by E-Hoog » Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:15 am
Interesting topic this,
@ above somewhere, I'm actually quite fond of the Lord of the Rings myself, but you really have to get into a certain frame of mind to enjoy it. I have the special extended editions of the dvds (which comes in a box of 4 dvds per movie), bloody hell that's a lot of watching, but still, very interesting if you're interested in how movies get made (like me). One of the specials was a sort of documentary about Tolkien and that stated that Tolkien actually invented this whole mythology, for himself... He created the whole history of Middle Earth etc., without actually writing a novel. I'm talking about huge filing cabinets here. Then, after The Hobbit he was asked to write a sequel, which became LOTR. So it's not hard to see why he puts so much history into this work, and yes, that can get quite boring from time to time if you're not the right frame of mind.
As for the worst books:
1) The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury. This was a bit of a Davinci Code rip-off and not in the least exiting.
2) The Broker by John Grisham. Normally I adore everything Grisham does, but this novel got on my nerves because of all the Italian lessons the main character gets. I actually listened to this book (audiobook) during my work and if the author then starts summing up ALL the items in a room with it's Italian meaning for about three minutes.... for Pete's sake that was boring. I guess if you read it you can just skip these sections, but still, the story wasn't that good either.
3) Atlantis by David Gibbens. This was a story that hung together by a lot of coincidences and too much description on the actual Atlantis they found. It's a miracle I finished this.
There are probably more of course, but I can't think of any