What's "real," anyway?

[Mithalwen]

I have a spooky premonition that I am going to get at least one more gauntlet around the face for what I am going to say, so would all would be challengers please read carefully and inwardly digest the following paragraph before they read what will follow it and try to kill me.

I love the Middle Earth. I love its people, languages, geography and history. I am perpetually grateful to the Prof and Christopher Tolkien for making it available to me. It gave me a refuge during an unhappy adolescence and a major bereavement. The Lord of the Rings is my favourite book and it would be my "Desert Island" Choice.


However, I don't think LOTR is that well written ...... parts are marvellous but others I usually skip in re-reading - the style is all over the place in the early chapters.... and some of the poetry is actively dire..... I usually think of Tolkien as the historian and archivist of the world he created not as a writer of literature. When I read Shakespeare, I do so for the language more than the story I mean most of his stories were taken from Holinshed (?) ..... I read Tolkien for the story and its setting .... not usually for the writing .... although a few passages and poems are dear to me . I get swallowed up into Middle Earth so easily but if I detatch and look objectively , I sometimes yearn for it to be tightened up a bit....

OK shall I shoot myself now and save yourselves the bother?