How did you get to know Tolkien?

[Beren3000]

This is my 1000th post! (don't look at my post count, it's that stupid glitch again :mad: )
I always thought that my 1000th post should be in a Tolkien-related thread, but instead, I'll start this one because I can't find any other thread to the same effect.
How did you first get to know Tolkien? When was that? What were your first impressions? etc... etc...
I was introduced to Tolkien through the FoTR movie: after the movie, I couldn't wait for the next one to be released, so I went and bought the book and read it. After that I was so fascinated with ME that I bought The Hobbit and The Silmarillion and became a fan. That was in 2001. My first impression (of the movie) was: "good story and has a bit of meaning, too." My first impression of the book: "too bad they couldn't have made a 10-hour movie!".

[Sister Golden Hair]

Moving to the Middle-earth Forum.

[Thingol's new Wife]

I am sorry,and glad to say SGH forced it on me. She would talk about it all the time, tell me all the stories, and then decided I should read it out loud to her, because she didn't believe I would read the Sil on my own. It only took a week because she kept switching books and wanted to describe every character to me verbadem. Finally we finish and then she takes the book and I have nothing to read. :(

[Kellquenti]

A friend of mine named his house "Bag End", Named his dog Bilbo and had every Hobbit character,made out of china ,on his mantlepiece.
He gave me a copy of The Hobbit as I left. I read that and it gradually became a Tolkien obsession which has worsened over the years,
I am now a hopeless case with no cure and I don't care!! :D

[Elemmírë]

I am sorry,and glad to say SGH forced it on me. She would talk about it all the time, tell me all the stories, and then decided I should read it out loud to her, because she didn't believe I would read the Sil on my own. It only took a week because she kept switching books and wanted to describe every character to me verbadem. Finally we finish and then she takes the book and I have nothing to read. :(

Wow. :p I'm impressed.

Hm. I can think of someone I'll try that on now. :evil:

I read FotR for an 8th grade book report. Somehow I developed a serious phobia against hobbits and almost put the book down. But, about a month later, I reached the second part of the book. There I met Glorfindel and developed a healthy obsession with Elves that somehow keeps on getting stronger... :D In about a week, I finished the rest of the trilogy and started the Silmarillion. Then I finished that and started reading random HoME books that my library had...

Then, with nothing else to spark my interest, and no internet access, my obsession died down a bit, until the movies came out. Then I reread the Silm (since I had forgotten everything :o ) and became hopelessly obsessed with Finrod. Older and wiser, I suppose... ;) And here I am now, getting worse everyday... :D

[ItalianLegolas]

My dad who was a big Tolkien fanatic when he was young, made the decision (much to my mother's chagrin I suppose) to read me the Hobbit when I was about 3 or 4, he then read me LoTR after that. I then read both of them by the time I could read without needing to consult an adult. I then read the Sil and I loved the mythology of it. Everything just kind of fell into place from there, I bought everything that had 'Based on the book "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien' on it. In school I am generally referred to as
a) the nerdy one or
b) that Tolkien loving freak

I generally don't like when I am reffered to as A, but I NEVER take offense when they say B!!

[inked]

A colleague at the movie theatre I worked at in college was taking a Children's Literature course. She had read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe for class and we talked about it. She loaned me her copy. I then got every copy of the Narnia Chronicles and read them all. So I discovered that CS Lewis had this group of friends, the Inklings, and started reading works by them. Tolkien was first with The Hobbit (publication sequence first time around for me, please :D ); followed by LoTR and all the then available works which did not include the Sil or others about ME until they were published!!! Next was Dorothy L. Sayers and her corpus, then Charles Williams.

So here I am countless re-reads of these folks later and still hooked!

And as the Tolkien corpus has come out, each new item has been a trigger to re-read the two initial works. And I have them all as they are available on cassette tape or CD to listen to! And I have all the movies in theatrical and EE releases. And all the soundtracks! No, no, no problem here! Just a lifetime committment! :D

Needless to say I introduced my children to the stories via the "let me read you a story" route to both Narnia and ME (only TH and LoTR). But they haven't the bug like th old man, or, at least not yet!

[Embladyne]

Wow. :p I'm impressed.

Hm. I can think of someone I'll try that on now. :evil:
I can guess who... :evil: Oh, I told noon about the LOTR books you found in spanish, and she was really interested in reading them...I may be able to convince her to join us in the Moot.... :D :evil:

My mom showed me the Hobbit around 3rd? grade, I think....it was an illustrated version, and I was very interested in it.
Then, the summer of 5th grade I found LOTR somewhere in a bookcase around the house, and read it at summer camp. I was so interested that it hardly took any time...it was really crazy, because I've read LOTS of fantasy, and that book was the quickest and most interesting read ever. Then, a friend of the family loaned me his copy of the Silmarillion...and I struggled through it very slowly. It still interested me, but the wording was much more difficult to comprehend....
So, yeah....since then, whenever I've found a new Tolkien book, I've had a desperate need to read it. :D
Roverrandom was really cool, too.

[Radagast The Brown]

My sister and cousin just kept talking about the books, the Lord of the Rings.. it was very annoying, because I didn't understand anything. But at the time I didn't read any books, and was against the idea of books in general...
I had to read Harry Potter for school (I really did. I didn't even choose it, it was randomly done by the teacher)... the second actually, so I read the first before, and really liked it. So I read it again and again.. the 3 first ones (The fourth wasn't published) till it was boring. So I asked my sister what to read and she told to read the Hobbit... and I did. :)

[Mercutio]

I had to read the Hobbit for 7th grade summer reading, and generally enjoyed it. Nothing else of Tolkien tho until I was looking around the house for something to read. We had a really old, slightly falling apart copy of the Fellowship of the Ring. My older brother suggested I read that. I got most of the way thru before I discovered that the story didn't actually conclude until the end of book III! I basically stoped at that point. A year or so later I started it again, this time getting to the Two Towers, but all the endless battles got a little slow and I didn't finish. I finally later read all three books; eventually seeing the first two movies at home and the third in the theater.

[Pytt]

My father and stepmother read LoTR for me when I was 8, or maybe 7. I thought they were absolutley marvelous. I was totaly in to it. After that they read the Hobbit, and they bought Sil for me, but they didn't manage to read it, beacuse of all the names.

[BeardofPants]

I was "forced" to read the Hobbit for a school project for intermediate (ages 11-13, I was 11) school. I was in the advanced group of my Taha Maori class, and I guess the teacher thought we were ready for it. I wasn't a fan, sad to say. I found it a bit monotonous (I used that exact word in my book report;)) Then when I was 14, the BF suggested that I read LOTR. I haven't looked back. I've read it several times since then, as well as the Hobbit, and the Sil. :D

[Beren3000]

So I discovered that CS Lewis had this group of friends, the Inklings, and started reading works by them.
That's interesting. The opposite happened with me, I started on TCoN because I had read that Lewis was a friend of Tolkien's.
I was in the advanced group of my Taha Maori class, and I guess the teacher thought we were ready for it.
Excuse my ignorance, but what's a Taha Maori class?

[BeardofPants]

It's basically a cultural/language class, where you learn about the language (te reo maori) and culture (taha maori) of the maori (indigenous peoples of New Zealand). It was like a normal class in that we did english, science, maths, etc, but we also did the maori stuff on top of that (so we'd sing waiatas (songs), and stuff).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taha_maori

[Beren3000]

I see! Thanks for the link, BoP :)

[Telcontar_Dunedain]

I read the Hobbit when I was nine but never gave a second thought to any other Tolkien books until the films came out. I went to watch FotR when I was eleven. Then in 2002 I was going to Romania with my grandparents and as we were going by car I needed I something really long to read, so my Mum bought me LotR. I read it while I was over there and have loved it ever since.

[Beren3000]

Then in 2002 I was going to Romania with my grandparents and as we were going by car I needed I something really long to read, so my Mum bought me LotR. I read it while I was over there and have loved it ever since.
:eek: You read all of LoTR in a car ride?

[Telcontar_Dunedain]

Well a three week trek round Romania and one week of that was in a car.

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

i was read the hobbit when i was a wee one, and it has just developed over the past 14 years or so, thankfully I love all of tolkien's works

[Manveru]

my parents got me a boxed set of TCON when i was pretty young and i loved them so much and read them so often that they got me the hobbit after i had finished them. then since i liked the hobbit they got me LotR. i was still fairly young and it was a pretty hard read but i enjoyed it anyway. i wasnt too huge of a fan or anything but i read the chronicles of prydain, which is another fantasy series by llyod alexander. then i saw that they were making LotR into a movie and i got really excited about taht and i saw FotR and it was awesome. then i got the Sil and UT for my birthday and read them. then i read LotR again and saw TTT opening night, yada yada yada, now im a huge fan and im just finishing BoLT part 2.

[Embladyne]

I remember reading the Lloyd Alexander books. Did you ever read Westmark Series?

[Nurvingiel]

My dad read LOTR to my brother and I when we were about 10. I thought it was completely brilliant and re-read the series myself. Then I read the Hobbit, the Sil, and several more LOTR re-reads. Plus, I've started acquiring all of Tolkien's works, and reading them, like "Farmer Giles of Ham" and "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and "Unfinished Tales".

And there will be more... more!!!

Great thread Beren, happy 1000th!

[tolkienfan]

I read The Hobbit and enjoyed it. A couple years later my dad got me The Hobbit + LOTR boxed set for Christmas. I reread The Hobbit and read The Lord of the Rings, and I loved them. Then I saw the movies as they came out, and read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales.

[Embladyne]

I've started acquiring all of Tolkien's works, and reading them, like "Farmer Giles of Ham" and "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" and "Unfinished Tales".It gets to be like that, yes... :D

[Beren3000]

Great thread Beren, happy 1000th!
Thanks! :)

[Rían]

I read LOTR for the first time in college - I think my bf had mentioned it and I saw it and picked it up. I liked it a lot, and read it again every few years or so. I think I read the Hobbit after LOTR. Then like Elemmire, since I had no one to talk to about it, it kinda died down. Then when the first movie was coming out and there was talk about it, my interest re-perked-up, and then I found Michael Martinez's wonderful articles and it notched up even more - wow, other people actually liked it a lot like I did! Then I followed a link he had to Entmoot ... and oh the relief to talk to people that liked it as much as I did! I finished the Sil (I think I had started it at uni but couldn't get thru it), and LOVED it, and became a major First Age fan. Then I found out about the HOME books and got the ones relating to the First Age (I wasn't interested in the ones about Trotter the Hobbit). I read some other works, like Leaf by Niggle (WONDERFUL!) and Farmer Giles, etc., read some biographies, and Letters, etc.

I'm kinda Tolkiened-out right now - I just went nuts when I first joined the Moot and posted mostly in the Sil and ME forums. It was like a huge pent-up dam coming out talking about Tolkien -I couldn't get enough of talking with people that knew and loved his works! Lately I've mostly been "down south" in the GM forums, taking a Tolkien break. But not really, because I know the people I'm talking with on non-Tolkien subjects are Tolkien lovers, and I can make Tolkien references and they KNOW what I'm talking about! I love that!

Anyway, I've read the Hobbit to the kids and they really like it, too. They all like the movies (I only let the two youngest see selected parts, tho - still kinda violent for them.) They liked Farmer Giles, too, and I think this summer I'll have a Tolkien day and play all 3 movies (and fast-forward thru the gory parts) for the two youngest. Then I might read LOTR to them while driving on our summer vacations.

ps - congrats, Beren! :) I enjoy your posts - may you have many thousands more!

[Manveru]

I remember reading the Lloyd Alexander books. Did you ever read Westmark Series?

no are they good?

[Embladyne]

no are they good?At the time I read them, I thought so. It's been several years, now...so I just remember that I liked them.

[ItalianLegolas]

The Only Lloyd Alexander book I ever read was the Black Cauldron, wasn't that part of a 7 book series?

[Bombadillo]

Good 1000th post Beren!

It seems like a lot of people were read to when they were little. My dad did the same thing, starting with The Hobbit and continuing with LotR. Of course it would always have to be before bedtime and I'd fall asleep on his lap. In the morning I'd hear from my older and slightly more energetic brother that these stories rock. So I kind of grew up with that knowledge in the back of my head, and when I heard the books were being turned into movies (and I was sure that the stories would be ruined by this new medium) I breezed through them as fast as I could so I could so I could get my own mental image of the characters in my head before getting stuck with Elijah Wood. :p At "The Breaking of Saruman" I started looking for a message board, and found TookTalk, where I was lead to Entmoot through Radagast the Brown's sig. From here, I've been hearing a lot about the Sil, and so now I'm reading that, slowly.

My dad also read the Chronicles of Narnia to us too, Inked. I don't think he even knew about Tolkien and Lewis' friendship.

[Embladyne]

The Only Lloyd Alexander book I ever read was the Black Cauldron, wasn't that part of a 7 book series?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was. And maybe there were a couple more books. You can search online, or at a library for Llyod Alexander, and find out for sure... :D

[Durin1]

I first read The Hobbit when I was about 8 or 9. I was visiting family on my mum's side during the summer holidays and I found the book in my uncle's room. Apparently he had never read it but gave it to me to read. I read it within a few days and took the book back home with me and read it again!.

It was a couple of years later that I found the inclincation to read LoTR and I instantly thought it was the best thing since sliced bread! I have been hooked ever since, reading LoTR at least twice a year during my school years.

As I got older, I began to be fascinated by JRRT's other works so found The Sil and this took me to a higher level of appreciation.

[Elanor the Fair]

Thirty five years ago, I was given the Lord of the Rings as a birthday present (no really - it was a present - I didn't strangle anyone or riddle them out of it ;) ). I was already a total bookworm, (I read the chronicles of Narnia when I was 7!!) but I loved this book so much. My family and friends soon discovered my addiction and bought me lots of other Tolkien books and now I have a pretty impressive collection!! :) Lucky me!!