For me it's just all the funny words for highly specific descriptors of particular types of terrain. But also, you can somehow still get such a vivid picture and follow the gist, even as you filter through all that, even if you don't bother to look it up.

"Along the left was an eylet flanked by a hithertop which flattened as they proceeded north through the shallow wolly, which rose into semi-steep clifftons..."

(Yes I made all that up lol)

Somehow even with my ADHD I'm having such a good time with it...because it's so vivid, like Tolkien was actually there.

Yeah, I was one of those "gifted" kids. I'm not sure that it helped anything other than depression and anxiety, but I'm still here, watching as things get even stupider.

I'm not cynical, you're being silly.

It always strikes me regarding the mental gymnastics people engage in regarding consumption of entertainment. Violent video games*, even if it’s cartoon violence, tv and movies are everywhere. But people clutch their pearls if it’s in a book format. The world is ending if it’s sexual. Hell, Utah just banned Judy Blume books.

*I’m not condemning video games, study after study has proven that violence in games doesn’t lead to violent behavior, just that we find violence in games acceptable vs people losing their shit over a girl getting her period in a book for YA’s.

They undoubtedly wouldn't approve of the content of some of the books I was reading back then either. I had already learned the extremely broad strokes around sex and reproduction by the first grade. My parents have a farm with livestock. I was also reading computer manuals learning how to be a greyhat, before the term even existed.