Is LoTR worth reading if I don't give a shit about high

>>8410593
Just watch the films.

>>8410608
The films are shit. Just read the books.

>>8410593
the books are great for grade/middle schoolers. ASOIAF is better for adults.

LOTR have at least some artistic value, some resemblance os style and originality, you can see all the care and love Tolkien put into his work and this form of artistic sincerity is great, at least for me

That being said it really depends, if you didn't read a lot of the canon already you probably will have fun, but if you already have some literary baggage the books may drag

I say, give it a try, at least they are way better than ASOIAF

There's so, so much more to LOTR than elves and dwarves. The fact that they're the things everybody remembers from LOTR is a testament to the fact that lots of nerds are actually incredibly stupid.

Tolkien himself called LOTR a very Catholic work. See if that doesn't intrigue you.

Nah, not if you don't like that stuff. I'm sure there are better books about the nature of good and evil.

>I heard the books are pretty good as explorations of good vs evil.
Where'd you hear that? The villains are savage monsters with no characterization or redeeming qualities.

>>8410593
It is very good if you like a good storytelling, European culture, the beauty of language. It's good, fun, unpretentious and is not without depth

If you would you like
- An imaginary universe by someone who is actually versed in historical culture
- A story about surviving war from someone who survived WWI
- A story about simplicity overcoming rapacious greed (commentary on technology intended)
Then LoTR is for you.

I wish LoTR was more like prologue, which sort of reads like a colloquial historical document.

>>8412388
This.

>>8410593
If you don't like fantasy then no. Muh good n' evil is a theme that's done to death anyway.

>>8410774
They're both shit, just watch Game of Thrones and jerk off

The Lord of the Rings is actually interesting and well written. It makes great use of inverse dramatic irony, most character often know a lot more than the reader.

Also, the story is told from the perspective of the character that knows the less in the scene, a character that will have questions and things to learn about their own world while avoiding to ask about things the character already knows, thus avoiding the info dumps that are common in fantasy.

Besides it's comfy as fuck, it has the ability to suck you into middle earth.

Sorry if I'm a little confusing, english is not my first language.

>>8410593
Absolutely not. LotR is well liked for fantasy worldbuilding, and many pages are just descriptions. Good and evil are only there to advance the story. If you don't give a shit about high fantasy you will be alienated. Just watch the movies.

moldbug fan and occupy leader Justine Tunney wrote a blog post that she deleted like a week later on her site that is now down about how LOTR and its universe was in essence the national mythology of the Anglo-Saxons, having most of their legends lost over time, conquest, and religious purges

>>8412339

considering Europe was administrated by the church for as long as it was, it would be hard to name anything that wasn't, including protestant treatises, Tolkien might have been a Catholic, but that was clearly only as important as a source of faith in surviving the war and hope for the future: knowing protestant/calvinist history I could have been told he was a die hard calvinist and it would have probably meant even more

unless you're talking about the part where the hobbits made Hugenot barbeque at the end

>>8412339
This. Also it helps to consider that elves and dwarves being staples of fantasy as a genre is a result of the entire modern fantasy genre being bad knockoffs of Tolkien filtered through lore text blocks from D&D. It's one of those cases where the bad cliche swims upstream and taints the original work.

Tolkien's "fantasy races" are painstakingly crafted based on his lifelong research into the mythology and linguistics of various European cultures. LOTR could be thought of as a literary experiment to construct from one person's imagination an entire internally consistent mythology and world.

>>8410593
No, because I don't want to have to read the dumb-ass insults you'll post after you read it. If the genre doesn't interest you, leave it alone. It's great with or without you.

>>8410593
I had those book covers as a kid. Theyre now in tatters somewhere at my moms