GeroW4lll

To my utter shame as a nerd/geek, I have to admit that I've never read Lord of the Rings. Here's my story:

After watching all the geek films and stories in the wrong sequence, I decided I better do it right. The Hobbit is the prequel so it has to go first. Tolkien was after all a master of the best book of the last century. Unfortunately it was NOT the hobbit.

The hobbit is set in the LOTR's Middle earth, before the LOTR but after the scene setting wars and Isildur's chopping Sauron's finger off and so on. Golem has found the ring and lost it and the story is about Bilbo Baggins finding it. And also giant spiders, a special sword, and a hundred and one other nifty odds and ends that make handy plot-hole sealant.

The story is illogical, badly motivated and not very credible. I'm not talking realism, I know its fantasy. I mean suspension of disbelief is not happening. Tolkien hates some of his characters so much that he just keep raining crap on them from start to finish, and they end up taking the brunt of the blame, even though they're supposed to be misguided good guys, with plenty enough of bad guys to go around. Mostly he hates dwarves in this one. It put me off Tolkein so much that I could never again muster the motivation to read LOTR. Sux for me I guess.

Finally, because the motivation of the story is so lame, Tolkien pulls not a rabbit, but a dragon out of a hat. Bilbo succeeds where everyone smarter, stronger, better and more noble than him have failed, on his own dumb luck and lots of help from the author. I've read a book by Clive Cussler once where he wrote himself into the book as a holiday maker who stumbles upon the trapped, wounded hero and rescues them. The hobbit does worse.

So after that ordeal, I didn't have the strength of willpower left to read LOTR, but I did watch the movies. The first one really, and eventually saw the rest when someone else rented them. They basically work on this "went there, did that, met that guy who helped them, went there, did that," etc etc cycle, so if they really deserve all this hype about best book of the century, I bet a lot was left out of the movie. In fact I pray it, or I'll lose all hope for humanity's ability to judge books.

If after that rant you still want to see a Hobbit move or (god forbid, several) Peter Jackson is making it. http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.co...-hobbit-films/ He's apparently had a lot of trouble getting a cast, crew and everyone else. When his director abandoned him he decided to do that himself. But there you go.

PS. Wish I could spell also LOL.