Going back to my humble beginnings, I was first thrown into Middle-earth (quite literally, as you shall see) during the summer before my freshman year in High School, when The Hobbit had been assigned as mandatory summer reading. I naturally indulged my inherent procrastination until the last week before the scheduled test of the aforementioned piece of literature (as I can readily admit practicing even to this day, three years later), but I immediately fell in love with Arda and read The Hobbit thrice more before the exam.
I immediately got my hands on The Lord of the Rings, and read it several times. Over the course of the next two years, I plowed through the expanses of The Silmarillion, straight into the jungles of HoME--my lowly roots eventually taking hold and, in time, yielding a virtual plethora of knowledge pertaining to Middle-earth. But alas, in terms of years reading, I am but a toddler when it comes to Tolkien.
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