: Certainly the Hobbit is an easy read. But I think many folks would disagree with you about LOTR. Easier to grasp (to a modern audience)than many of the "Academic" standards, like Shakespeare or Moby Dick, but more of challenge than most contemporary fantasy and science fiction. A first time reader, used to the fast-paced, plot driven modern writing, would probably find the depth of Tolkien's writing a bit convoluted.

Certainly that might account for a portion of the current fiction and fantasy. But there is also a great deal of works out today that would not be considered "fast-paced, plot driven". Terry Brooks has been hailed (though not by myself) as a great writer. But I gave up reading him after the fifth book in the Shannara cycle (and that one I trudged through). Terry Gookind would also be an excellent example of a comparitively boring fantasy writer. Science fiction has not failed in this capacity either. The above are not the exception to the rule either.

Tolkien remains one of the best selling authors of all time, at last count somewhere between ten and twenty million copies of LOTR have been sold in the English translation. Numbers become difficult to account for in the 25 odd languages that LOTR has been translated into.

From this we can conclude that the modern audiences do not find "[t]he multiple names for people and places, the invented languages, references to the earlier ages . . . more of [a] struggle than the typical modern leisurely reader is accustomed to." Robert Jordan (whether you like him or not) is a current best seller and he incorporates all of the same techniques.

-RR