Did you ever read it?

I had a friend at school who loved the book. I tried a few times to get into it and thought it was dull as anything so just passed on it after 200 pages or so.

Fast forward to the films and I actually enjoyed a lot of the first film but the 2nd and 3rd films I found pretty endless. Then later at university people wanted to watch the extended DVDs or whatever and I found better things to be doing those nights after the first time.

Everyone has different reasons for liking or disliking things, but for me my main dislike is the lack of genuine humour in the stories. It is relentlessly serious. I don't mean I expect jokes everywhere but it's particularly po-faced, the book especially. I tried reading it again a few years ago to see if I'd been too harsh on it but still couldn't make it to the end.

While I recognise the enormous impact and world building Tolkien created, he really couldn't write for shit. The LOTR books are largely boring with small amounts of interesting stuff/action inbetween. Probably should have stuck to short for stuff like The Hobbit.