Lord of The Rings or Harry Potter?

Harry Potter is good. It's fast-paced and exciting. LOTR, however, is of another league completely. Even the LOTR movies are far and away superior to the HP ones.

I completely agree with Shafter on this:

I'm very sorry that the attention span of the average reader is not long enough to see the depth and beauty in LotR.

My thoughts exactly. LOTR is just too hard a read and/or too complex for a lot of readers to understand.

I feel that Harry Potter is a very good at being a plain book, nothing more. You can read it, its enjoyable and takes no mental effort. However, the extra challenge provided by LotR to understand all that is written makes it, for me, by far the better book.

Surely what makes a book good is that it doesn't have to be a challenge to read. Is it not better to enjoy a book and feel relaxed at the end than to force yourself to read it, causing frustation and annoyance? Most of the critiques here help writers to make their story or whatever easier and better to read. So why is LOTR such an exception? For me, it is the very fact that LOTR is so difficult and hard to get into that makes it the worse book.

The challenge is persent in understanding the connotations and allegories in the book. Any words are easy to "read", I did not phrase that well. Being challenged by a book does not make me frustrated or annoyed, it's like a hard puzzle, you enjoy its difficulty and apparent impossibility. Harry Potter is like a very simple puzzle that, when you have completed it, you do not feel as if you have accomplished anything. There is a difference between how easy something is to read and how easy something is to fully understand.

I'm going to have to side with hekategirl; I need the motivation to read LOTR. However, I have been reading Harry Potter since who knows when. I keep borrowing LOTR from the library, then don't get around to reading it.

Oh, question!
This is a question asked totally out of ignorance, so don't get too mad at me: Which book in Lord of the Rings comes first? (Now I'll probably get it completely wrong) Is it Hobbit, or Fellowship of the Ring, or am I just way out in left field?

Someone help! It is now my official personal goal to read it over vacation. Really. As soon as I find out what comes first (tangent: the chicken or the egg. sorry. end tangent) I'll go to the bookstore and buy it, then I can have something of real substance to post in this reply.

On the subject of Harry Potter (since I have read this one, I can comment in good faith), there are people who dislike it, saying that it's not good writing and that the characters are flat, or that it's just a good story. There are times when I don't like Rowling's writing style, it seems very sparse and action-oriented, but I think the fact that there are seven books makes up for it because over that period, the reader can glean information about things as they change over time, the same reason the characters often seem flat (I completely agreed with that statement up until a few months ago when I started reading up on it). And her books do tell a good story, but there's more to it than that; I love all the foreshadowing that appears in her books. I think it involves the reader in the universe more.

Going by the films, LOTR was done much better. The Harry Potter films have had too many directors to be consistant and there is barely continuity within the storyline. You'd think that if I've seen the LOTR movies, I would be able to at least start the books, but nope. Haven't done it yet. Still getting around to it.

Update [30 March]: I now have Lord of the Rings in my posession. Yes my friends, I have taken the first step towards reading the beloved trilogy! Now all I need is time...

The Hobbit and LOTR are two seperate things. The Hobbit is the prequel, if you like, to LOTR. Fellowship of the Ring is the first in LOTR, followed by Two Towers and Return of the King.

Many people who have posted on this subject have read Harry Potter, but not Lord of the Rings. I am exactly the opposite, having read Lord of the Rings many times, and never even picked up Harry Potter. Needless to say, I prefer Lord of the Rings.

Call me old fashioned, but I think one of the reasons Harry Potter is liked more is because, as they've said, it's an easier read. I've read excerpts, and the language is snappy and simple. Lord of the Rings is intricate, descriptive and thorough. The reason HP is preffered, I think, is that people know what England looks like. The culture and landscape is known already. Middle earth had to be build from the ground up, in only a few books. Therefore the details are piled on liberally.

The style is more traditional in LOTR. It isn't as up-to-date as Harry Potter, and not as socially relevant to us. Plus it seems that attention spans are shrinking. It takes a determined person to finish LOTR.

This debate could go on forever but here's my take on it.

First off, LOTR is very much an aquired taste. I know, because I've tried to read it a fair few times and it just hasn't happened. It's the greatest fantasy ever written without a doubt, but it's just not for me. It's long-winded and hard to get into. Basically, it's one for the fans.
HP, on the other hand, is a much more accesible read. Where this debate really gets going is when people think an accesible read is a bad read. IT'S NOT. HP is fast, absorbing with a fascinating, tight plot. People who claim that it's not as good as LOTR for whatever reason are being intelectually snobbish.

Harry Potter all the way.

From your logic you would deduce that anything that is more sophisticated cannot be praised because it would be "intellectually snobbish". The reason LOTR is better is because its so much more complex. Some people call this "long-winded" because they don't have the patience to give it a chance. People like Harry Potter more because you read a line and think "Oh, that makes me sad", it couldn't be more simple. LOTR contains far more depth and many different emotions can be deduced from different parts, depending on who you are. Harry Potter provides no variety, it's there and there is only one train of thought you can follow from it. Harry Potter isn't more "accessible", it's just so much more simple.

I do not base this at all on how easy a book is or how long or anything like that. I base this completely on how much I LIKE a book and for that purpose it has to be Harry Potter.

Alainna
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I agree with Thriving Fire when he said the Lord of the Rings is an aquired taste. I myself have read it several times, the first time being little more than a skim through, and to be honest I did still skim over bits of it the last time I read it (it's not that I don't enjoy them, I just have a very short attention span). My point is that every time I read the books I found it a bit easier and more enjoyable. I've made a promise to myself that the next time I get a chance to read them I will read every single page, though that's really not relevant to this discussion.

I prefer LOTR, but that might have something to with the fact that I seem to have grown out of Harry Potter. The last time I read one of them I found myself quite bored through most of it.

Here's my theory: When the Lord of the Rings was written, people had longer attention spans. Today some people don't even have the patience to read a book period much less a serries of long-winded books like LOTR or a classic like Les Miserables (>1000 pages, by the way). My little brother won't read at all--i tell him he's crazy.

I read LOTR books and watched the movies simultaneously (read a chapter, watch it on the movie) and it took me forever, but i fell in love with the story. The movies were much better in the books, though, because i felt like i was there. The actors were great, the plot staying along with the story in the books, the destinies of characters being played out. And no main characters (except for Boromir, of course, and King Theoden, but i wasn't too attached to them) died. I hate it when i get attached to a character and the author kills them off! *sniff sniff...dumbledore, sirius, and cedric...

which brings me to Harry Potter. I absolutely love the books. probably read each of them at least three times. Rowling is a brillant author, the plots are so complex and intertwining, and the characters so perfectly depicted that the first time I picked up Sorcerer's stone three months ago, I read it late into the night, and within three days I had read CS, POA, and GF. The movies do suck, but they're getting better. My all-time favorite was Prisoner of Azkaban, though I'm looking forward with joyful anticipation to July 13 this summer--order of the phoenix!
I'll never grow out of either harry potter or LOTR. They're both great in their own ways.

Alainna wrote:I do not base this at all on how easy a book is or how long or anything like that. I base this completely on how much I LIKE a book and for that purpose it has to be Harry Potter.

Alainna
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I agree completely I enjoy Harry Potter so much because the way JKR uses humour; one of the reasons people re-read the series is because it's not an intense ride all the way through(Not saying LOTR is) and it is a fun book to read

I love LOTR. brilliant book.

LOTR! LOTR! LOTR!