How did you Come across these Books
 

Okay, this is sort of embarrasing, but this is how I found the LOTR books.

I was in Berlin Peck Library and I was walking down the Young Adult Section. I tripped over a book that was on the floor and fell, while I was getting up and cursing the user, I looked down at the book. It was The Hobbit. So I thought what the heck, so I checked it out and read it. That's how I became hooked on the LOTR

I to also found my copy of The Hobbit in a library. I had just finished reading the Last Battle by C.S.Lewis and asked the librarian whether there were anymore in the Narnia series. She pulled out my card and to my horror told me I had read them all, seeing my distress she asked me if I had read The Hobbit, I told her I hadn't and she went and got me a copy. I now own 49 seperate copies (one in German) of this marvellous book, 52 copies of The Lord of the Rings, and over 200 other books of/on Tolkien, all because of a wet afternoon in Dec 1969.

I didn't have much of a propensity for reading in my younger days as I was busy with other things like sports and video games. When I was about 21 and just returned from Brazil my Dad recommended that I read LotR's and I did so. Comically I didn't at first realize that it was a trilogy and when the fellowship was leaving Lothlorien I kept wondering how they were going to quickly destroy the ring because there are only 50 or so pages to do it :o. I have since read them about yearly along with the Silm, The Hobbit is read every few years.

Haha! My story is juicy. I stole mine from my middle school library as a memento and a way to get back at my old bookworm librarian. She...was not exactly very nice.
So I read it. And I liked it. And I watched the movies. And now, here I am... :D

i found them in my library when i was looking for something else.

All I'm going to say is that my little sis threw the Two Towers at me. Thankfully, she has very bad aim and it almost hit some other guy.... :D

My father read me the Hobbit when I was very young, about six or seven, or something. It was on the 70's. The Finnish version had just appeared and the book was heavily abridged with many character names twisted to ring a children-book -flavour. But the world (and the story) immersed me and the illustrations (by Tove Jansson, the author of the Moomin-books) were just mind-boggling. I got caught then... even with a fake of a kind. :)

I was lured into The Hobbit by Smaug himself!

I was in my early teens (back in the early 1960s) when my brother brought home a book from school. Out of idle curiosity I opened the book and found a map at the begining. I'd always been fascinated by maps so I tooka a closer look and spotted a tiny red dragon.

That was enough! I knew immediately that I had to read the book and I've been reading it ever since then.
.

My older brother told us all that we should read the book, so when Pop finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia out loud, we decided to read The Hobbit. But this time, since he knew the book, my brother would do the reading. So, he did.

After it was read aloud to me (and the whole family), I decided to read it myself. When I did that, I waited a little while, asked Mom if I could read the LotR, picked up the FotR and began...

You'll never guess how many times I stopped reading that book because it distressed and frightened me in so many places! But, by the time I finished the FotR and began the TT, I was quite hooked.

-- Folwren

I was fortunate enough to have a grandmother who not only encouraged reading, but truly understood what I might find interesting, and challenged me always. She bought me The Hobbit at 7 yrs, and The Simarillion for Christmas when I was 9. I've read them, and the countless others I received from her, over and again ever since. (going-on 30 years ;) )

An incredible woman, to whom I am eternally grateful.

My oft-repeated tale is that I nicked the books off my cool older brother. He had disappeared for weeks on end with these books so I wanted to read 'em too, because he was cool, and because anything so absorbing just had to be good. I was about 12 and as my mother once said "I would read the side of the cornflakes box if I had nothing else around to read". I'd previously had obsessions with Brer Rabbit, Alice In Wonderland, Heidi (there are about 4 Heidi books, did you know she even grows up and has kids?.... ;) ), What Katy Did and Mallory Towers. It was time for me to move on to the serious stuff. Hey presto, the parents were saddled with two Tolkien obsessed offspring.

I still have that set of books now, battered and creased, and they are worth more to me than any of the posh collectible ones I own.

I received LOTR as an Easter present from my mother. The irony of it is that, when seeing the books I was not too impressed as they did not seem my type of reading. I thought I was bound not to like it. Well, four years after that sunny Easter morning, here I am, listening to TTT soundtrack, waiting for the Christmas holydays to come so I can read LOTR for the eleventh time. :D

I was introduced to the books many years ago by my boyfriend at that time. I lived in Middle-earth for three days while reading them, doing only what was absolutely necessary and reading every spare minute. He then gave me a set of my own for Christmas. I still have - and use! - that set of Ballantine's paperbacks, though they are gradually disintegrating and should be replaced for daily use. However, the boyfriend became legend, and I have no idea if he's still a fan of the books and/or movies and active in any way.

Three days? It took me about three weeks (more, probably). Although I was still at school so that might have had something to do with my slow reading!

Always keep your first set of books, and keep them carefully, they will one day be a great treasure to you and they are irreplaceable.

Well "Father Christmas" gave me the LOTR a tad prematurely the year I read the Hobbit (having missed the final episode on Jackanory because I was at Brownies. I got stuck at the end of the Two Towers (Cirith Ungol was a bit too scary for me at nine) and only re-read it entirely a year or so later. I know I was hooked by the time I got to secondary school. My original copies disintegrated when I lent them to my Goddaughter who couldn't wait for her brother to finish with their copy. My next set are pretty tatty so I got the revised 50th anniversary all in one and covet the boxed hardbacks for best...

Golly, you sound like me.

I've kept the first copies I ever read. I actually read the books that my dad got when he was in...highschool, I think. He never read them, but they were old when I got my hands on them. By the time they'd lived through being read by four of us five kids, the FotR was in five parts, but the other two survived it rather well.

-- Folwren

I wouldn't have missed Jackanory for anything, especially not Brownies (I lasted one year and did no badges, I mostly spent my time irritating other girls by putting spiders in their hair - I think I was in the Green Pixies). But I never ever saw the Jackanory Hobbit, or else I simply didn't remember it. :( I've got an bit of an addiction now for hunting down nice sets of the books so I'm not short of 'em. I got that nice new gold one-volume one too, couldn't resist. It's my Bling Rings ;)

Which edition are they Folwren? They must be quite old. Paperback or hardback? I'm intrigued now!

[QUOTE=Lalwendë]I wouldn't have missed Jackanory for anything, especially not Brownies (I lasted one year and did no badges, I mostly spent my time irritating other girls by putting spiders in their hair - I think I was in the Green Pixies). But I never ever saw the Jackanory Hobbit, or else I simply didn't remember it. :( QUOTE]

Oh it was wonderful... Bernard Cribbins was the reader... and I liked the Brownies - I was Sixer of the Gnomes - Leader of the Noldor in effect .. :D

Now you've got me going....Feanor of the Brownies. Wreaking havoc by insisting on taking a Silmaril Forging badge instead of Housekeeping. Leading the Gnomes on a rebellion when made to collect beanbags and hulahoops of varying colours from the field after the Jamboree. Being pursued by Gladysmog, Lord of the Brownowls...

:D

My first copy was my dad's from high school, too. I have another set for annotating, as these first ones nurtured two generations of geeks and are far too precious to be scribbled in!

I vaguely remember reading the Fellowship quite young, but wasn't interested until my teacher started reading the Hobbit to us in class. I read the Fellowship and The Two Towers two years later, but moved before I could read the Return of the King. In other words, I was "normal" for a whole 2 months of my high school career.

Well, this sounds terribly silly, but my first crush was on a friend of my dad's (I was eight, he was 27) who ran a bookstore and was a Tolkien expert. I was already a bookworm, and so of course I had to read the books that so fascinated the object of my affection! My first copies of the were cheap paperbacks which, alas, are long gone, but that lovely man actually gave me a copy of the so-called "Big Red Book of Death", which is at this moment, 19 years later, sitting beside my keyboard.

It's nice to know this, some of your stories are really fascinating, just a little moment in life, without intention or even with other intention you come to thing which influences you for the rest of your life! :)

My story is not as shocking. When I was about 7, my older cousin taught our family on holidays to play role-playing games, at first it was lesser local version of Dungeon's and Dragons. Being 7 years old, I didn't have much reason out of it, but it caught me. Later then, he received Iron Crown Enterprise's Lord of the Rings roleplaying game as present, and I got it year later as Christmas present. It was interesting, and I wanted to read the books which there were quoted. My grandmother is a librarian, so you could guess the rest. I first read the Hobbit, in which Bilbo's poem against the spiders got me laughing and shaking down on the floor. My grandmother then supplied me with my own books so that even other visitors of the library could gain access to them :D The only thing I might mention about that good woman is that she never got the books' names straight and she thought that the name of the first part of the Trilogy was Lord of the Rings and second Lord of the Tower (I never asked her what she thought was the name of the third.)

That Finnish version really had illustrations from Tove Jansson?!?!!! MAN... THAT'S UNBELIEVABLE! I want it!!! :eek:

My story isn't nearly as exciting as you people's are, but I'll let slip anyway. My friend had stolen it from her brother and she introduced it to me.

It's interesting.I've always been a fan of the fantasy and the sci-fi.Since childhood.I prefer fantasy though if I have to choose.It's somewhat related to the past and history of the mankind and the sci-fi is related to the future.
Anyways - there were in Bulgaria a special kind of roleplay gamebooks,which I really enjoyed in my early ages so after they stopped making them I related myself to the great Tolkien world,because I understood for it from them.

I first read the Hobbit when I was smaller, maybe 10 in Romania. I know I enjoyed reading fantasy, and I had found the book in my grandmother's bookshelf...that's how it started
I afterwards purchased it in English, and bought LOTR after reading the first chapter of the book at the end of the Hobbit.
I purchased the Silmarillion, the UT, and some of the "minor works" after the movies appeared

I remember it like it was yesterday. The day was Thursday December 20th, and I had just gotten home from school (I was a sophomore in high school at the time) and turned on MTV and on there was the Making the Movie Lord of the Rings the Fellowship of the Ring \ and I was hooked. So I had my mom take me to the mall and get me the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, all three in one book and I read the Hobbit by Saturday morning, was finished with the Fellowship by sunday around lunch-time afterwhich I went to the movies and saw FOTR for the first of seven times and after that I came home and was finished reading the whole thing by the day after Christmas. By far, these memories I will never forget.

Haha, that sounds pretty fairy-tale like :p

Me, I learnt about LotR through the old Bakshi films. Then my mom bought the book when the movies came out. You can guess what happened :p

My story is very plain. My mom read the book when I was around 6, and I asked her what it's about, and she said she'd read it to me. I reread it myself a few years later, and again and again. Sounds pretty boring compared to some of yours! :D

My story is somewhat similar. A few months before my dad had bought the dvds of the movies and we had watched all three of them straight through. As soon as I found out that there were books I knew I wanted them. So for my twelfth birthday I was allowed to order about half a dozen books. I can't even remember what most of them are now but one of them was Lord of the Rings. I read it straight through that weekend and then carried it around for weeks rereading passages. It has now lasted longer then any of my other obsessions like Nancy Drew or Harry Potter. Which is saying a lot since I own over a hundred ND books.

As a side note you're the first person that I've ever heard of that's read What Katy Did besides me.

My dad would mention The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit in passing for as long as I could remember......I would always roll my eyes and pass them off as "one of Dad's kitschy science fiction novels". (NOTE: That was before I became a sci-fi fan myself. Mind your words, you may eat them some day.)

When I was in the hospital once (I was about 14 or 15 at the time) my dad read the first part of The Fellowship of the Ring to me. I was mildly interested, but didn't give the story much thought afterward.

My dad had been telling me The Fellowship of the Ring was about to become a movie a good month or two before it came out. About a week before the movies came out (December 2001) I passed my dad's battered old paperbacks on the bookshelf (you know, the tan paperbacks with the Eye and the ring script on the front in the red slipcase, I think they are second edition Allen & Unwin but I'm not sure) and thought "Hmm...maybe I will give these a try.

I.......WAS.......HOOKED

It's been a great nine years ever since that day. :):):)