Quote:
Originally Posted by Ea
That's a shame  I'm re-reading it now, for the first time in English, and I am so impressed by the prose. You can't rush through it, you have to read it slowly, but I find it quite wonderful. That said, I'm now 37 and I wouldn't have appreciated this aspect of writing nearly as much in my twenties as I do now. As I have found, one's tastes change and develop over time. Authors that I couldn't spare a moment ten years ago, I now find I like very much. And there's other authors I'm still waiting for, but perhaps in ten years' time....  |
I concur. I first read the series when Tolkien was still alive, when an English teacher decided that if I was going to read things that weren't the assigned texts in her class, it might as well be something good, and handed me PB copies of the series. The prose style took getting used to. I had to push myself to read the first hundred pages of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ - but once I had, the book kicked in, and I read the rest over a weekend. I've reread it many times since, and I find something new each time.
Some books you can't actively read: you have to learn to relax and let the book read itself to you. Another like that for me was E. R. Eddison's _The Worm Ourobouous_. Eddison was a Victorian gentleman writing Elizabethan prose. The prose took considerable adjustment, but once I did it went down like fine cognac.
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Dennis