Jun 2010, 17:52, closed)