[Devongone]

Somebody should just have told you to enjoy it and let your imagination take hold. There's loads of clever people like you who never read a book Snoots. It doesn't matter of course! BUT you are right, interpreting literature is treated as if it is some sort of alchemy with strange rules that need to be followed to the letter. The truth is we are all interpreting the world around us all the time, fantasy and fiction are just a step away from what we understand as reality. You're doing it all the time with football so you could and would do it with a book. Loads of people can't stand Tolkien, but there would have been something truth or fiction that would have grabbed you if our idiot education system hadn't killed it for you.

People used to say I should have been a teacher and the subject would have been literature, but all my students would either have got straight As in the exams for being original or would have failed completely. It's sad when we present something so poorly that failing the exam' does become a badge of honour.