/lit/ - Literature

>>22182168
Tolkien's mythopoeic style pitting the forces of religious good and bad against each other in a conworld while recounting entire histories over centuries and creating his own words in his own languages is derived from the Book of Mormon by the way.

>>18109859
There is a lot to get out of it. It's not the most ideal prose and it's easy to miss the pearls for distracting details. You might get caught up on how funny the names are or how you can't suspend disbelief over this and that, and miss out completely on the fascinating theological, ethical, and political theory which is present throughout the book. It really dives deep into those sorts of things. Moreover, it has two other things going for it. First, It has a lot of very memorable moments. Unless you're a Mormon you might not appreciate how picturesque the Book of Mormon actually is because it's not obvious at a first glance, but to us it's like when people go over Bible stories and they are iconic to them. It also has a lot of catchy memorable verses and passages, again in common with the way the Bible has the same. It's a very quotable book, at least for Mormons. Second, it has a unique sensibility for the sublime. Maybe that's in keeping with the 19th century but it really is unique. For example, there's a point where a prophet has a vision of the whole history of the world in detail. In another circumstance, Jesus prays and speaks in words that are comprehended but impossible to express in words. Then some children do the same. That sort of stuff, where you're presented with this incompletely comprehensible sheer magnitude, is aesthetically very unique to the Book of Mormon, and to LDS scripture in general (it's found throughout the Doctrine and Covenants and Pearl of Great Price as well).

>>17962585
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/bc/content/shared/content/english/pdf/language-materials/35666_eng.pdf
You will understand most of the book just from this and it's way faster and more easily digestible (since it's originally for children).

>>17250195
Mormon artwork is really good, there's a real effort to portray things in a high art sense, it's not like those creepy kitschy paintings made by Shiites and Theosophists and so forth. Maybe I'm biased but it absolutely helps make the stories memorable.