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grilledbeers t1_jeab3ek wrote

If you’re skipping entire pages you’re not actually reading the book. No shame in just putting something down you don’t like.

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jdbrew OP t1_jear3vn wrote

I answered in another comment, but it’s more that when I feel like he’s made his point and he goes on and on and on for paragraphs about the same thing, I start jumping to the next paragraph until I’m getting new information. Sometimes that takes an entire page of jumping. But it’s maybe been 4 pages out of 250, so nah, I’m definitely still reading it. But you’re right, I tend to only do this when I’m bored

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tfurrows t1_jeb2aif wrote

I was into the first half of Return of the King before I finally started skimming through pages looking for anything interesting to happen and skipping songs and poems. Wished I had started sooner.

Like OP said, all respect in the world to Tolkien for pioneering the genre and a truly astonishing amount of world-building. But as a storyteller he left me unimpressed.

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GraniteGeekNH t1_jeaq7n8 wrote

I disagree - the ability to skip and skim is an important part of being a reader. I'd call it one of the most important skills that makes reading fun and useful.

There are parts of any work, fiction or nonfiction, that may not resonate with you or might be redundant to something you already read. There's no need to slog through them; skim over it and get to the parts that are good for you. It's not all-or-nothing!

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Dialent t1_jeb2ig5 wrote

While I think that's true of a lot of books, with Tolkien, one of the main reasons he is so beloved is the quality of the prose. The downside of this is that a lot of the writing is spent in description, or in retelling old legends, and other pieces of fluff that do not advance the narrative or tell us much about the characters we're following. I do believe that if you were to skip over this because you find it boring, you would be missing out on a large part of why Tolkien is special.

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