The books don't exactly zip along.

t weeps over the benighted non-Tolkien lovers. Realizes that just leaves more for her. Stops weeping and prices another set of the Trilogy for lo, her copy has worn out.

I read the Hobbit and, while it was an entertaining story, the writing was pretty bad in my opinion. I couldn't get past the first chapter of the first LOTR books. I loved the movies though!

See, my Buffista card's in jeopardy because I'm a sports-- what's the opposite of afficianado? Yeah, that. Don't follow, don't like, don't care, no matter what your poison: baseball, football, soccer, basketball, Aussie football, track, field, cross-ountry, gymnastics, shot put, discus, cross-country or downhill skiing, snowshoeing, mountain biking, motorcross, Nascar (sorry, Cass!), Formula I, stickball, roller blading--don't care, don't play, don't watch. I occasionally follow ice skating, but since the rules change and aging out of familiar competitors, I lost interest. I'll watch surfing on tv, but come on, is that a sport or a pursuit? Rock climbing, ditto.

So, you know sports heretic.

And I love the LotR movies, but only managed to get through the books once, during a bedridden bout of pneumonia. H has been known to get his way by waving one of them at me in threat. I'm a huge sf-fantasy fan, and will watch a lot of SiFi (ptui!) movies and series that are...questionable in quality, just to get my otherworld fix.

So, we get some edges punched on our card and others never do get validated. 'S all good. Buffistas are exclusively inclusive like that.

Nascar (sorry, Cass!), Formula I,

Wrong order.

(x-post from Bitches)

Thanks for the thoughts, all. We're most worried about Marie. She's never been without Max before, and she was in the room when he was put to sleep. We thought it'd be less difficult for her than spending forever wondering when he'd come home.

She seems to be handling her grief fairly well, but it's hard to tell with a cat.

Good thoughts to you and yours, Fred.

I'm the wrong kind of geek for LOTR. Sports, too, really.(sorry Keith! But I try to pay attention for you.I could probably fool superficial fans at this point, cause I *do* know if some famous sports guy fucked up his thumb/asked for more bank/etc.) So, in BizzarroWorld, I could totally go Cosmo!Girl and pick up the one sporty guy looking for play that's not on the screen in a sports bar. At least, till he got off the guys I know and I'm all "No problem...USA...I don't understand." I'm way not hot enough for that. I AM the kind of geek that can identify fifty members of Congress and the ones that really put the *member* part in play most vividly.

There was a time when I reread The Trilogy (for, lo, there is only one true trilogy for me) every year, but I find it's better to wait a couple years between readings, because a couple of years of life experiences change it in subtle ways.

Tolkien has a very differently tuned "ear" for language that puts a fair number of readers off. It's consistent, it actually reads aloud very well (if you pronounce everything with the proper received British accent) and owes more to Chaucer and Beowulf than to Shakespeare and King James. It's not clumsy prose.

It's not clumsy prose.

I'd disagree (at least w/r/t the Hobbit) but, you know, different people like different things!