Thread: Why is this story just so amazing?

Reserved for Tolkien fantatics to laugh about. A but of an appreciation thread

The other night I was reading Book 3 part one of 'A song of Ice and Fire.' An amazing series, and G.R.R Martin really captures characters in a light that few other authors ever good. Not even Tolkien.

But then reading through it, I just had a huge urge to pick up LOTR and start reading Tom Bombadil's chapter. I pick it up, go to the best part and start laughing out lout.

It's just so fantastically weird! Here we have Merry, Pippin, Frodo and Sam, all near to death in the dankiest #### hole of the Old Forest, and then Tolkien pops out with a

Hey ho! Merry do! Merry do, my darling..."

For all it's faults, LOTR is just an amazing book!

Ol' Tom always leaves a smile on my face when I read about him. There's a lesson to be learned from him.

When I started to read Song of Ice and Fire I also thought fo a while "this could be richer than LotR"... but starting with the end of the 3rd book it just went downhill, overly constructed, overly "so, now I am going to annoy and shock them, cause I do hardcore stuff... muhahah".

Actually I am now at a point where I like the TV Series Game of Thrones much better than the books.


AND, to come back to Tolkien, I appreciate him much more after seeing how Martin starts to fail... sure, in a way Martin is somehow more "realistic" with his characters and everything... although at the same time Tolkien also offers a lot of grey shades in his books, but very clearly dosed when he really thought it necessary. And of course there is a set of history behind it that lacks from Martin's rather content-less saga.

One part that always makes me laugh is when Frodo wakes up just after Sam and Smeagol have an argument and Smeagol promptly tells Frodo that "Smeagol is a sneak", and Sam bites his tongue to stay quiet.

I for one did not enjoy the light parts of the book so much. Perhaps that is why I like the Silmarillion and the Children of Hurin more than the Lord of the Rings. I don't think any other fantasy has as much depth and detail as Tolkien's Legendarium.

I love Tolkien's description of Shelob in Return of the King. In one page Tolkien transformed Shelob from generic villain 1,329,734 into a Middle Earth version of an OG(Original Gangster) that had respect by all, including Sauron. Very well done.

Touching a bit on some of the other discussions going on in other threads...

I love how Tolkien fleshed out some characters and gave insight into their innermost thoughts, yet left others almost a complete mystery. And I love that Tolkien seemed perfectly happy to let his fans speculate, by claiming that even he himself didn't know some of the answers to the riddles of his world.

Genius.

I think LOTR has a lot f stuff to please most people that like stories, Tom Bombadil is one, I prefer Beorn from the Hobbit but both are very similar.

Originally Posted by Al.

I think LOTR has a lot f stuff to please most people that like stories, Tom Bombadil is one, I prefer Beorn from the Hobbit but both are very similar.

It's more clear though that Beorn is from the race of Men.