Tolkein

It's been so long since I've read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings that I'd complete forgotten how different Tolkein's style of writing is.
I've been reading modern novels so long I forgot the style that used to be prevalent back when books were the main source of entertainment.
Tolkein's style is so completely different from anything I can remember reading before yet still fundamentally the same.
It does remind me of Thomas Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge though, they have the same split-narrative style where the story teller is half just telling the story and half talking directly to you, the reader.
At first it's a big confronting, no one really writes like that anymore and I think if anyone even did now it wouldn't be taken well. But then, like anything, you get used to it, this dialogue between long-dead author and reader makes the whole experience a little more intimate, a little more real, the story a little more real. Tolkien talks to you like you know these places they travel through, like you know about the existences of Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, Wizards and accept it as fact.