I hope it's a good lesson to you that succinctness is in no way superior to clarity. Just to be fair, your long winded sentences are neither. I would highly recommend reading beyond the range of classics and getting outside your safe space.

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I didn't know it was a book! I thought the movie was pretty cool.

The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley. Too slow plot and predictable ending.
Lock Every Door by Riley Sager. Terrible.

It's an important book to read for cultural literacy reasons, but it doesn't hold up all that well. I enjoy old books and movies, but most don't actually hold up well if you are expecting a similar experience to consuming contemporary media.

I wrote an email to an author whose book I enjoyed. They had the usual contact us form on their website. To my surprise, a week after they replied. It felt comforting because it was during a particularly difficult time in my life. As long as you're being respectful, there should be no harm in sending a letter to them.

I’d say so, yes. It’s enjoyable and enough things have been changed. Like nearly all books, it contains some interesting things that didn’t make it into the movie. And you get to know the main characters better.

I don't think there's a formula to reading. I used to have a rule with myself that i need to finish a book word for word. But I realized that there are too many books to read and only one lifetime. I don't want to waste my time with reading rules. Read how you want. I look at reading like eating. Whether I peel my potato, eat it with the skin, or fry it up as chips is no one's business.

I have another controversial approach to reading though: I read the last chapter first. If it's intriguing enough, I'll read the book in its entirety.

Otherwise always meeting deadlines in high school, I one night realized—to my horror—I had a test on the novel The Yearling the next day with only half the book read, so I was fated for an F. Then I thought, "I'll skim the second half but keep an eye out for the plot points." Remembering those, I took the test and got a B.

The book is much better

Hey, listen, everytime someone asks hard or uncomfortable questions, they are bound to come off as something to someone. I'm interested to know which part sounded arrogant to you personally? I don't feel elitist for reading, on the contrary, I'm praising how approachable reading is to people in any circumstances.

Agreed, I’ve heard that Dune has been used for examples in English classes of how NOT to write, because the story and world is often engaging enough to get the students’ interest, but is still filled with mixed metaphors, confused tenses, tautological descriptions, and sometimes the subject of a sentence will change from clause to clause.

Oh wow I loved that book

Bro just shut up

Good lord, if it's any consolation in no way whatever was I suggesting that you had brain damage or the like: I simply listed the things that that 'brain-training' called to mind.

The thing with Tolkien’s diction is that it shifts as the story progresses to other areas of Middle-earth. It’s starts off with a rather comfortable, discursive 20th-century style for the Hobbiton scenes, and when the action shifts to other areas the diction becomes much grander to match, like the Medieval Gondor or the Old English Rohan. Sometimes he will purge his writing entirely of words not derived from Old English sources, which truly makes it feel like you’ve travelled to a different place, and in The Return of the King especially he has a very elevated tone, compact, declarative, unafraid of inversion, with a very satisfying balance of iambic and trochaic pulses (it reads well aloud). You’ll also notice that when Aragorn throws off his persona as Strider and assumes the mantle of King of Gondor he often starts speaking in Homeric dactyls, the rhythm and cadence of the heroic Epics, whereas if the Hobbits were ever to start speaking in verse rather than prose it would probably be in common iambs, there are lots of little touches like that that endear LOTR to me.

Like most people here are saying, it’s not for everyone, which may be why so few fantasy writers copy Tolkien’s stylistic strategy in this (they’ve stolen plenty of other things of course). Most fantasy writers show their world by simply railroading you from place to place and then throwing a bunch of invented history at you, but I personally thought that Tolkien’s method with language was the only one that actually made you feel like you’re in a different world. People who have read lots of older quainter books or large epics usually do better with Tolkien than people hoping to curl up with something cosy. Personally I prefer being thrown out of my comfort zone when I read something new rather than just curling up with something that will give me everything I expect a book of its kind to do. It sounds like you’re not going to get out of The Lord of the Rings what Tolkien put into it, so there’s no shame in putting it down and reading something you think will be more worth your time. There are so many masterpieces out there to read that I think you would be doing yourself a disservice if you instead spent your time on a book that didn’t give you anything in return.

I for awhile put off reading the book because I’d seen the movie, and then I loved the book when I read it. It’s great.

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Thanks for the advice. I do realise that mental training might be somewhat dangerous if pushed too far, precisely because our brain conveys the reality to us. I do something I call conscious resting (similar to meditating, but less restrictive, you can open your eyes and basically do nothing, allowing you brain to rest from registering physical surroundings and allowing it to naturally flow to any thoughts it likes, without any outside stimulation).

I thought the book was so great, one of my favourites, even though I knew what happened in the end (because of the movie) - just as funny and I enjoyed the (increased) science! And definitively read, or even better, listen to the audiobook of Project Hail Mary. It’s not a sequel so you could do that first!

Or, if you can, listen to the audiobook. Easily my favorite audiobook of all time. You will NOT be disappointed!

I personally do not do it and if I do it, I ask myself why?

Last time I was doing that was from the Dexter books and I was becoming more and more pissed with the book because I was skipping too much. So I stopped and asked my partner to give me a summary instead.

If half the book is skipped, maybe just search for a summary? It could be the writing style of the author is not for you. Or your brain needs something different (lighter/heavier) at the moment.

I tend to have different books in my Currently Reading so I can switch my attention and keep my brain interested, and if I see one is not interesting I simply remove it. I think we have enough books in our “to read” lists that we shouldn’t really feel bad about removing some for not liking them.

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

I was all about the ~vibes~ then it got....rough

I really wonder why her books receive so much recommendation. I read In the woods, The likeness and some other book that now I can't even recognize by the summary on the Goodreads. The reason why these books are so popular is beyond me.

Because you’re probably referring to a style of writing that those who like it would call “descriptive” or “romantic,” not purple.