As a Lord of The Rings fan, I am fascinated by its world and lore. Which is having me thinking about getting into the Tolkien books. I wonder if doing this would be as overwhelming as trying to look into Tom Clancy’s.

@pimoore is there a book or series I should start? Is a big series? What kind of started this in my head was I saw an Audible recommendation for The Children on Húrin.

@Gaby I didn’t get in to Tolkien much, past The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. But I loved those stories. A friend of mine and I even started using Elvish to write notes in school a little bit.

@Gaby The Stand > LOTR

@hjertnes I tried to start reading the Stand and gave up very quick lol

@Gaby it’s amazing

@hjertnes You are WRONG! 😛

LOTR > The Stand.

That said…The Stand is just a small part of the Dark Tower series imo.

And Dark Tower > LOTR.

@Gaby I would start with reading The Hobbit. And if you like that, continue with LOTR.

If you still want more, as I did way back when, I would go to The Silmarillion.

I have enjoyed all his books. Many of which has been collected and published by his son. Not required though.

@Gaby I sympathize with giving up on The Stand. I did finish it, but the whole time I was thinking, “Why in the world should I care about the internal workings of THIS character?!?!”

@furstenberg I haven’t read The Stand since the 80s. I until recently, I could never get past Two Towers, which is weird because I loved sowed and sorcery as a kid. I read Dark Tower in the 80s, too, and it was a slog and don’t remember much about it. I could try re-reading it but I already have a dozen books on my stack I have to get to first.

@josephaleo I could never finish The Stand or start on the “new” stuff in the late 80s. Read several other, older King/Bachman books.

@odd I stopped reading Stephen King last century. He’s a great writer but after all I felt like I had read enough of his books (and I read a lot of his books) that they were becoming predictable. I would like to read Gerald’s Game because the premis is plenty horrifying. But I already have a stack of books to get to, which a=contains three horrors novels.

@josephaleo Yeah, I got quite a few stacks of unread books too. Did you ever read any Dean Koontz? I’ve read a couple, and think they are a bit “Kingesque”, but in a different way.

@odd I think I’ve read one book by Koontz but for the life of me I can’t remember which one. That was decades ago.

The horror novels in my stack of books (and by stack I mean what’s on my Kindle) are Grotesquerie by Richard Gavin, The Secret of Ventriloquism by Jon Padgett and Wyrd by Adam L.G. Neville.

@josephaleo I had already read a most of King’s books when I discovered the Dark Tower series in the late 80s.

So when I read the Gunslinger, I ran to my local bookstore to buy the next books. It was three books at the time I think.

I’ve continued to read Stephen King books over the years, have them all in a shelf behind me. Mostly good stuff.

But the Dark Tower series is the only books of him I have reread several times. Love that series.

@furstenberg I think the books I’ve re-read the most are early Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon), Iain M. Banks’s Consider Phlebas and Player of Games, Greg Egan’s Diaspora, and everything by Bruce Sterling.

@furstenberg was born in the late 80s 😂

@hjertnes Are you calling me old, or you young? 😉

@hjertnes I knew I wasn’t young anymore when one of my knees started to make a noise when I got up from a squat.

@furstenberg haha. I don’t think you can have the architect title and be “young” 😂

@hjertnes 😛

@pimoore I’m very comfortable being old and grumpy

@pimoore It gets worse :)

@pimoore sigh. I hate having a lawn to maintain 🙄