This is not my experience but a friend's who read LotR when it first came out in the early 1950s. I said that the most vivid thing I remembered about reading the book the first time was the tension and frustration after finishing volume 2 (Two Towers) -- I had to wait a day to get home from school (I, too, read it illicitly under the desk!), rush to the library and borrow Book 3 (Return of King).
This friend replied, 'But imagine what it was like for me! Imagine having to wait 8 months until the last book came out, with Frodo alive and captured by the Orcs, and Sam outside the underground gate of the Tower of Cirith Ungol!'
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