Public Research: The Book You Started with
 

The title must be self explaining :)

In my case it was the Hobbit, second came Smith, and than the rest

Public Research Project

My social worker read Roverandom to me when I was a kid, but the first one I read by myself was The Hobbit.

I started with the Two Towers, got really confused, gave up, realised it was a series and began again with The Hobbit. I voted The Hobbit for the purpose of this poll because it was the first Tolkien book I finished reading.

Wow...I'd almost forgotten Roverandum. Haven't seen it in years. Started with the hobbit...but I had forgotten Roverandum.

Gee..I have absolutely no excuse to feel this old.

I voted for the Hobbit, even though it was first read to me by my father.

The first translation of the Hobbit in Finland went by a name "The Dragon mountain". It was considerably abridged and formed into a children's book: all the dwarves' had funny bedtimestory names and so on... The illustrations were nice though. They had been made by Tove Jansson, the author of the Moomin -characters with which some of you might be familiar with.

But still. Luckily we got a whole translation with more loyally tolkienish names & stuff at the 80's. Kind of missed the illustrations though. :p

LotR. Totally. "Ooh, it has a picture of Orlando Bloom on the back.... Wow, it's actually an amazing book!... Holy crap, I'm in love! And not with Orlando Bloom" The rest is history.

A really old edition of LOTR with the worst drawings I ever saw and pages that departed the book as I read it. It was brilliant !

The Hobbit, after being interested in the upcoming movies.
Walmart had Ballantine paperbacks with neat illustrations by Ted Nasmith for $6.99 each. I bought The Hobbit and LOTR and started there.

My father read the hobbit to me when I was little. I never lost the fascination.

The hobbit when I was 7/8, just before (or at the same time as) the movies came out

My first book was LOTR, simply because that was the only Tolkien's book that was in the house at the time. I read TH, The Sil, and COH less than a year ago (finally layed my hands on a copy! :)), and I' planning on reading UT, HOME, Roverandom, and others as soon as I can get hold of a copy.

If you give a girl a book....
 

It was like this:
There's a book of Lord of the Rings. OMG, this is the best book ever but I wish there was more about the Elves.

A few weeks later, I bought The Silmarillion and fell in love with with it.

Then I found out that UT has more info on Celeborn bought it. Then the Hobbit so I could read about Thranduil.

Then I found a copy of Sir Gawain and the Freen Knight/ Pearl/ Sir Orfeo and a copy of The Tolkien Reader.

After reading them I wanted to know more about Tolkien so I ordered a copy of Letters.

Along with Letters I ordered Letters from Father Christmas, Morgoth's Ring, War of the Jewels, and the Peoples of Middle Earth.

And I'll get the rest as soon as I have the money.

Roverandom is a charming little book. :) When and if I have children that will be the first bedtime story I read to them, followed by The Hobbit. I do recommend reading it, but of course, any Tolkien nerd will want to. ;)

The first Tolkien book I read was The Hobbit, of course. My grandmother got the EEs for my father one Christmas and I really liked them. When my friend came over and started complaining about inaccurate they are I decided that reading the books would be a fantastic idea. Now I have one shelf of a bookcase dedicated to Tolkien (except my first box set, that has a special place on my bed), and that isn't enough books. D: