Unpopular Opinions Thread

[utee94]

My knock on the books is that they're very tedious to read.  However enjoyable I find them, a description about a leaf that goes on for three pages can be a slog.  (Ok, that's an exaggeration and not really in there, but you know what I mean.)

There are many who enjoy the books because of that.  Not all music must be bubble gum, not all fiction must be pulp. 

[utee94]

I read the trilogy back when I was 13 or so... Then re-read it in college when they started doing the movies.

I found it an entertaining read.

But @SFBadger96 -- isn't that a template for a HELL of a lot of stories? How many stories are there in literature of an unlikely alliance between disparate forces of good, fighting evil, building suspense as the odds [and danger] to them rises, and then they miraculously [or conventionally] prevail? It's the central arc of most good storytelling.

Yes that in general, and specifically the Monomyth-- The Hero's Journey-- has been a common structure in written literature, since anyone began writing literature.

It's not the structure that is noteworthy in LOTR, it's the detail, the writing, the characters, and the world building. 

[jgvol]

That is quite the unpopular opinion. 

My knock on the books is that they're very tedious to read.  However enjoyable I find them, a description about a leaf that goes on for three pages can be a slog.  (Ok, that's an exaggeration and not really in there, but you know what I mean.)

Moby Dick is like that as well.

Beautiful writing, and you can really "see" the scene because of it, but a little sloggy for sure.

[utee94]

I was once having dinner with my i s c & a aggie wife, and two couples who were our close friends.  All of us guys were tech nerds, and sci-fi/fantasy dorks, and we were discussing LOTR.  At that point the movies had recently come out, and my wife really liked them, so during that discussion I encouraged her to read them.

That's when my friend's wife, who was a schoolteacher, looked at her and said, "Oh, you don't want to do that.  Those books are hard."

I couldn't help but laugh.  From then on, any time we were cracking on one another for doing something dumb, we'd say something like, "oh yeah, you don't want to go bowling, keeping score is hard."

[FearlessF]

Walter Sobchak: I'm sorry, Smokey. You were over the line, that's a foul. Smokey: Bullshit. Mark it 8, Dude. Walter Sobchak: Uh, excuse me. Mark it zero.

[Cincydawg]

That's when my friend's wife, who was a schoolteacher, looked at her and said, "Oh, you don't want to do that.  Those books are hard."

[Cincydawg]

In college, I was in a private coed dorm, the school dorms were not at that time.  Anyway, we had a gaggle of pretty good looking gals on our hall, and they were all education majors.  I signed up for astonomy one quarter as a crip course, I could have made an A in that class without studying or attending, but several of the gaggle also took it, it was a "science" class for them.

The professor was pretty entertaining, so I did go to class, and ended up tutoring the gals down the hall.  I recall running by them in the hall to demonstrate a fake Doppler effect, they could not understand that at all.

I ended up dating one of the gals for a year plus, but it sort of fell apart once I went off the UNC.  So there was that.

[MikeDeTiger]

It's not the structure that is noteworthy in LOTR, it's the detail, the writing, the characters, and the world building.

And I'd argue, the theme.  

[MikeDeTiger]

I ended up dating one of the gals for a year plus, but it sort of fell apart once I went off the UNC.  So there was that.

CincyTarHeel?

[Cincydawg]

No, she got a teaching job west of Atlanta while I was in Chapel Hill.  We had an "agreement" we could date others IFF we kept each other informed, and she didn't, and then later "confessed" and felt bad for lying and tried to make it up to me, but at that time, I was about as hard core as one can be.

Black and white, etc.

A few months later I met a gal working on her MS in geology, she was terrific, mostly, but had some "issues" that never got resolved, I don't think I was part of them, she never talked much except that her mother had died a bit earlier.  She dropped me, then tried to come back, once, then dropped me again.  I liked her a lot, but I think it was hormonally driven.  Then a while later I met the gal I ended up marrying because ... it was the thing to do.

Fortunately, my current wife is 99% rational.

[FearlessF]

except for the distain for SD

[utee94]

except for the distain for SD

I mean, it's understandable.  SoCal weather sucks. 

[Cincydawg]

Her's is an unpopular opinion.

[Cincydawg]