Since I'm reading it, I'm curious

[alpharaposa]

Back when the Lord of the Rings movies came out, what continually shocked me was all the people that hadn't read the books. People I would have sworn would have read them simply hadn't. Gamers, writers, romantics... I was frequently surprised.

So, my curiousity once again arises:

[Poll #818926]

Comments

[muffinmaneric.livejournal.com]

If you haven't read at least The Hobbit, you deserve to be dragged out and ridden over by multiple Nazgûl.

[that-guy-zach.livejournal.com]

I just never got into reading fiction

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

In case of curiosity, the "In More Than One Language" was Spanish, and it was very difficult going. :)

[stryck.livejournal.com]

I was indeed curious! I knew aefenglommung had read it in German, but was surprised that anybody else checked off that box.

That's very cool.

[aefenglommung.livejournal.com]

I started reading LOTR when I was 13. I've read the entire trilogy + Hobbit -- I don't know how many times. I stopped counting years ago at 40+ times. I only read LOTR every few years now. Over-reading can deaden the experience, since you're rushing through, and already expecting the next scene.

I've hacked my way through LOTR and The Hobbit in German. And I've collected and read (or, in the case of some of the longer poetry, tried to read) nearly everything published by JRR Tolkien, including the History of Middle-Earth series.

I read Tolkien's scholarly works for fun. They're mind candy.

[aefenglommung.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah -- I was also going to say that after I finished LOTR the first time in the fall of 1967, I went looking for The Hobbit. They didn't have it in paperback immediately where I normally bought my books, so I went to the library in Spencer, IN, and there they had an original hardback copy of it from the 30s or 40s when it was first published in America. Which means I have read Tolkien's original version of the riddle game with Gollum, which he said Bilbo wrote in his own diary, which story-line he updated when he made the ring into The Ring(tm).

[yechezkiel.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about the experience being deadened. My mom read LotR to me at nine--and it's still one of my fondest memories, she even has tunes made up for all the songs--and I read it over & over for the next couple of years. I finally read the Silmarillion around my 12th birthday, and I haven't been able to read LotR since.

I'm rereading the Hobbit to myself for the first time since I was 6, now, though.

[aefenglommung.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, my experiences as an avid re-reader of things I like -- particulary my overindulgence of LOTR in my teen years -- has conditioned how I approach Scripture.

I know I'm supposed to read hunks of Scripture every single day -- preferably in an organized fashion, but I haven't been able to since seminary. Back then, I made myself a reading program that involved up to fourteen chapters a day (7 OT, 7 NT), and when I'd covered the whole Bible a coupla times, my ability to get a fresh experience of it waned. Unlike most folks, who report that they see more and more in the Bible the more they read and re-read it, I find that my mind skips things if I'm just reading something to be reading it (including the Bible).

So what I've done is to study pieces of the Bible intensively here and there, and that has helped me keep in touch with it and growing in my understanding. The rest is just research for sermon preparation. So reading the Scriptures forms almost no part of my daily prayer time with God.

I'm not advocating that for others, nor excusing myself of anything substandard. I'm just saying that, in the language of "learning styles," constant re-reading only helps me up to a point, after which we get into the law of diminishing returns.