Been taught his works in school/university
 

....meaning, I had The Hobbit read to our class by an enlightened Fourth Grade teacher.

Rediscovered it in sixth grade, reread The Hobbit then, attempted The Fellowship, & dropped it halfway through Book 1. Retried in 7th grade & made it all the way through.

Edit: BTW, Fourth grade-- that was.... 1969-70 school year.

I became a tolkien lover when I was 8 I found the books on my mum's book shelf. She didn't like the books when she was a child and was cind of mad when I found them :rolleyes: lol
So i red them and then forced my mum to let me see the movie when I finished the book and i have loved it ever since.

hm. I read The Hobbit when I was 8 or 9. And i liked it, kinda, but I didn't quite understand it. It was a bit over my head.....

and i was always scared to read the books because......i saw some LOTR dolls in Wal mart and got freaked out. :eek: :eek:

then i forgot all that.....and i found the books in my library and decided to read it.

I literally fell in love with them.....

My brother started me into Tolkien, first by reading the Hobbit out loud to the family. As soon as he thought me old enough for LotR, age 10, he gave them to me to read. Since I highly respect my brother, I did what he told me to, and here I am.

The movies just put it in a visual perspective for me, and since them I have been totally enthralled by his works...

I'm really surprised how many there were who got to know Tolkien from a parent. I thought I was the only one. My mother read the Hobbit to me (and later my sister) when we were younger. She had lots of Tolkien books sitting around the house. After that, I went to see the movie and then read LotR on my own.

Although it wasn't the main thing, Tolkien even influenced my choice of majors. I've gotten interested in languages and am doing a double major in linguistics along with Arabic and Hebrew.

I got the Hobbit from my parents.

I'm pretty sure the origin of my interest was reading a classic Australian storybook called "The Magic Pudding". There were rhymes on many pages, and my dad would do all the right voices. (the croaky one for the pudding, the squeaky penguin! :D ) Anyways, I discovered it again in the bookshelf again at the age of nine, found it funny and my dad told me I should read the Hobbit for a good book with songs, rhyming etc. I read the Hobbit in a month or so and eventually got LOTR and spent a whole year reading that, on and off.

So ... yeah. Whole obsessive nature developed from that. ;)

I was 10 years old and had just befriended a girl nowadays called Thinlómien.

I had heard of a book called The Lord of the Rings, but I had never thought about reading it. As a child I often read books because their names, covers or descriptions seemed interesting, and the Lotr unfortunately looked rather nondescript (in a child's opinion the Finnish edition indeed looks dull out).

I remember walking with Lommy in the wintry schoolyard, and she spoke to me about the Lord of the Rings and roleplaying and everything that was already a part of her life, but by now a part of my life, too. I actually owe everything to her.

When I turned 11 I got the Lord of the Rings from my aunt as a present. I read it quickly, and started rereading almost immediately when I had finished it for the first time. At some point my father thought I had become hooked and read no other books anymore, so he forbade me reading it for two or three months (I had read it say 6 times in 1,5 a year, but I don't think it was that much). I took it with me to school and read it anyway.

By my next bithday I had read the Lotr for several times, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion and the Unfinished Tales. There was something in Tolkien's works that made me love them, and that love is something I will probably always carry with me.

I alluded to this elsewhere on the forum, but oddly enough it was Tolkien's obituary that led me to read his books. I was in grade school and happened to see his obit in The Detroit Free Press (complete with his picture and some drawings of Hobbits). Out of curiousity I began reading The Hobbit, and decades later I still keep the Tolkien estate subsidized through annual purchases of their product (which take up most of one of the bookcases in my study).

Embarrassing admission...
 

I read the LOTR for the first time (at age 8) because a 28 year old man I had a crush on was very much into Tolkien, and I wanted to see what it was he liked so much.

The subsequent 8 rereadings, however, were motivated purely by love of the book!

Embarrassingly enough, I only completely read the Silmarillion this year, and it was for the same silly, childish reason that I first read LOTR.

(Read the first half in '87, lost it, and never got around to finishing it - I don't really know why. There is no excuse.)

I'm glad I finally did, though. I don't know why I am motivated best by curiosity about interesting men, but I guess I have to accept motivation where I find it. It seems to work out surprisingly well...

Left to my own devices,I'd probably take LJ quizzes and listen to Radiohead all day until I died of boredom.

Hmmm...wouldn't listening to Radiohead all day give you the bends?

Just a second... you had a crush on a 28 year old Tolkien addict?! :p

Of course, the age difference is less of an issue this time! :D

I wonder who that interesting 28 year old man is that you're so curious about... :eek:

;)