I am among the last of the Old School Book Fans, as I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings just bare months before The Silmarillion was released. I found The Sil hard going, and gave it up halfway through (not finishing it until about 4 years ago), but read and re-read TH and LOTR, perusing fan BBS and the Internet when it became available, reading movie rumors (oh, the endless debates on who should play Gandalf...Sean Connery being the much-hailed-and-derided favorite) and balrog wing discussions.
The real announcement of a real movie (which I read first on Ain't It Cool News) refueled my interest. I ended up being strongly influenced by the movies, but revere the books alone as canon, of course.
Oddly, I find myself standing almost in the exact center of the movies-versus-books road, and suffering the slings and arrows from cars on both lanes. "I love the books, I love the movies, they're two different things, why can't we all just get along?"
<Thenamir ducks as another salvo of sharp, pointy objects is hurled his way...>
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The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~~ Marcus Aurelius
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