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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3970 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 21, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It took me several attempts before I made it all the way through The Lord of the Rings. For a while I enjoyed reading other people writing about Lord of the Rings without having read it myself. I liked the idea of LOTR. I liked the themes, the analysis, the motives. But I didn't like the book itself.

I eventually read it through a book club type thing - someone was reading it for the first time and blogged about it one chapter a day. I read a chapter a day alongside the blogger and made it through, though it still felt like a slog. I got through it mostly because I still enjoyed reading other people's commentaries.

A few years later, I discovered the very best way of reading the books bar none. Find a park, garden, or other naturalish place. Walk around and listen to Phil Dragash's recording of the book. Listen to it early in the morning while you watch the sunrise on your front porch. Sip coffee or tea. Listen to it while performing whatever you consider a simple pleasure in life.

I think part of the problem is I want to get through a book. I only read 30-40 books a year, and sometimes wish I could skip the reading part and just know the details of the book. LOTR takes a long time to get through, and if your eyes are skipping ahead to the next plot point you are missing most of the experience of reading it. It's not a thriller. Audiobooks are the best medium for me when it comes to this kind of slow, experience based book. I know I'm going to "lose" X hours of time to it, I'm not trying to rush through. I can work it into a routine more easily.

The first time I read LOTR was just before the movies came out, and I read Fellowship whilst in the hospital with chest pains. Reading a story of four friends on a cross-country adventure was a real comfort at the time.

(I had been trying to impress a friend by swallowing air to burp, but one painful gulp never yielded a belch. Within an hour I had chest pains. I had torn a tiny hole in my esophagus and the air was in my interstitial chest cavity, nearly collapsed a lung.)

I had seen the Rankin-Bass Return of the King and The Hobbit, so I knew how it ended but not how it began. It wasn’t until around 2008 when I saw Ralph Bakshi’s LOTR, which was just Fellowship and Two Towers.

I think part of the problem is I want to get through a book. I only read 30-40 books a year, and sometimes wish I could skip the reading part and just know the details of the book. LOTR takes a long time to get through, and if your eyes are skipping ahead to the next plot point you are missing most of the experience of reading it. It's not a thriller. Audiobooks are the best medium for me when it comes to this kind of slow, experience based book. I know I'm going to "lose" X hours of time to it, I'm not trying to rush through. I can work it into a routine more easily.

This is extremely similar to my own experience with reading in general. And I'll definitely have to give the Phil Dragash audio a try, thanks for the recommendation.

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