Books People Can't Finish

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Frodo is 33/34 at the time the quest starts out in the LotR movies. That's no young hero; IMHO, it's a good age. I often feel the urge to burn a book if it becomes apparatent that the "hero" is a 15 to 17-year old boy (or girl) again. It's overdone.

I'm not quite sure how you derive 33/34, unless I missed something in the film (entirely possible). However, that's utterly irrelevant when he looked like he wasn't a day over 22-25, tops. That's still highly accessible and relatable for quite young viewers (teens, naturally). If he'd looked mid-30's, I'd have had something less of an issue with it, but he's supposed to be in his 50's--not his early 30's. That's a pretty big age/experience gap. {shrug}. OTOH, the damn book(s) did get made into movies, and I suppose we should at least be thankful for that, and pretty damned good movies, all things considered. Given how Hollyweird operates, we should be grateful we didn't get a 70-minute version of all three tomes. ;-)

Hitch

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm not quite sure how you derive 33/34, unless I missed something in the film (entirely possible).

In the book, the party is about Bilbo's 111th birthday, but also about Frodo becoming an adult at age 33. This is why Bilbo invited 144 guests, and he offended them all by calling them 'one gross.'

I don't know on top of my head what's said exactly in the movie or if Frodo's age can be calculated. (edit: I've found some clips on Youtube. As far as I can see, Frodo's age is unknown in the movies.)

However, that's utterly irrelevant when he looked like he wasn't a day over 22-25, tops.

At the time, Elijah Wood was 20. As a Hobbit has a normal lifespan of around 95-100 years, it's believable that they look younger than a human of the same age, but I know what you mean.

OTOH, the damn book(s) did get made into movies, and I suppose we should at least be thankful for that, and pretty damned good movies, all things considered. Given how Hollyweird operates, we should be grateful we didn't get a 70-minute version of all three tomes. ;-)

But we are getting a trilogy of movies as long as the LotR movies, while the book they're based on is only 20% the length of the LotR books...

[Clancey]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Frodo is 33/34 at the time the quest starts out in the LotR movies. That's no young hero; IMHO, it's a good age. I often feel the urge to burn a book if it becomes apparatent that the "hero" is a 15 to 17-year old boy (or girl) again. It's overdone.

Though I agree with you about the tween/teen protagonists, 33 is young for the long-lived Hobbit race, so I thought the apparent youth of the hobbit characters to be appropriate.

I read Atlas Shrugged when I was very young and frankly do not remember it. I read it about the time I read 1984, Brave New World and Animal Farm and sort of lumped it in with them. However, I read The Fountainhead as a young adult (22) and enjoyed it - unusual because almost all of my recreational reading is in the Fantasy and Science Fiction genres. I also do not agree with Rand's politics, but it was well written and kept my interest.

I usually read every book I start because I am cheap and am going to read anything I buy to the (sometimes) bitter end. Where I do go off the rails is in a couple of book series that I started and never finished. Chief among which is the Thomas Covenant series by Stephen R. Donaldson. I read the first two trilogies to the bitter end, thinking that somewhere Covenant was actually going to become a hero, or at least show some concern for others than himself. At the end of the second series I actually felt like physically throwing the book as far away from myself as I could. I never considered reading the third trilogy. I hesitate to say I hate anything/anyone, but that character comes as close to drawing hatred out of me than any real person possibly could.

I did start the Gormenghast books after a friend recommended them to me, but I just lost interest in the first book and never continued that series either.

I did read the entire Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind and by the fourth book I felt like I was slogging through muck. I am not overly critical of writers, but that was the worst written series of books I've ever read.

Catch-22 was one of my favorite books back in the day. I also read all of the M.A.S.H. books. Maybe one had to be of a certain generation to have related to Catch-22, I don't know, but I enjoyed every page. When I became a soldier it resonated even deeper with me. Major Major Major - I could see that happening.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I'm not quite sure how you derive 33/34, unless I missed something in the film (entirely possible). However, that's utterly irrelevant when he looked like he wasn't a day over 22-25, tops. That's still highly accessible and relatable for quite young viewers (teens, naturally). If he'd looked mid-30's, I'd have had something less of an issue with it, but he's supposed to be in his 50's--not his early 30's. That's a pretty big age/experience gap. {shrug}. OTOH, the damn book(s) did get made into movies, and I suppose we should at least be thankful for that, and pretty damned good movies, all things considered. Given how Hollyweird operates, we should be grateful we didn't get a 70-minute version of all three tomes. ;-)

Hitch

It's at age 33 when a Hobbit comes of age. Bilbo was in his 50's when he went on his journey I believe and in the party scene in LOTR Bilbo is 111 and Frodo is coming of age. Bilbo points out they add up to 144 and 144-111 = 33. And later in Chapter 2 it says that Frodo is approaching 50

Spoiler:

when Gandalf comes to check on the ring

.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by crich70

It's at age 33 when a Hobbit comes of age. Bilbo was in his 50's when he went on his journey I believe and in the party scene in LOTR Bilbo is 111 and Frodo is coming of age. Bilbo points out they add up to 144 and 144-111 = 33. And later in Chapter 2 it says that Frodo is approaching 50

Spoiler:

when Gandalf comes to check on the ring

.

Sorry:

We're talking at cross-purposes, or I'm just being unclear (hardly surprising). I meant, the 33-34 age in the movie. I know the age/timeline in the books. ;-) I didn't take the age/timeline in the movie as correlating to the age/timeline in the book, given that whats-is-name was 20 when the movie was made, and looked it.

Hitch

[Bilbo1967]

Well, looked it for a human. Who knows what hobbits look like as they age?

[DiapDealer]

The grey foot-hair gives 'em away every time.

[Bilbo1967]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

The grey foot-hair gives 'em away every time.

Of course, silly me

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Sorry:

We're talking at cross-purposes, or I'm just being unclear (hardly surprising). I meant, the 33-34 age in the movie. I know the age/timeline in the books. ;-) I didn't take the age/timeline in the movie as correlating to the age/timeline in the book, given that whats-is-name was 20 when the movie was made, and looked it.

Hitch

In the movie, Frodo's age was never revealed. And yes, he did look as if he was around 20, obviously. Sam actually looked older, but that might be caused by the fact that he was also fatter.

In the book, it was explained that Frodo (and Bilbo) kept looking way younger than they were, because of the effects of the ring. Even at 50, Frodo looked like he was in his thirties. Bilbo in the book would have looked much younger than Bilbo in the movie, as he was called "well preserved"; looking like 50 even when closing in on 100.

It would have been possible to put the 17 years of research into the movies, and have Frodo look like 20, but then, Sam and the others would have needed to look like close to forty. I don't think that would have worked very well.

Actually, I think that the entire 'looking young at an old age' was taken out of the movie to not confuse people who were not well versed in the LotR books.

[Dngrsone]

Originally Posted by crich70

You may have a point there. It's good that publishers are a bit more observant I think. Though sometimes you have to wonder if they are with some of the errors that sometimes pop up in ebooks. Hard to enjoy, much less finish a book that's filled with errors.

It's getting better, though-- ten years ago, there was nary an ebook that wasn't just a print-copy torn apart and quick-scanned, OCR'd and published without an even cursory glance at the resultant mess.

Sadly, I still have a bunch of ten-year-old ebooks that need thorough going-over...

It kind of sucks that I have these wonderful portable devices yet I am eschewing them for the laptop just so I can repair badly formatted ebooks.

I have put down some print books because the errors in them were too distracting.

Unfortunately (or not), I usbsequently forgot the titles...

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

It's getting better, though-- ten years ago, there was nary an ebook that wasn't just a print-copy torn apart and quick-scanned, OCR'd and published without an even cursory glance at the resultant mess.

This is completely untrue. PG have been producing decent eBooks for some 30+ years.

Originally Posted by HarryT

This is completely untrue. PG have been producing decent eBooks for some 30+ years.

I was a volunteer proof reader for PG for a couple of years about four years ago. So they certainly do try and produce good quality (relative to errors in text) ebooks.

[Dngrsone]

I stand largely corrected. I have heard complaints about the quality of Project Gutenberg ebooks, but I personally have not had any issues with them.

With that said, PG is not a commercial publisher, nor does it behave as such. While I probably should have qualified my statement to specifically products of a commercial publishing house, my statement stands in-context.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Dngrsone

With that said, PG is not a commercial publisher, nor does it behave as such. While I probably should have qualified my statement to specifically products of a commercial publishing house, my statement stands in-context.

I'm afraid that even if you restrict yourself to commercial publishers, it's still incorrect to say that there weren't any ebooks 10 years ago. Baen, to name but one commercial publisher, have been publishing ebooks since the late 1990s. I know, because I've been buying them since then.

Here, for example, is a partial list of the ebooks that they published in 1999:

http://www.baenebooks.com/c-11-1999-...n-bundles.aspx

("Partial" because most of the books they published then are no longer available. The list just includes the ones that you can still buy today.)

[Dngrsone]

I didn't say there weren't any, I am saying that the overwhelming majority of the ebooks available back then were not well-built.

Shall I qualify that by adding, "at least not the ones that I was interested in and bought"?

Let's not argue over symantics when there are much more important things to complain about...