Tolkien fans?

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In Lord of the rings is nearly everything which should be in a good story.
I think that Tolkien had to much ideas. He has not finished his world.
Many other writers could write a hole book or more with only a small part of the ideas from Tolkien.

I love the Lord of the Rings series I cannot wait till they release the Hobbit. I wonder if they are going to have the dragon Smog in it? . [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlSM8-35ZGc[/youtube]

I really like the books and first picked them up in fifth grade. I've never really liked the movies. I don't like Peter Jackson's interpretation.

Still haven't read the Hobbit.. The shame or sil or hurin it's terrible, did read lotr again 4 times back to back a few months back, (lost all my other books and pretty much everything else) so am currently still there in a way..
But generally love middle earth and all who dwell thither, the attention to detail and the marvelous mythology and indeed the etymology.

Films I enjoyed a great deal, helps me picture it because Tolkien's wordcraft is far superior to my own imagination.. But the inconsistencies will always slightly annoy me. I would happily have watched the 8 hour a movie version that Jackson might have made if trying to be 100% faithful.

I think they will pretty much have to. Smaug is a main character in the story, IMO. They can't exactly leave him out as they did Tom Bombadil and still be telling the same story.

Oh, just found a series of in-production video blogs:
The Hobbit - Production Video #1 |HD|

I'm not sure if I want to watch the hobbit movie.
I think I could lost my own imagination of the book or the places.
And I hate differences between movies and books.
So I want to wait first and watch the film later when I know if it is good or bad done.

There is another thing which I would recommend for Tolkien fans.
Do you know the computergame Medieval 2 Total war?
In the Internet there is a fantastic mod, with the name Third Age Total war.
On this mod you can play every fraction of the book and it is possibe to conquerer hole Middle-Earth.
When you like Tolkien and strategy Games, you must have this mod.
(there is also a unfinished mod for the first age)

For all Tolkienfans who only have read the trilogy or the Hobbit, I would recommendd first the Children of Hurin, because the other works of Tolkien are really difficult to read. You should get used to his style when you want to read the other stories of the first age.
(My prefered stories from the first age are The children of Hurin, and the fall of Gondolin)

Honestly the Hobbit is one of his best books, in some ways better than LOTR. The writing itself (I don't mean the plot or the story but the actual writing) is probably his best. I think maybe the title might have a not so apparent meaning to it; compared to pretty much everything else he ever did, it stands out as very modest, plain, down to earth, and straightforward, although fanciful and colourful nevertheless. Remind you of anything that starts with an H?

I own the Silmarillion but i have lots of trouble reading it because the letters are so small, but its been a long time since i tried, and now i have reading glasses :) Oh and i have the book of the Two Towers, but i never finished it because at that time i wasn't doing so good and i really never felt the need to read a book at that time, maybe i'll try to read it some time soon, seeing as i increased my book collections a lot and i'm completing series now and....sorry just rambled and got sidetracked

Raises hand. Middle Earth is one of my Special Interests.

I am possibly quite rare, as i was a child when the movies were being released but read the books before seeing them (at 13)

I would elaborate but my post would never end if i started talking about Tolkien.

Don't get me wrong, I'm almost certain I'd love it, I'm not avoiding it as such just I struggle with reading. Am hyperlexic but have a lot of difficulty focusing and so tend to put off reading anything for quite a while.
I'll likely kick myself but what else beginning with H? Confused

When I read the descriptions of the places of Tolkiens World, I had the feeling that this are places that could be also in your dreams.
I had the feeling that the places, and the stories are far, far away behind some fog, but they are familiar.
What are your favourite places in Tolkiens books?
For me, I like Tol Eressa, Gondolin and the realm of Hithlum. (from the Silmarillion).

Hobbits. The book itself is like one.

Oh I see lol
Was overthinking that one and missed the more obvious or what should have been anyway. fool of a took-fudo.

Oh gosh. My favorites? Hollin, Ithilien, and Wilderland west of Mirkwood as described in The Hobbit.

I love everything that Tolkien ever wrote. (I bet no one guessed that for any reason.) I agree that there is something very autistic about Tolkien. A lot of modern readers seem to assume that his writing and characters are cheap and shallow because so much of the action is external and plot-driven rather than internal and emotional, which isn't the way modern literary fiction is expected to work. Personally I think he was a master at crafting a compelling, internally consistent narrative as well as of piercingly beautiful and sad language.

I don't find his characters shallow at all, I just think they are understated enough that you have to really care about the story and be attuned to the use of language to understand them. I reread the trilogy every year, and am currently finishing The Return of the King. I genuinely find the descent of Denethor into madness to be one of the most dramatic, eloquent and subtle pieces of character development that I have ever read. It never fails to move me.

I don't like any of the movie adaptations, however. I didn't like what the writers did to the story and characters in the Peter Jackson version. I will be going to see The Hobbit when it comes out, partly out of my accursed curiosity to see in what ways they butcher the gospel of my childhood, and partly because I very much like some of the actors in it (Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Stephen Fry) and I'm hopeful that their talent might shine through despite PJ's ridiculous direction.

For all of you other Tolkien lovers, here is a lovely morsel I discovered today: a 1968 interview with Tolkien, recently released by the BBC. I love his voice and I think he seems like such a sweet old man.
http://good-report.com/5861/just-releas ... kien-video

Absolutely. I've heard that criticism often. It has become more and more common in modern literature for the writer to go into great detail describing each characters mental landscape when, in older works such as Tolkien's, the reader is meant to interpret that mental state from the character's actions or speech.

Now, it is perfectly okay for people to prefer a modern writing style. But this does not make Tolkien's style inferior, it simply requires more from the reader in order to the full effect.

As for the movie adaptations, I don't care for the plot changes. Though I do understand why some were made. Tom Bombadil, for instance. Incorporating him would have added hours to the movie without moving the plot forward. Still, that doesn't mean I wouldn't have liked to see him.

At the same time, visually they are an absolute treat. There is a definite Middle-Earthness to them. If you were to show me stills of the various sets, with no characters in view to give it away, I would still know it was LOTR. The Shire, Rivendell, Moria, Edoras, Minas Tirith, all beautifully realized.

I agree that for cinematic purposes it was necessary to cut some parts of the story, although I still think it compromises and imbalances the narrative because Tolkien so carefully crafted interludes like Tom Bombadil to build believability, character, and tone. For that reason I agree with Tolkien himself in that I don't think a film adaptation is truly appropriate for his works. Also, it rankles me that they cut parts of the original story with the excuse of limited time and then took up the time instead with their own silly Hollywood cliches, like the skirmish on the way to Helm's Deep with the warg-hyena-things; and that they completely inverted and killed the significance of characters like Faramir and Denethor. They're not writing for five year olds; they're adapting a classic trilogy which is already well-loved in its own right, so they didn't have to rewrite everything to accord with mainstream cinema's set-piece expectations.

I do agree with you about the non-character visuals. I would like to have Weta make me up an interactive 3-D Middle-earth minus Orlando Bloom and velvet muumuus, please.