when it comes to their books.
The way LOTR was written made it so fucking boring, I dropped it halfway through The Two Towers.
The Twilight series, on the other hand, was so entertaining that I read it till the very end. I don’t care if the characters are trashy / drama is crap / whatever; I just want to be entertained.
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At least you admit you are only there for jangling keys.
You would love early 2000s YA fiction. Have fun.
Trashy romance novels are also apparently entertaining but that doesn’t make them good literature. Twilight may be entertaining but the terrible grammar, word choice and plot make it a joke. Its the reality TV of novels.
The first book of twilight was far more compelling to read than the first book of LOTR. It almost felt like I was being trolled with how many pages are spent describing mundane nonsense in LOTR.
Reminder that “Vote the opposition of the norm”
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it’s something that’s widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
You definitely get an upvote from me
You disgust me. Have an upvote.
I didn’t read the TL series. Is it worth it? The movies were so bad they were actually comedies.
The first book is worth it for sure, the rest are skippable though honestly. The first book came out before all the attention and pressure and money.
Whenever I’m feeling down I watch one of those compilation videos of Robert Pattinson shitting on the series.
You like what you like. I prefer science fiction myself. I tried reading the first LOTR book and I couldn’t get through it bcz it had like 2 straight pages describing the scenery.
Followed by two more pages describing each piece of food on the table in as much detail as possible.
Lotr was clearly written when people had more time on their hands.
Lotr’s time use and verbosity is nothing to me, I’ve read Robert Jordan’s works.
This is all based on my weak memory, but I read maybe half Robert Jordan’s wheel of time and dont remember having the same issue. I can’t remember why I didnt finish the series though, so maybe it was a bit too drawn out for me after all.
I recal lots of joking about being paid by the word, even he himself made jokes about the length of his novels, when he was dying while trying to finish the last of the story he said Tor would have to invent a new binding method because he was going to fit it all into the last one, no matter what. Sadly he didn’t have enough time but left enough worldbuilding behind.
I think they might have been some of my favorates in part because of the length tbh, I’m a very fast reader.
Thats a unique way to call someone a dumb sibling fucker
This is such an insane take I love it
I hate everything about this post
But you really might like Percy Jackson books.
But you really might like Percy Jackson books.
I do.
Have either of you read the Pendragon series by D.J. McHale? If you liked Percy Jackson, you’ll probably enjoy them as well. I really enjoyed the audio books.
I don’t know how to tag/ping people on Lemmy, so i hope u/surewhynotlem sees this as well. @surewhynotlem (<- just checking if that works)
Have a great day!
Thanks for the recommendation.
Me too. It’s wonderful brain candy
I upvoted because I could not disagree more.
But! No judgement from me. Everything’s not for everyone. I can reread the LOTR trilogy for the 12th time or delve into the Silmarillion (basically the history of the LOTR world) and love every second. Whereas I tried to make it through the first Twilight book after watching the movie and had to put it down and take a shower. But if you like Twilight more, read that, because that’s what you like! Your thoughts still have value!
Such a truly unpopular opinion. I could not disagree more, but I also think there is a difference between what you find enjoyable and objectively what is better. Something that you do not find enjoyable can still be objectively better than something you do. You might enjoy reading tabloids more than Shakespeare, that does not make tabloids better writing, just something you find more entertaining. I think that is the issue most people will have with this post.
there is a difference between what you find enjoyable and objectively what is better.
I am aware. The clickbait title is intentional😈
Or you could just admit there is no objective truth when it comes to art. Maybe you are arguing tabloids are technical writings while Shakespeare wrote pieces of art?
The ridiculous amount of songs and poems in the LOTR books were incredibly boring. They’re certainly not page turners. Very slow pacing and often overly detailed descriptions abound.
You’re not wrong. But also I don’t think it would be quite the same without, and the tedious display of reverance for song and poetry contributes something very human (and often beyond human) to many of the characters.
I’m with the OP, I gave it a shot but the songs and poems were a negative for me too. I just started skipping them, and also skipping most of the giant paragraphs detailing what a broom looked like or how a piece of ham glistened or whatever.
giant paragraphs detailing what a broom looked like or how a piece of ham glistened or whatever
I genuinely don’t even know where that is coming from. He is known for lengthy description of landscape and geographical features, and that critique would be valid, but… not about trivial details about random objects like this? Huh??
Hmmm. I like The Lord of the Rings more overall, but it could feel…draggy at points.
The only part in the first two Twilight books I liked when I was was told to read them when I worked at Borders was her use of empty chapters to represent depression and the passage of time. I’m a sucker for using the medium like that.
I should read House of Leaves.
House of Leaves drags at times. At times it’s gripping, and at times I was bored stiff. It’s interesting, I think it’s nutty, I think it’s a real reach and ought to be lauded, but I just never thought it was that good. I’ve discovered I’m just a sucker for classic epic fantasy though, so perhaps it just weren’t for me. I also read it 20 years ago at this point, and so perhaps with my maturity I might enjoy another read. My brother in law just got me a copy actually, which is good because my original copy disappeared.
I never read Twilight so I have nothing to add there.
It still feels like something I should try and read, House of Leaves. I don’t think I’ll suuuuper enjoy it, mostly because horror is very much not my jam, but use of medium very much is!
Twilight was easy to read is another bonus for it. You can tear through them quickly. Which is what I did when told I had to read them by my boss. I read the first two in…twoish days, returned them, said “Okay I’ve read the first two, please don’t make me read more” and she said okay.
Just curious, why did your boss require you to read Twilight?
It was Borders and sometimes she just wanted us to read a popular book so we could talk to customers about it. It was right before the midnight release of the 4th book, and I’d be register that night, so she wanted me to…try and talk about it, I guess.
I just sold them the books and wished them a good night and hoped they enjoyed it instead!
LotR is really, really old. It’s another time with different reading habits and writing culture. It’s just logical it can’t really compete with current literature. It might beba masterpiece but when the audience changes its just not so appealing anymore.
Fucking hell, I hate having to upvote this…so much…
Twilight is everything that is wrong with modern literature. It’s dumbing down your art in order to cater to a population whose reading levels have declined to the low grade school level over the years.
Good books increase your literacy. You learn new things from reading them; new words, new phrases, etc… an author is supposed to add to the collective intelligence of the world, not debase themselves to write at a fourth grade level so that their books are more popular to incurious illiterates.
Eww, gatekeeping literature.
You can just read for fun, ya know. It need not be an intellectual pursuit.
Even books read for pleasure shouldn’t have to dumb down their grammar and writing style. There are plenty of comic books/graphic novels with better writing than the Twilight Saga (for example). By “learning something” I don’t mean you have to read non-fiction books to learn about history and what not. But books like Twilight, which are written with no sense of story structure, word usage, or proper grammar in some places, are beyond harmful.
She’s a shit writer whose style appeals to people who people who can’t tell the difference because they barely paid attention in English class and don’t care to.
If you want an example of the other direction, Harry Potter is a series that appeals to young people, but are well written and actually inspire kids to read because it challenges them to get better at handling good writing.
I’m not “gate keeping” anything. I’m saying the writer has an obligation to enrich people, regardless of whether it’s reading for fun or reading for learning.
“Literature” comes from Latin, and it originally meant “the use of letters” or “writing.” But when the word entered the Romance languages that derived from Latin, it took on the additional meaning of “knowledge acquired from reading or studying books.” So we might use this definition to understand “Literature with a Capital L” as writing that gives us knowledge–writing that should be studied.
Knowledge and intellect is legit in the literature definition?
So essentially literature can’t be “gate keeping” it is what it is. It’s just do you want to study it and gain knowledge / intellect - or nah?
