Tolkein - fantastic or verbose?

[Pompey Bum]

there's something about the sound of bugles, the cavalry charge, the war cry, that moment when two battle lines meet, that just gives me the chills

The epic conflict between my tailbone and the theater seat is what impressed me the most.

Legolas jumping onto the Heffalump - sorry, Oliphant

Heh heh. Oh bother!

[mona amon]

I guess this version would have been kinder on the back parts - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yqVD0swvWU

[Pompey Bum]

Ah, much better. Mind you I love epic movies, but for them to work (for me) they need multidimensional characters and an outcome I care about. The only interesting character in Lord of the Rings was Gollum, and he was a total rilpoff of Uriah Heep.

[Jackson Richardson]

I find Gollum a deeply fascinating figure and ultimately tragic. Uriah Heep is Dickens' most obviously comic villain. I don't think there's much in common with them. The Dickensian parallel to Gollum I can see is with Miss Havisham - another self harming obsessive. An even better parallel for Gollum is Rudyard Kiplings' A Pict Song https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourc...%20we%20lyrics

[Sancho]

I read it as a teenager, or I should say I slogged through it, my reason being - hormones. A girl gave it to me and I was trying to, ahem, you know. I should give The Lord Of The Rings a fresh go. It didn't really take the first time (neither did the girl, she dumped me).

At any rate, has anybody here read Stephen King's Dark Tower saga? A few months ago, on a whim, I picked up the first book in the series, The Gunslinger, and burned through it. Then I was hooked, which is how addiction works - c'mon, man, you know you want it, the first one's free. I'm not kidding, download it for free at the airport. I guess the movie is coming out next year so they're drumming up interest.

Anyway the first book is pretty short, but he's just getting warmed up. They just keep getting fatter as you go along. By the seventh book, The Dark Tower, not to mix metaphors or anything but you've got a 500 pound gorilla on your back - it's over a thousand pages. I've gotta tell ya. Sometimes I think King writes faster than I read. I wanted to be done with it, but at the same time I wanted it to keep going on and on. And sorta it does. I had a fine time reading it.

Think I'll skip the movie, though.