This Year's Model of Humanity

I am in total agreement with you about not liking Tolkien's prose, but loving the movies. I always say he wrote it like a medieval chronicle, and there's a reason Froissart sits unread on my bookshelf. The point of view provides so little context into the emotional lives of the characters that I can't gain a connection to them. I cried at the end of RotK, when I read about the elves leaving the world. That was the only point where I was touched by the writing. All else was event after event, and I like reflection.