Help me to love the Lord of the Rings

[TerrorDæmonum]

But if love is an act of the will, cannot one simply will themselves to love LOTR....?

Love has more than one meaning.

[drummerboy]

But if love is an act of the will, cannot one simply will themselves to love LOTR....?

Love has more than one meaning.

I was being sarcastic...

[TerrorDæmonum]

I was being sarcastic...

I was being honest and straightforward.

[drummerboy]

I was being sarcastic...

I was being honest and straightforward.

Good for you, you should be a reporter

[Tennessean]

Whether you love something or not depends on what you want from it. My appreciation of The Lord of the Rings, as literature and as a movie, The X-Files, Charles Dickens, and H. P. Lovecraft are all a little different.

What is there to appreciate about h.p. lovecraft?  Because, my guess is that indulging his works would constitute a sin, potentially grave.   A quick wikipedia check brought up a number or red flags.  The man was an athiest who wrote about the occult, specializing in grimoires/books of magic.  Below is a pasted section from his wiki page.

Religion and occultism
Several contemporary religions have been influenced by Lovecraft's works. Kenneth Grant, the founder of the Typhonian Order, incorporated Lovecraft's Mythos into his ritual and occult system. Grant combined his interest in Lovecraft's fiction with his adherence to Aleister Crowley's Thelema. The Typhonian Order considers Lovecraftian entities to be symbols through which people may interact with something inhuman.[242] Grant also argued that Crowley himself was influenced by Lovecraft's writings, particularly in the naming of characters in The Book of the Law.[243] Similarly, The Satanic Rituals, co-written by Anton LaVey and Michael A. Aquino, includes the "Ceremony of the Nine Angles", which is a ritual that was influenced by the descriptions in "The Dreams in the Witch House". It contains invocations of several of Lovecraft's fictional gods.[244]

There have been several books that have claimed to be an authentic edition of Lovecraft's Necronomicon.[245] The Simon Necronomicon is one such example. It was written by an unknown figure who identified themselves as "Simon". Peter Levenda, an occult author who has written about the Necronomicon, claims that he and "Simon" came across a hidden Greek translation of the grimoire while looking through a collection of antiquities at a New York bookstore during the 1960s or 1970s.[246] This book was claimed to have borne the seal of the Necronomicon. Levenda went on to claim that Lovecraft had access to this purported scroll.[247] A textual analysis has determined that the contents of this book were derived from multiple documents that discuss Mesopotamian myth and magic. The finding of a magical text by monks is also a common theme in the history of grimoires.[248] It has been suggested that Lavenda is the true author of the Simon Necronomicon.[249]

I've read and enjoyed almost all Lovecraft's stories, and they're no more influenced by "the occult" than Scooby-Doo.