The Glade 4.0

I disagree. All three books of LotR arehard to finish.

The Hobbit, meanwhile, is a lighthearted, and very short afternoon's diversion.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
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I think a lot of people want to feel special and unique, and they hate being reminded that they're just another faceless and nameless drone in the grand scheme of things (or so their perceptions see it this way). So they latch onto something that they find enjoyable, and maybe a few others do as well, and this gives them their clique and feelings of uniqueness they've been craving.

But when that thing they love becomes even more popular, their (perceived) uniqueness starts to get watered down. So the only way they can try to preserve their uniqueness and special-snowflakiness is by placing a badge on themselves saying "I liked it before you."

Some folks label these people as "hipsters" but it goes far beyond pabst blue ribbon, bad glasses, and ironically liking things. It happens everywhere. Like when folks in the SWTOR beta (and many other video game betas) realized they weren't going to be getting anything that would differentiate themselves from the players who started playing the game day one (and holy hell was there an uproar by quite a few of them).

I even experienced it myself when Star Wars mania hit around 1999. Myself and a handful of others I knew were still very much into Star Wars 20 years later when it really wasn't on the majority of the world's radar anymore. There were some niche products that catered to folks like us around the world and we definitely had our clique. But then it became super popular again, and things changed a bit.

When I realized how I was feeling internally about the whole thing was stupid and that having more people in the world liking the same thing that you do isn't a bad thing, I embraced it.

There is no point in trying to delude yourself with some (false) perception of elitism in *any* area of life. If anything, it holds you back from truly enjoying life.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

^ +1

I don't know if the books are superior. IMO, it makes a better TV drama than a book. He has a very non-standard plot organization (there isn't one) and the books are too long. I can read a 1000 page book in a few days, but if wrote 1000 pages I imagine I'd cut it down. Not everything that becomes a chapter needs to be read about. It's hard to judge either the show or the books in a final way until they're complete. But I would say that he puts too much in his final product.

Traditional western literary history goes with a three part set up. Rising action, climax, and conclusion. Some books will have a few PoV characters and those threads are related or tie together in some way. This is how most fantasy books work. GoT is totally different. It's like a giant pile of various lengths of twine. I found it annoying early on, but I just finished DwD and I think it's hard to judge. I wasn't going to read DwD, because after reading the others I was pretty irritated by the guys style. There are occasionally very annoying things GRRM does, but he's created a world that feels and characters that feel like real people. It's weird. I'm not sure if he's brilliant or awful. Maybe it's a fine line.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Freitag's Triangle is rarely a conscious consideration while writing.

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It's the most frequent outcome regardless. I get the impression that GRRM is just winging it every book. He has no out line for the story in GoT. He might not even know how it ends yet.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

He has already given the HBO writers the outline for how everything is going to end. In the case that he has a heart attack before he finishes writing.