[gste]

By coincidence I also finished The Fellowship of the Ring about two weeks ago.

I have always had the intuition about reading speed that it is very easy to be a speed reader if you skim over things. I've always questioned how much of speed reading is just skipping stuff and filtering for the most important word tokens.

You could skip all of Tolkien's scenery descriptions, you could skip Tom Bombadil and Lothlorien and still know basically what happened to Frodo and where he's going. But that's not really the point. When I read a book of that much importance, I've always read every word and understood every sentence. I get easily distracted and often have to reread passages. I am not a fast reader. Tolkien's descriptions are not always that easy. But this is what I find so rewarding about reading in the first place.

However, when I'm reading an article online, the difference is stark. When I read articles, I usually start from the bottom and read backwards. That's my way of finding out the results, and then piecing together how much context I actually need to understand it. Maybe I should slow that down sometimes.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

Although people think LoTR as a novel meant for younger people, it certainly is not an Tolkien never meant it that way and it certainly is not an easy text. It is far more complex than any fantasy I have ever come across. Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring. One would be mad to simply skim it through.

[notahacker]

> Tolkien was a top language scholar who spoke several even dead languages, so there’s a lot more going on than just the surface plot of Frodo “returning” Bilbo’s ring.

If you want to see it then way Tolkien saw it, probably the best way is to get through all that unimportant stuff involving rings and battles as quickly as possible to get to the appendices where Tolkein spent his time thinking about the history and etymology and even neat little details like how the calendar worked in the Shire...

(I'm only half joking)

[jahnu]

> One would be mad to simply skim it through.

Reminds me of an ah-ha! moment I had as a kid playing a text adventure game on my C64. I was stuck for a while and tried to find alternative ways forwards. I typed in "cheat" and it replied "OK, you win!" and ended the game.

[harshreality]

One might also argue that The Little Prince is "far more complex" and deeper than anything written at a typical adult reading level. That lower linguistic surface complexity allows more space for the reader to explore ideas and themes.

I'm skeptical. Is there no more value to series like Gormenghast, Book of the New Sun, and The Second Apocalypse, beyond mere literary masochism, compared to LotR? Like them or not, LotR, as elaborate as its mythology is (if you include Silmarillion and some or all of the History of Middle Earth), is not at the same level.

[throwway120385]

I've read that Tolkien wrote There and Back Again / The Hobbit as a book for his children. Then he started writing what would become The Fellowship of The Ring for his kids, but he quickly realized that the story was taking many dark turns and that he was best served by moving away from writing it as a book for his kids.

[qmr]

I don't know. I enjoyed it in tweens and high school, couldn't get into it again in later life.

[matsemann]

I think both ways of reading are fine. Sometimes you just want to get on with the plot, other times you want to immerse yourself. Or maybe you always just want to get on with the plot, which is fine, just don't complain about the book being boring, it just wasn't for you. Which is how I feel about Lotr. But at the same time, rushing over the songs, boring parts with Tom etc is also how I managed to make it work for me.

[ErigmolCt]

Speed reading absolutely works if the goal is "what happened and why," but Tolkien is a good reminder that plot is just the skeleton

[kristianp]

I've been reading "Terminal Alliance", a light, humorous s.f. novel. After reading tfa I've slowed down and after all it's Christmas holidays, what's the rush? Even reading this inconsequential novel more slowly has allowed me to enjoy the details more. The metric in online discussions is always how many books you read, but this is a reminder that that's not the point.

The title, about "default settings" being "too high" makes me want an example from a technical domain, though.

[ByThyGrace]

> When I read a book of that much importance

Imagine if Tolkien was writing Fellowship last decade, and the book landed on your hands today. No decades of cult growing, no adaptations or explosive marketing, some word of mouth. Would you think it "much important" before reading it? What makes the importance?

In my opinion it's the prose. It's always the prose. Always gotta be on the lookout for good writers, new and old.

[yawz]

I love Woody Allen's speed reading joke:

> "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."

[photios]

I could see value in slowing down or re-reading crafted writing like Tolkien's. I've been doing that with St. Paul's epistles.

There is no value in doing it for modern clickbait or AI slop though.

[docmars]

I thought I was crazy for reading articles backwards, but it really does help to build a better picture of what's being shared or reported.

I find that a lot of journalists like to pack their writing with fluff before they even reach the subject of the headline, a lot like recipe blogs sharing their life stories before finally reaching the instructions, as if the recipe is only secondary or tertiary to the background given.

This is why I appreciate articles that include bullet points or a TL;DR right at the beginning to summarize. For anything really long that I'm just not interested in reading fully and only want the main points, I use an LLM with the URL to summarize briefly.

While there's so much value in slowing down as the OP wrote, I feel as if journalists want you to lend the same pace to them for all the time of ours they waste. It's like they forget how much information is available to us and how unimportant it all is.