ITT: Post your unpopular opinions

[Anonymous No.4597337]

I think this is the absolute most retardedly overrated series of books in existence.

[Anonymous No.4597348]

>>4597337
FUCKING FINALLY

I agree OP. Fuck hobbits and fuck 3rd breakfast

[Anonymous No.4597353]

>>4597337
The Hobbit was very, very meh. The LOTR trilogy is like the Beatles, decent, by no means bad but totally overrated.
Literally entire pages are elvish songs that provide little to no meaning to the story other than briefly mentioning locations and lore

[Anonymous No.4597354]

I think that Nietzsche isn't as 2deep4you as many make him out to be. In plenty of passages he's literally just taking about "physiology" or "psychology". He's just like, a dumber Freud.

[Anonymous No.4597356]

>>4597337
I agree with you and still think it's quite a fine novel.

[Anonymous No.4597357]

As a guy who, for a good 5 years of his life, was thoroughly obsessed with everything Tolkien wrote (I religiously studied everything published under his name), I have to agree.

LOTR is the archetype of fantasy—and arguably the best fantasy series ever written—but its prose is pretty "second-rate" as some have called it.

Yeah, it's overrated. I still love it to death, though. Mainly for the memories I have of reading it as a kid.

[Anonymous No.4597367]

Camus is distasteful, the Stranger sucked, and I'm not a fan of Hesse much. Siddhartha was eh.

I also can't get into LOTR also.

[Anonymous No.4597376]

>>4597356
>>4597357
Remember, "overrated" doesn't necessarily mean bad, but that's not to say it's never bad.
I'm fucking sick of people calling the books "perfect" as if they're all versed in literature and shit and not being able to read works by someone like Joyce because it's "too boring" or some shit. Fuck.

[Anonymous No.4597377]

>>4597367
>I also can't get into LOTR also.
Welp, time to go to sleep.

[Anonymous No.4597394]

>>4597337
Don't you mean.

ITT: POST YOUR EXTREMLY EXAGGERATED OPINIONS

>I think this is the absolute most retardedly overrated series of books in existence.
Your exaggeration is retarded.

[Anonymous No.4597401]

>>4597394
It's my opinion, I don't think there's any series of books so overrated.

[Anonymous No.4597410]

>>4597376
Joyce is overrated in est you like him more than I do so I'm going to invalidate your tremendous joy in his work by using a term that implies something more than opinion.

[Anonymous No.4597411]

>>4597401
Harry Potter.

[Anonymous No.4597425]

>>4597411
It's a decent children's series of books. LOTR is intended for more "mature" readers, and it is very overrated by said "mature" readers
>>4597410
I was just using Joyce as an example.

[Anonymous No.4597431]

>>4597425
there's no denying it's influence

[Anonymous No.4597436]

>>4597401
And I'm saying your opinion is exaggerated

[Anonymous No.4597440]

>>4597425
LOTR was just a writer having fun, and a lot of people thought what he did was fantastic, mainly the dedication he put into fleshing out his world. There's nothing "immature" about that.

It doesn't matter what example you use, "overrated" is a shit word, it's like "pseudo-intellectual". "Overrated" explicitly doesn't have to do with your tastes, it has to do with criticizing other people's' taste; you are criticizing someone for enjoying something "too much"; that's fucking retarded, dawg. The whole point of reading is pleasure.

[Anonymous No.4597444]

>>4597367
Being honest, I read Siddhartha in German and enjoyed the read. I liked his way of constructing long phrases without being verbose, always being apt in description rather than unnecessarily tiring. The story is his take on the Western philosophy which greatly influenced, so I guess there isn't much room for debate on that, you either agree with and/or have profound interest for it or you don't know/don't care/don't agree and thus don't like it. I just liked his presentation of it.

[Anonymous No.4597447]

Yeah OP either that or... No, it's that.

[Anonymous No.4597455]

>>4597436
And I'm not OP and pointing out you have no counter-point and are just a pissed off autist that your little sperg books are not that great and loved by people who have probably never read almost anything else

[Anonymous No.4597466]

>>4597440
You can't look at something that is clearly flawed and clearly "just a writer having fun" objectively and say it's perfect, and too many people say that.

[Anonymous No.4597471]

>>4597455
Your point is a complete assumption. You have no idea what my opinion on LOTR is, I just gave my opinion that the op's opinion is exaggerated for what I believe to be shock value.

If he were to say The Da Vinci Code is the absolute most retarder book he/she has ever read I would say I too have that opinion.

To be very anal, there are thousands of series the op hasn't read, so his statement is retarded in that sense as well.

I'm a little pissed because I hate exaggeration with works of literature. I don't mind LOTR but I don't think it's godly.

>are not that great and loved by people who have probably never read almost anything else
The irony of that is the op probably hasn't read much.

[Anonymous No.4597472]

>>4597466
The Iliad has an instance of a killed off character reappearing again.

[Anonymous No.4597475]

>>4597466
They're exaggerating when they say perfect, they don't really mean it. You can find flaws in anything pretty much.

[Anonymous No.4597476]

>>4597472
The Iliad is pretty overrated too, in the same regard

[Anonymous No.4597484]

>>4597476
I don't think so; the character is minor, and fixing the plot inconsistency wouldn't improve enjoyment tremendously.

Now, would you consider those repetitious meter-fillers that Homers uses, to be flawed?

[Anonymous No.4597496]

>>4597354

>Freud
>not being a worse version of Nietzsche with some Schopenhauer for the lols

hue

[Anonymous No.4597507]

>>4597337
how is this unpopular opinion? I tought we had a common consensus that LotR is piece of shit-literature placed in ingenious world

[Anonymous No.4597512]

The vast majority of classic literature is nothing special. It may have been groundbreaking 300 years ago and therefore have historical significance, but other than that it's usually pretty standard.

[Anonymous No.4597515]

>>4597512
I'm glad someone else agrees there, literature should be good on its own, it shouldn't be seen as good just because it influenced other literature or something

[Anonymous No.4597541]

>>4597507
>piece of shit-literature
I'm surrounded by exaggerations!

Cmon man. Sure the prose arn't god-tier and Tolien isn't good at all with creating tension but shit-literature? nah.

[Anonymous No.4597556]

From the classics I have read. They're mostly boring and bland. Classics tend to have lot's of uninteresting dialogue, characters rarely say interesting things, the dialogue is more used to push the plot along.

People seemed to have lived boring lives if classics are a representation of that. (Sure there are exceptions). Ball parties are boring as hell, dining parties are boring as hell, aristocrats had boring lives. Exciting prose in classics is hard to find.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is ok. Lord Henry Wotton mostly talks shit. The sexism in the book at times through Wotton's opinions is ridiculous and hasn't aged.

[Anonymous No.4597566]

The popular opinion is that high fantasy means there are a lot of wizards and dragons and low fantasy means that there are no magic swords, only a handful of wizards, and the dragons went extinct a long time ago when a large asteroid struck the earth and the age of mammals began. This is also the TVTropes opinion and carries as much weight as the TVTropes definition of "deconstruction."

I prefer the Wikipedia opinion.

High Fantasy means fantasy set in a secondary world and which thus invokes the concept which the fantasist J. R. R. Tolkien coined "secondary belief" rather than suspension of disbelief as the means by which it interacts with readers. It does not try to convince the reader that they could run into Ged in the streets of New York ("He," by H. P. Lovecraft) or find his bones buried in a barrow in the land of the Geats ("Beowulf," unknown), but rather to allow them to believe in Ged in Earthsea; that Ged's magic defies real physics is not at issue because neither physics nor reality are challenged in the first place.

Low Fantasy refers to fantasy which is usually set within the primary world, but the setting is not the true definition, which is that it takes steps to ensure that existing disbelief can be properly suspended, as secondary belief becomes either impossible or worth nothing. The attempt to convince the reader to suspend said disbelief is sometimes central to the story, in which case the reader's suspension of disbelief is only taken for granted by the author at the story's climax after a significant buildup justifying it; allowing the reader for a moment (but only a moment) to believe that Cthulhu really does lurk beneath the waves and reach some artists and psychics in their dreams, or that in the farm country of western New England a meteorite bearing a great and terrible Something once struck where a new reservoir now sits, and that some portion of it may yet remain. If attempted through Tolkien's "secondary belief" and the mode of High Fantasy such stories can become worthless, because their purpose is to induce a reaction which can only be gained once disbelief has been suspended; Lovecraft found (through trial and error) that he reached the sense of "adventurous expectancy" which he sought if he could will himself into believing in a suspension of the laws of reality as a real possibility, though it was not possible for him to suspend his disbelief for longer than it took to read a story.

It is for this reason that the aliens of Independence Day are not frightening but the aliens of the early seasons of The X-Files were; the X-Files, when done well, could cause a sufficiently willing viewer to suspend disbelief, but Independence Day relied on the secondary belief that in a world where computers were invented with Roswell tech, a Macintosh could hack an alien mothership. One is an excellent Low Fantasy which turned into a poor High Fantasy, and the other is a poor High Fantasy through and through.

[Anonymous No.4598096]

>>4597512
>>4597515
These two.

[Anonymous No.4598124]

Sure is samefag itt.

[Anonymous No.4598136]

>>4598124
Sure is gay-ass art in this post.

[Anonymous No.4598228]

ITT we pretend that /lit/ is our blog.

[Anonymous No.4598344]

I am not American, but I have a strong preference for American writers.
They tend to be more concise in their writing style.
A sweeping generalisation, I know.

[Anonymous No.4598368]

>>4598228
keki

[Anonymous No.4598390]

>>4598344
>A sweeping generalisation, I know.
It isn't really. Entirely anecdotal, but I've found Japanese lit with ties to english speaking (mostly american) authors is much easier to read from a narrative standpoint in comparison to the more native style of writing. It's much more concise, as you said.

[Anonymous No.4598415]

The vast majority of "continental philosophy" (excluding some things like phenomenology) is bullshit. Especially the "post-" shit and anything founded in psychoanalysis. I get an uncontrollable urge to vomit when I see someone taking Derrida or Lacan seriously.

[Anonymous No.4598452]

>>4598415
How does it feel to know that, as the tribune of the plebs, no Roman may harm your person?

[Anonymous No.4598456]

>>4598415
The vast majority of which you've you've read? In fact, you are ignorant. To me Derrida was pretty good, Lacan meaningless. But both would find you a simple emetophobe, anon. They would be correct.

[Anonymous No.4598509]

i love ASoIaF and cant fucking wait for book 6
though if George keeps writing after book 7 i will be disappointed

reading non-fiction seems pointless to me

james patterson books are good... for doorstops. and raiding my computer monitor

dean kuntz is a good author

radiohead's best album isnt OK Computer

[Anonymous No.4598539]

>>4598452
Your comment is hilarious and well-taken.

>>4598456
I could qualify and say I'm well-read in the canonical figures and follow current developments in the field but I'm sure I wouldn't change your opinion of me.

[Anonymous No.4598546]

I think /lit/'s counter-cultural Christianity is getting out of hand. Pretending to believe in spirituality and a God doesn't make you deep or intuitive, it makes you a douchebag. I'm an atheist, and I understand that many other atheists are tools, but I don't pretend to believe in God just because Richard Dawkins and his friends are repulsive; I just don't listen to him. Buying into Jesuit Philosophy, or the arguments of Aquinas, or Kiekegaard or Kant doesn't make you contemplative and "ahead of the curve", it makes you a hipster.

There's nothing wrong with being Christian, as long as you're actually Christian. Not just pretending to be to "defend civilization" or to be artistic or something.

[Anonymous No.4598584]

>>4598546
I think I like you

[Anonymous No.4598614]

Writing long books means one of the two: either the writer is unable to write well (and drowns anything of worth in loads of crap) or he is pretentious (and drowns anything of worth in loads of crap). This, of course, does not apply to escapist literature.

Dostoyevsky is one of the better examples. A few worthwhile ideas in a sea of shit.

Borges knew what's up, good for him.

[Anonymous No.4598619]

>>4598509
Obviously it's Kid a (amnesiac is also acceptable) hello from /mu/ by the way

[Anonymous No.4598703]

>>4598546

>I'm an atheist, and I understand that many other atheists are tools

You're one of them if you think people are just pretending to be Christian.

[Anonymous No.4598757]

>>4598703
People who misuse the term "edgy", force fedora and other shit memes and think they're the hottest shit since sliced bread are definitely pretending.

[Anonymous No.4598764]

>>4598757

How does any of that make you think they're pretending?

[Anonymous No.4598783]

Art/books should have a coherent underlying point that the author could express in one sentence if he wanted to. The reason he conveys it in art instead is that, if he were to simply say that sentence, he would only be giving you the tip of the "pyramid" that appears in his mind when he imagines the underlying point. The idea of art is to simulate or communicate the thousands of other blocks, the ones that make up the successive bases that the point sits on, that are actually the majority of the point itself and part of it. A lot of this has to go deep into the unconscious, past polished verbal expression or intentional logic, into expressions and concepts people may share but not be able to articulate as a species yet. The idea of art is to take the one person lucky enough to construct his own pyramid to a given higher expression of the human condition and show others how to build it, hands-on.

[Anonymous No.4598822]

>>4598703
>Talk to Christians on /lit/
>"Well I don't actually, physically believe in the Resurrection or afterlife"
>"A lot of the Gospel may not be true, but it's more about the message than anything else. A lot of it is just morality stories"
>"Well I don't actually believe that the Church should be the only ones allowed to interpret scripture"
>"I know that Jesus said that violence is always wrong, but, c'mon..."
>"Well I don't actually go to Church, but..."

[Anonymous No.4598830]

>>4598764
because nobody can be that stupid

[Anonymous No.4599801]

>>4598757
Posts like this are cognitive dissonace central imo. They help repress an undesired idea. That or the person has a 2 digit IQ. Huehue

[Anonymous No.4599916]

>>4597337
wrong op its the harry potter series

[Anonymous No.4599927]

>>4598822
I know there are people like that on /lit/, but there can't be MANY of them, right?

That's not Christianity, that's just trolling.

Please tell me there aren't many of them.

pls

[Anonymous No.4599940]

>>4599927

Make troll thread about how philosophy is dead and science can explain everything and you must get down on your knees and worship Francis Bacon, even greater than Charles Darwin etc., and you will see these hilarious knights of Christ troop forth from the nooks and crannies to defend their miserable positions.

Just kidding, don't do this at all. it happens way too often.

[Anonymous No.4600133]

I think all books opposing and marginalising Jehovah's witnesses sacred dogma should be burned and forgotten.

[Anonymous No.4600302]

>>4597556
You seem to be making a confusion between "classics" and "books written in the nineteenth century". The epics of the antiquity tend to have some pretty crazy shit. Call that exaggerated, or retarded, or overdone if you will, but boring certainly not. Isuggest you read more of older books, they're not all about aristocratic ball parties, far from that.

[Anonymous No.4600392]

>>4599940
No, I understand that kind of trolling.

It's just that I am a Christian, a REAL Christian. Go to Mass every single Sunday, every major feast day, every holy day of obligation. I have a certain level of contempt for pretenders, though I won't say I despise them.

[FiRez !!tndrCZJHE+I No.4600432]

I think Ayn Rand wrote interesting and motivating stories in a superb prose.

If philosophy is dead, absurdism killed it.

[Anonymous No.4600455]

>>4600432
>superb prose

[Anonymous No.4600503]

>>4597337
I think serious literature is just entertainment for people who enjoy analysis and got bored with easy novels. Not to say it doesn't have real benefits; people who read and interpret literature seem to be better critical thinkers and more conscientious in general, but I don't think people, especially people on /lit/, read because of those benefits, I think they read literature and philosophy because they enjoy it. It's entertainment for people who take themselves too seriously to be comfortable being entertained by vidyas and TV.

It's like the biochemist who makes a six figure salary and gives you shit for your poor life choices, when he only went into that field because he enjoyed it and was good at it.

I think literary types read because they like reading and are good at it, and that doesn't make them any better than someone who likes skateboarding or playing guitar and is good at it.

[Anonymous No.4600522]

>>4600503
why skateboarders and guitar plebs have to be good at it if your whole premise is based upon enjoying it.

[Anonymous No.4601061]

>>4597496
idiot

[Anonymous No.4601111]

>>4600522
It doesn't have to be amazing skill, just relative to their own other interests. Someone may not be a great skateboarder, even compared to their other friends, but they're better at it then math, art, and music, and just as good at literature, but they enjoy skateboarding and not literature so pursue the former.

And I'm not saying this to piss on people who like literature. People are cocky and obnoxious in every hobby. A skateboarder is as likely to dismiss readers as nerds as a reader is to dismiss skateboarders as plebs.

The issue I have is that you can have a completely reasonable skateboarder and a completely reasonable reader, neither of them are cocky douche bags, but the reader is automatically thought better than the skateboarder when they both only pursued subjects that interested them.

[Anonymous No.4601182]

Kvothe isn't a Gary Stu in any way, shape, or form.

[Anonymous No.4601884]

>>4601182
But this is objectively true. By the time I reached the second book, rothfuss was just hammering it in.

[Anonymous No.4601927]

Philosophy is dead. It was made obsolete by science.

[Anonymous No.4601963]

>>4601927
Philosophy is the basis of science.

[Anonymous No.4601965]

>>4597411
To be overraped, HP would've to be considered classic, rather than children's literature, and for it to be considered good after book 3.

Neither is the case. If anything, it's underrated. No, it's not the second coming of Christ. But apart from OotP, the books maintain decent entertainment value, even if character development takes a massive dive after PoA.

[Anonymous No.4601968]

>>4597337
Agreed, I enjoyed the books but they were definitely flawed. And no where near as good as they are praised. Also Hobbit > LotR

[Anonymous No.4601973]

>>4601963
Science is applied intelligence and doesn't need philosophy.

[Anonymous No.4601974]

The Illiad and the Bible with their adapted-from-oral-tradition style of ludicrous blandness and eternal repetition suited for memorisation to maintain an oral tradition, but terrible to read.

It's fine to consider them influential. They were, massively so. But we've moved on, and they're no more 'Great' than neolithic stone tools are 'Great'. They pale in comparison to modernity.

[Anonymous No.4601975]

>>4601973
>"Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument."

Sounds a lot like the fundamental ideas of science to me.

[Anonymous No.4601999]

>>4601884
No, not really.

Kvothe doesn't have the universe prove him right at every turn, you know, like an actual Gary-Stu does. Just because a character is intelligent and attractive and somewhat remarkable doesn't mean that's he's a Gary-Stu.

[Anonymous No.4602006]

Everything Douglas Adams wrote was trying-to-be-funny shit. I was thrilled to hear of his death.

Terry Pratchett is also a bad writer, as is his buttboy Neil Gaiman.

[Anonymous No.4602012]

>>4601999
I was agreeing. I've talked to less literary types and they couldn't see any of that. Nor could they pick up on the fact that that he is a self-admitted fabricator and embellisher of tales and on the meta-level, comes from a long line of unreliable narrators.

By the second book, he was practically screaming with contradictions and omissions. The worst he is guilty of is being Holden Caulfield.

[Anonymous No.4602016]

>>4597337
Bilbo is a story about a botched heist that maybe Tarantino could save.
Lord of the Rings is an inverted fetch-quest.

But the reason that both books are totally unplausible are pretty mundane.

Middle-Earth is supposed to be old and everything. But the various countries (or whatever) are like isolated islands. It is not like every settlement expanded until the borders connected or something. The hobbits of Shire have a really advanced society with postal service and everything. So unless their culture is autochton, they must have been influenced from somewhere.

Everyone is oblivious to violence. Disregarding the goblins, orks and uruk-hais, no one has the potential to violence within. It is something bad people do or something that men has to do against the bad people - never for personal gain! Let's say that Sauron decided to not use those worhtless snorting ghosts in hoods on horseback, but decided to send a mercenary company (as if there are any in Middle-Earth, lel) to raid Shire. (He had like 60 years to plot and plan). Of course it would be a bad thing. But the surviving hobbits would probably be more amazed by the concept of mercenaries.

And the tempting power of the ring is plain stupid. It is not the power of invisibility in itself that is tempting (as any good and unique tool would be). But it is the mindfuck it exerts.

There's plenty of gold, but there's no concept of money, currency, credits, debts and book keping.

[Anonymous No.4602023]

>>4601975
Philosophy is just shit flinging over untestable and irrelevant opinions. There is no "systematic approach".

[Anonymous No.4602025]

>>4602012
Oh shit, my bad dude.

[Anonymous No.4602046]

>>4602025
It's good. I'm just glad someone else gets it on the level it was written. Usually when all the shortcomings come up, there's only a few that are really valid and mary-sue kvothe isn't one of them.

[Anonymous No.4602074]

>>4597512
>The vast majority of classic literature is nothing special. It may have been groundbreaking 300 years ago and therefore have historical significance, but other than that it's usually pretty standard.

I could not agree harder. I've been disappointed so many times by 'classic' books, 'classic' albums (music), 'classic' movies that it is pig disgusting and if someone tries to market/review/put value to something by saying 'it's a classic' it is goddamn nearly sure way to make me go 180 degree in my decision to buy/read it.

[Anonymous No.4602407]

>>4597337
Is LotR even rated that highly? Sure, it's popular,but who rates it as a great work of literature?

[Anonymous No.4602447]

>>4602407

OP doesn't mean "LotR receives critical esteem and I resent that", because LotR doesn't receive critical esteem. Even within the context of fantasy, it's not as if it swept all the awards or anything - there were no notable awards in fantasy at the time. It's an unusual book in that all the vast success it has enjoyed is due to word-of-mouth from the people who like it. This is probably also the reason why liking it became associated with "nerdy" - read socially reclusive - behavior.

[Anonymous No.4602451]

>>4602447

So what OP means is that "nerds like LotR and I resent nerds"?

[Anonymous No.4602461]

>>4602447
I don't understand this how is LOTR not critically esteemed. This is a serious question, what makes a work critically acclaimed? and who are good reviewers for critically acclaimed works? Like, where would I go if I wanted a unbiased, educated view, on a book?

[Anonymous No.4602481]

>>4602023
Listen here nignog we can even go as far back to as basic shit the motherfucking Socrating method to provide evidence that philosophy uses systematic approaches. If anything most researchers, especially bio cunts, literally just fuck around until they find something. A family member of mine won his nobel in medicine and I know that he got it because for a solid decade his method was pretty much, "lol let's fuck with genes and make this animal glow"

[Anonymous No.4602486]

>>4602461

>This is a serious question, what makes a work critically acclaimed?

Critics acclaim it.

>and who are good reviewers for critically acclaimed works?

Why, whichever reviewer agrees with your opinions, so that you can post his review on /lit/ as if it were the word of god and dare anyone to disagree with you, of course!

>Like, where would I go if I wanted a unbiased, educated view, on a book?

No such thing obviously, you will have to settle for just "educated". Read Harold Bloom, he is basically babby's first literary critic. Better yet, read books yourself and become educated and unbiased. Have fun.

[Anonymous No.4602526]

no one cares about your regular opinions so why do you all insist on sharing your unpopular opinions?

[Anonymous No.4602532]

>>4597337
I could never finish the lotr, I found it so painfully boring

[Anonymous No.4602542]

>>4602486
I guess I believe there should be a standard that says, This is good literature, and this isn't. I think there is a difference between something being good, and something being popular.

I just have a hard time knowing what that standard is?

[Anonymous No.4602554]

>>4602542

There exists such a standard, but it only exists only insofar as you can decide what is good and what is not and make other people take your decision seriously. Popular, good, critically acclaimed -- these are not synonyms and you should be careful about people using them as if they were.

[Anonymous No.4602563]

I don't think Robinson Crusoe is racist

[Anonymous No.4602682]

>>4602006
>I was thrilled to hear of his death

>being happy that someone died just because they wrote books you didn't like

Grow up, kid.

[Anonymous No.4602692]

>>4602554
so i guess, in a sense, what makes a book good is what i can pull out of it, what I learn from it.

[Anonymous No.4602915]

>>4602016
It amazes me how people can praise high fantasy or sci fi works like this for having well thought out and constructed worlds when you can tell through a cursory reading that the author hasn't thought through how the economy or political economy of their world works.

[Anonymous No.4602923]

>>4597337

That's not the bible.

[Anonymous No.4602931]

>>4597566
Good point. So shouldn't there be two axises. One for high-low and the other for fantastic-mundane.

[Anonymous No.4602941]

>>4602915

I don't think you really get the idea of "world-building". The Lord of the Rings is not intended to provide a realistic depiction of a non-existent world. It's a myth from a non-existent world. Nobody in Beowulf stops to think about medieval Scandinavian economics because the economics aren't the point, the story is about clashes of values. Which is also what The Lord of the Rings is about.

[Anonymous No.4603071]

>>4602915
Doesn't have to be bad per se. Theres little talk about money in Lovecraft's prose. And that is nothing different from his contemporaries. Money was yet to be an issue to discussed in literature.

Yeah, his fiction piggybacked on our world. But you can make a fetch-quest where the adventurers are travelling to some desolate place where economy doesn't really matter.

[Anonymous No.4603075]

>>4602941
Good point, but Shire is basically some ideal England grafted to some other world. With a postal system.

[Anonymous No.4603295]

>>4602016
> Middle-Earth is supposed to be old and everything. But the various countries (or whatever) are like isolated islands. It is not like every settlement expanded until the borders connected or something. The hobbits of Shire have a really advanced society with postal service and everything. So unless their culture is autochton, they must have been influenced from somewhere.

The Hobbits of the Shire are the only mystery. The Silmarillion does, in fact, detail the expansion and migration of other civilizations.

> Everyone is oblivious to violence. Disregarding the goblins, orks and uruk-hais, no one has the potential to violence within. It is something bad people do or something that men has to do against the bad people - never for personal gain! Let's say that Sauron decided to not use those worhtless snorting ghosts in hoods on horseback, but decided to send a mercenary company (as if there are any in Middle-Earth, lel) to raid Shire. (He had like 60 years to plot and plan). Of course it would be a bad thing. But the surviving hobbits would probably be more amazed by the concept of mercenaries.

Well that's just plainly bullshit, even among Hobbits. Bilbo's Took grandfather (I think) was a warrior, and the Noldor among the elves were war-like in the days of old. Feanor butchered hundreds of Teleri simply because he needed their boats to make his journey to Middle-earth.

> And the tempting power of the ring is plain stupid. It is not the power of invisibility in itself that is tempting (as any good and unique tool would be). But it is the mindfuck it exerts.

The Ring is more than an invisibility tool.

>There's plenty of gold, but there's no concept of money, currency, credits, debts and book keping

Or there is but it was so unimportant to the narrative that Tolkien felt no reason to show it?

[Anonymous No.4603322]

>>4597353
If you dont like lore then gtfo :/

Seriously you have to love lore to have lotr as your favorite books. I do.

Also tolkein is a great writer, the two towers (books 3 and 4) are amazing if you read the previous two books

[Anonymous No.4605082]

>>4603295
>The Hobbits of the Shire are the only mystery. The Silmarillion does, in fact, detail the expansion and migration of other civilizations.
Thanks! But does it explain the mysterious empty spaces between the kingdoms during the time of Bilbo-LotR?

>Well that's just plainly bullshit, even among Hobbits. Bilbo's Took grandfather (I think) was a warrior, and the Noldor among the elves were war-like in the days of old. Feanor butchered hundreds of Teleri simply because he needed their boats to make his journey to Middle-earth.
The key phrase here is "days of old". It's like the violence exercised by their relatives could as well be exercised by fairy tale characters. Something funny to crack jokes about. Nothing that has any relevance for people that has until of now, stayed at home all their lives. Of course the end of the spear doesn't care about if the wielder is experienced nor a newbie, honorable nor a craven. But it's beyond hilarious that a bunch of short peasants that don't even wield slings (a common shepherd weapon) got these mysterious warrior skills once they leave home.

>The Ring is more than an invisibility tool.
True. But it's such a cheap plot device that externalizes evil for the sake of convenience.

>Or there is but it was so unimportant to the narrative that Tolkien felt no reason to show it?
True. So we have a mountain kingdom of gold hogging dorfs. Everyone wants their gold, but no one really wants it. Because let's assume that the crops have been bad and the dorfs has to buy lots of food. That would cause an inflation. Because the gold didn't back any currency. For all practical economic reasons, the gold could've stayed unmined.

And if we assume that the neighbours are jealous of the gold, we can assume that they seek wealth elsewhere. Trading with goods. Trading with information and so on.

Of course this is uninteresting for a hoary tale of adventure. But wealth can't be pegged to one and only one factor. Going to war because of unpaid debts is a valid casus belli. Everything isn't about muh grand fathers honor and so on. Business is business.

So given all the meta and conceit LotR, it really raises the question of how Middle Earth *really* was.

[Anonymous No.4605569]

>>4605082

>But it's beyond hilarious that a bunch of short peasants that don't even wield slings (a common shepherd weapon) got these mysterious warrior skills once they leave home.

Boromir taught them how to fight and Tolkien mentioned that the Hobbits were especially skilled in throwing stones multiple times.

[Anonymous No.4605632]

>>4598368
>>>/b/

[Anonymous No.4605648]

>>4601975
It is fundamental, but you still aren't disproving the fact that science makes a significant portion of philosophy unneeded.

[Anonymous No.4605667]

>>4602526
>no one cares about your regular opinions so why do you all insist on sharing your unpopular opinions?
I think the people here who want to fit in with the /lit/ secret club care.

[Anonymous No.4606750]

>>4597353
Literally 80% of the first half of The Fellowship of the Ring is just about Hobbits everyday lives, which are as entertaining as watching a tomato decaying.

[Anonymous No.4606753]

>>4597356
I think everybody here agrees that The Silmarillion>LOTR saga>The Hobbit.

[Anonymous No.4608230]

>>4602016
>no one has the potential to violence within
>it's something bad people do
Is this about the Kinslayings, the Kin Strife of Gondor, or Rohan and Dunland? There were extenuating circumstances. Maedhros at least demonstrably isn't evil, I don't care what Tumblr commentators say.

>mercenary company to raid the Shire
Jackson was right to exclude the Scouring, get over it.

>>4605082
>such a cheap plot device that externalizes evil for the sake of convenience
The Ring externalizes most of a character's inner desires regardless of the actual evil involved, such as Sam's desire to be as one of the great Elvish heroes of the First Age and his desire to have the orc barracks emptied, just as he desired to understand when Gorbag and Shagrat were speaking in the Black Speech. Sure, dominating through fear and exploiting pre-existing hatred are the uses of magic Morgoth was condemned for in the Osanwe Kenta, but Sam was as guilty as the Ring. The Ring even fulfills its promises; the Ring of Flame Sam saw in his mind's eye affirmed Frodo's curse, when he said that if Gollum tried to steal the Ring then Gollum would be cast into the fire himself. Keeping promises isn't evil unless you're a Noldor. The externalization of evil is a real attribute of the Ring, and the Ring's evil is more direct and demonstrable than, say, the ring of Gyges, but its use as a plot device is paid for far in advance (as in the case of Frodo's curse) or with great subtlety (Sam's use of the art of Osanwe is too subtle even for Sam himself to notice, seeing it as fortune or some power of languages just as he saw Galadriel's ring as "a star shining through your hand"). I don't see the Ring's evil as a matter of eagle-like convenience; Tolkien managed to make characters evil or get tempted by evil just fine without it.

>no concept of money
>they seek wealth elsewhere. Trading with goods.
Yes, the men of Esgaroth do trade goods even with the mysterious hidden folk of Mirkwood, such as barrels of wine, both up and down the riverway; they are able to do so because the river is very placid and has neither significant rapids nor waterfalls. This is in The Hobbit itself, a tale of adventure if ever there was one, and is used in a way which does not detract from the adventurous nature of the work. Tolkien attempted some similar things in his first dozen drafts of Fellowship, when his main characters' driving concern was that Bilbo had lost all his wealth and he or his heir (then named Bingo) were faced with hard times ahead, and Bingo's coin purse was to be a very finite resource. Bingo's desire to follow Bilbo's footsteps because he didn't like working as a carpenter and thought an adventure was a good way to get rich quick was a horrible idea and I am glad Tolkien discarded it, though perhaps he threw the baby out with the bathwater on a couple of those revisions.

>Going to war because of unpaid debts is a valid casus belli
Stop trying to justify the First Sack of Doriath.

[Anonymous No.4608233]

>>4606750
That's literally my favorite part of the whole series.

[Anonymous No.4608276]

>>4608230

>Jackson was right to exclude the Scouring, get over it.

No, fuck off. Actually don't do that, good post apart from this. Without the Scouring of the Shire, LotR ends on a note of dippy fairy-tale bullshit. The fact that the Shire has become tainted by the war is simply a no-brainer, it is a completely unprotected enclave that is known to stronger, imperialistic powers. The extent to which the society of the Shire has been subverted is a reminder that war does not mean just sword fights with orcs, about whose opinions nobody ever cares: real people are on the receiving end of military conflict, not even soldiers looking for a fight but people and cultures who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

More than that, excluding it from the story entire reflects the totality of Jackson's misreading of LotR: namely that it would make some great action movies. For Jackson, once Aragorn has been crowned again, it's all downhill from there. Aragorn is The Hero, after all, so what does it matter what happens after Frodo gets home? After all, the Bad Guy got blown up and the Good Guy got made king, right?

Even Tolkien wasn't dumb enough to buy into this monarchistic/messianic delusion. Nor did he forget that a "genuine" epic originating from Frodo Baggins of the Shire would have some diegetic consciousness of the real difficulty that war brings.

[Anonymous No.4608368]

>>4597444
I disagree, only because then I couldn't call the twilight books overrated. anyone that enjoyed that series truly is mentally handicapped

[Anonymous No.4608392]

>>4597353
>beatles
>overrated

jesus fucking christ

[Anonymous No.4608400]

>>4608392

[Anonymous No.4608428]

>>4608392
The fact that...

[Anonymous No.4608482]

>>4598509
>reading non-fiction seems pointless to me
Really? After making my way through a few mediocre/boring novels recently, I've concluded that nonfiction is a better investment of my time. Even if a nonfiction history/science/philosophy book is boring or flawed, at least it teaches you something. On the other hand, if you finish a boring novel, you've learned nothing so it's a complete waste of time.

I say this after finishing Inherent Vice (apart from some great dialogue here and there, didn't like it that much), giving up on American Pastoral (beautiful prose, but overbearing, repetitive narration), and putting aside White Noise (littered with implausible dialogue).

I might finish Against The Day, but either way I'm going back to philosophy, psychology, and nonfiction neuroscience books. I'll probably finish Language, Truth, and Logic first, then buy Predictably Irrational.

[Anonymous No.4608505]

>>4608428
lol

[Anonymous No.4608531]

>>4600432
>50-page speech that repeats everything she said in the novel for the thousandth time
>paper-thin characterization
>superb

Top kek.

[Anonymous No.4608551]

>>4608531
I seriously do think that the circumlocutory nature of the novel has something to do with how popular it is. Indeed, people like it because they invested so much time into it. It was propaganda of a genius kind. The right is actually fairly good at implementing propaganda well.

[Anonymous No.4608611]

>>4598822
Religion was always about a personal connection, a personal story anon.

[Anonymous No.4608614]

>>4608230
>Jackson was right to exclude the Scouring, get over it.
Er, I was refering to the time between Bilbo's return and his 111th birthday. LotR could have ended before it started.

I stand corrected on the nature of the ring and trade. However, gold-hogging dorfs would end up poorer than they think they are.

[Anonymous No.4608618]

>>4608392
Overrated isn't the same thing as bad... -_-

[Anonymous No.4608626]

>>4605569
Ok, but stone throwing (where's the sling) is only good for hit and run skirmishing. Also, you can't just teach anyone to fight like that. The hobbits would be raped in four dimensions if they went toe-to-toe with any human village.

[Anonymous No.4608640]

holy shit this board is the edgiest and cringiest place ever

[Anonymous No.4608645]

>>4608640
>this is the xiest y

then stay off of 4chan dumbass. Holy shit, what has this place become, where people come here just to call everyone edgy. Go and stay go.

[Anonymous No.4608646]

>>4608645
Holy shit dude, you've lost it.

[Anonymous No.4608649]

>>4608645

[Anonymous No.4608892]

>>4608626

>The hobbits would be raped in four dimensions if they went toe-to-toe with any human village.

They never went toe to toe with anyone. It took nearly the entire shire to run off the few humans during the scouring.

[Anonymous No.4608896]

Is it just me, or is the word "overrated" the dumbest word you can use?

It means you don't think that an object is good as the general population believes it to be, indicating that your opinion on it is "truer" than the general population's.

[Anonymous No.4608914]

>>4597484
What in my opinion is annoying about Iliad, if anything, are these legthy battle logs about who thrust whom with spear and at what exact angle and where it hit and who was the grandgrandfather of the thrustee and so on for ten pages and what was Zeus doing at the time until reader/listener completely forgets what the fuck is actually going on.

[Anonymous No.4609133]

>>4597354
More like the influence Freud never accepted.

[Anonymous No.4609158]

>>4608896
>Is it just me, or is the word "overrated" the dumbest word you can use?

No, it's not just you, 'overrated' is definitely in the top10. One of the many problems with this word is that when you use it, you are thereby not simultaneously stating exactly what you think the general opinion on the supposedly overrated is. You aren't stating what you think others think about it, and you aren't stating what you think about it, you are merely stating that you think that others like it more than you do, which tells us very little.

In our next episode, I'll tell you to castrate yourself for using the word 'dated'.

[Anonymous No.4609171]

>>4598509

It's Amnesiac, not OK Computer.

Anyway.

Gormenghast and Meryvyn Peak in general deserve more love among the public.

Harry Potter was terrible and it was only enjoyable because of nostalgia.

Stephen King wasn't that bad of a writer before the accident which clearly had a toll on him. His new stuff now isn't worth reading.

1984 is a terrible book, in fact, Orwell is a terrible novelist but he's an okay essayist. I wish people would stop treating him as some sort of prophet in regards to MUH PRIVACY.

I have enjoyed David Foster Wallace's body of work despite the meme surrounding him. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again was great especially the chapter on David Lynch.

The Metamorphosis isn't even Franz Kafka's best short story and it's only applauded by people who read it in high school because babbie's first Kafka. In The Penal Colony, The Hunger Artist, A Country Doctor and The Burrow are much better.

[Anonymous No.4609184]

>>4609171

Also forgot that E.M Forster should be recognized more since he basically invented the idea of the internet and that we would be dependent and addicted to it now he's largely forgotten which is a shame.

[Anonymous No.4609352]

The only reason Lovecraft is read in modern times is because of the meme surrounding cthulu.

[Anonymous No.4609558]

>>4609352
>What is creating a human-unfriendly mythology?

I think I just found the sacrifice for this week, I hope Yog Sothoth approves.