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A comment on JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952). Parent comment

Re:JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952) by bombcar on Monday January 12, 2026 @09:13AM (#46588774)
Reading is faster - a reason not to do it! There’s a reason that rituals across time and space have had readings from time immemorial- and not just because of the cost of printing.

Especially with a work like LotR it can be very tempting to skim parts; the audiobook will just continue on, which can help you encounter passages you’d normally have skipped over.

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Re:JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952) by thombat on Monday January 12, 2026 @10:00AM (#46589411)
Absolutely! I'd read LotR many times before I first read it aloud as a bedtime story season and was abashed to find how much I'd been skipping over, mostly parenthetical details of geography and world-building, while hastening in pursuit of the plot, like the holder of a big box of bonbons gorging target than savouring.
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Re:JRR Tolkien reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952) by bombcar on Monday January 12, 2026 @11:55AM (#46591089)
Exactly - it's somewhat akin to listening to an album in one sitting vs the songs on shuffle mixed with others; but even moreso.

It wasn't until I had an audiobook version that I "sat through" all the poetry and tree-descriptions, and it was worth it.

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