Oscars, HP Directors!

[naamagatus]

I, somewhat snobbishly, asked:
 
> >I hope I'm not going to sound too horribly snobbish, but have you 
> >never tried reading Kafka or Dostoyevsky? Tolstoy? Faulkner? 
> >Steinbeck? Thomas Mann? Conrad? Virginia Wolf? Joyce (Ulysess is 
> >still sitting hopefully on my book shelf)? Shakespeare?

Shannon put me to shame by replying: 

> Yes to all the above except for Dostoyevsky, Mann and Tolstoy. I've 
read a
> lot of things, actually.  

<snip reading list and reading preference>

And added, regarding Tolkien:
> 
> He's difficult because he's tedious.  He made a great story rather
> uninteresting for me.  I read through Fellowship the first time 
about five
> years ago, and found that I had absolutely no reaction to Gandalf 
dying.
> Tolkien spent more time talking about Middle Earth than he did 
about the
> characters in it, and he didn't make me care what happened to them.
> Thankfully, Peter Jackson *did* make me care and I can see past the 
things
> in the book that obscured the story for me all those years.

Me:

Ahhh. Well, then it's just a matter of difference in taste. I didn't 
find Tolkien tedious at all. LOTR is a book that once I begin reading 
it, I can't put it down. I love Tolkien's writing style - the 
descriptions, the stories within stories, the little snatches you get 
of a complex and majestic history or myth (actually myths) that lies 
submerged within the (story's) current time. For me it's like a long, 
leisurely hike in a beautiful country - and as far as I'm concerned, 
the longer the better. 
> 
> >Naama, who also thinks that the HP movie was .. ummm .. 
<euphemism> 
> >ordinary </euphemism>
> 
> It was entertaining, and very true to the book.  It moved a bit too 
quickly
> though.  Which is odd because that's what some people complain of
> Fellowship, that the pace was too relentless.  The difference, to 
me, was
> that in HP, it wasn't that the pace was too fast, but that the 
scenes
> seemed to end about 10 seconds too soon.  Made it just a bit 
choppy. But I
> loved it all the same. :)
> 

Well, I suppose this is another instance of difference in taste. I 
didn't find the movie entertaining, I'm afraid. I suppose that if I 
didn't love the books so much, I wouldn't mind it being so mediocre. 
As it is, I'm positively furious at Columbus for "desecrating" my 
beloved book. :-)

Naama