A couple years ago I worked with a news editor who in his late 20s was reading "The Hobbit" for the first time.
His initial excitement gave way to disappointment and outright disdain by the end. He'd been reading it as an adventure novel, where Bilbo and the dwarves were off to fight a dragon. In his mind, the promised climactic battle was a cheat. Smaug had been killed with one arrow, fired by a character whose introduction 20 pages earlier had barely registered.
I tried explaining that it wasn't about the dragon, but about Bilbo's growth as a character from timid sedentary hobbit to expert burglar, adventurer and hobbit with backbone to stand up to Thorin. He still didn't get it.
It's sad that Tolkien is not only the founder of the entire fantasy genre, he's also disliked by a number of people who have grown up with the derivatives. Pretty sad, they're so used to schlock they can't understand the real thing.
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