Lotr or narnia

[Sir Edmond the just]

Hi i did this same poll on a lotr form and so far it is lotr 5, narnia 2, and now i want to do the same thing on a narnia form. If you wish to tell why then feel free to do.

[King_Erlian]

I enjoyed The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, but I enjoyed Narnia more because the stories were more compact. I first read The Hobbit when I was eight (two years after I started reading Narnia) and it annoyed me that the story didn't finish when Smaug had been slain, but instead there was all this political wrangling between the dwarves and the elves and men. I can appreciate it more as an adult, but The Hobbit was a children's story and at the time I wanted a clean, simple, happy ending.

As for LOTR, I started that when I was 10. I raced through The Fellowship Of The Ring, struggled my way through The Two Towers and stopped dead at the beginning of The Return Of The King. I really couldn't be bothered with all the stuff about Theoden, Denethor etc. and I couldn't work out why Aragorn and Co. went to Helm's Deep for no apparent reason. I skipped Book V and went straight to Book VI to rejoin Frodo and Sam, because that was (in my mind) what the story was supposed to be about: destroying the Ring.

[Col Klink]

I voted for Narnia. I know I’m supposed to like The Lord of the Rings. It’s a popular with Narnia fans and a lot of my cousins really like it…but I don’t. When we were kids, my mother wouldn’t let my brother watch the LOTR movies before he was familiar with the books so he listened to them on audio. I heard them in the background a lot. While I didn’t listen to the whole thing, I did listen to more than just the first book and I found it rather meh.

I felt like the characters’ dialogue sounded the same. (Can anyone tell which is Merry and which is Pippin?) The only character who I thought were memorable were Gollum (I was actually kind of sad when he died), Sam (though I think I mainly like him because he reminds me of Joe Gargery, a character from one of my favorite books, Great Expectations) and maybe Gandalf.

The writing style was fine, I suppose. There are individual quotes that I like. But the description didn’t really stand out to me as great. I feel like the world of Middle Earth isn’t as fun as Narnia because the only fantastical races in it are hobbits, elves and dwarves. (Well, OK, there are a few other things but those are the ones that mostly come into the story.) I feel that a really long book needs characters with interesting personalities, a really good prose style, or an interesting world. All those things tend to be OK at best in The Lord of the Rings.

I did enjoy The Hobbit when I was young, but strangely I haven’t felt like rereading it now that I’m an adult. That isn’t the case with most of the books I loved as a kid. It’s not like I’ve decided it’s a bad book. I’m just…not interested in it.

I don’t think Tolkien would have been surprised by my opinion actually. He seems like a guy who was mostly writing to please himself, not other people. I respect that.

[coracle]

It's impossible for me to choose between them. I love then both!

[DiGoRyKiRkE]

This is kind of like comparing apple pie to chocolate cake. The two series are so incredibly different.

I read The Hobbit and disliked it very much. The whole plot of the book is "Dwarves go kill the dragon that took their treasure." And some random guy introduced in the latter third of the book is the one who kills him, while half the dwarves die in an overly politicized battle? Talk about an anti-climax...

Tolkien builds a giant world for readers to get lost in, where Lewis builds a small, cozy little world that his readers can feel at home in.

So. . . yeah. . . I chose Narnia

[fantasia]

I should hope on a Narnia forum that Narnia would win, and on a LotR forum LotR would win.

It's very difficult for me to compare the two. I adore both worlds for very different reasons. I love the massive expansion of LotR and the simplicity of Narnia.

In the past, my order went The Hobbit, Narnia, then LotR. As I've gotten older my preference for Hobbit vs LotR is beginning to switch.

I didn't actually vote in the poll. I think the story I love more is probably LotR, but the book(s) I'm more likely to reread is Narnia.

[The Rose-Tree Dryad]

I voted Narnia, although it may not be fair because Narnia has been in my life for a long time now and I only just got around to reading The Hobbit and LotR in the past few years. I still haven't seen the movies. I suppose it's possible that one day Tolkien's world will overtake Lewis's seven tales in my heart, but I'd be surprised.

I found so much to love when I read Tolkien's works, especially in The Lord of the Rings, but at the end of the day I think my taste in stories aligns much more closely with Lewis's and he will likely always win out for that reason. Tolkien was focused on building a beautiful and intricate world filled with cultures and languages and adventures worth a song, whereas Lewis was more preoccupied with weaving together atmosphere and images and ideas, stirring emotions and nudging memories in the reader, and always harking back to the longing for one's true home. I've always been drawn to stories like that, and Narnia is very near to my heart for that reason.

[johobbit]

It's impossible for me to choose between them. I love then both!

I'm with coracle. Both mean so very much to me, and I simply cannot choose. The depths of truths and meaning in these very different stories become even more precious to me as I get older. They are tied for my most beloved fictional books.