Some people may not like the books, and that is just fine. But to say they are not well written? That is a bunch of crap. You can't just say something is not well written because you don't like it or it isn't your cup of tea. I am not the biggest fan a Shakespeare, which is weird because I am big time into classic lit, but for some reason William does very little for me. But if I were to go about saying Macbeth is poorly written, who am I kidding. Just because you don't like Hemingway, doesn't mean Hemingway couldn't write. I am not a Tolkien worshipper who thinks the man could do no wrong, I guess for some reason LOTR fans get stereotypes this way. Oh yeah, that and that they can all read Elvish because they are super geeks who have nothing better to do. Which is unfortunate because there are some pretty big Shakespeare fanatics out there and for the most part they don't get picked on. When Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings, he set out to write an epic, like Beowulf or the Iliad. Quite honestly, I am thrilled with his results. You say it is long and meandering? It is long, but it is very poetic. If you are into that kind of stuff you can get thrills reading it. I for one love the poetic tone of Tolkien. I find it fantastic. I can just pick of the book and open it to just about anywhere and start reading it out loud and the troubles of the day melt away for a bit. I find it quite relaxing. As I mentioned before, I am a big literature nerd, I get kicks out of things like this. One of the biggest problem with the book the Lord of the Rings today, is that nobody really reads anymore. They read Danielle Steel and John Gresham. Nothing against either writer, but their books are just fluff, movies in the form of books. The most literary most people get these days is Stephen King and to my standards he is still just fluff. By today's writing standards there are certain rules if you want to be published. One of these is keeping the plot straight forward and as simple as possible. Anything that is not needed to progress the story needs to tossed out. I find this very unfortunate, because in the past books have managed to be very deep, more than just a story. By today's standard Victor Hugo's work would have never seen the light of day, fortunately for us, in his day they paid you by the page. As a result, we have these beautiful thick works of Hugo's that seemingly go on forever, but if you can get into it, you just might love every word. Let's look at Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. I hope some of you hear have read it, I think it is still required high-school reading, if not are schools are worse off these days than I thought. The Old Man in the Sea is a very short book, and it is an even more simple story. If we go with the logic of cut out what is not needed, we have an old has been of a fisherman going out to fish, being drug for three days by a marlin, finally catching it strapping it to the side of his ship, being attacked by sharks who eat his catch, finally making it home a beaten and broken man, while his fellow fishermen see the skeleton of the fish he caught they are in awe and no longer consider him a has been. You could write the story out much, much shorter than it already is, many parts of the book may be considered by some to meander, but there is so much more that happens in the Old Man and the Sea than just all that. I think today's standards of writing are flawed, and are the result of us having very little other than the typical McNovel as some have come to call them (McDonald's = fast food, quick, simple. + Novel. ) They are all just books that add on mental calories with no real intellectual gain, which are the books you find at the top of the bestsellers list, not because they are complex and thought provoking, but because they are simple and quick easy reads.

I certainly enjoyed the movies when they came out, I own them all on DVD even. I felt some of the changes were a little off and didn't make sense. I felt the exclusion of the Tom Bombadil section was understandable. Though it was a clever section of the book, it was a long subplot and for an abridged film version it made sense to remove it and have the Hobbits obtain their swords from Strider instead. Other changes bothered me much more.

The biggest thing I have against the movies is that they brought the story of the Lord of the Rings to a much larger crowed. Now everybody thinks they know the story of LOTR, yet they would probably believe the Lord of the Rings of the title is referring to Frodo. Lord of the Rings used to be this great secret. This wonderful work of literature and we all knew the story. If you found another Lord of the Rings fan it was great. Now you find a Lord of the Rings fan, and there is a good chance they have never read the books, and might even go as far to say the books suck and that it is great it was made into a movie. Another thing about the movie is that now, anytime I recommend the book to a friend and they actually read it, they already know what happens, and in their mind Elijah Wood is Frodo.

Just my thoughts on the matter.