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How wonderful that the day I find this club is under a week after I qualify for it.
I'm only just 18, but that makes me... old, I suppose. You truly feel it if you ever head over to the chat room where fourteen-year-olds bemoan their love-struck fates.
I did not "discover" Tolkien's work so much as I was forced to read it in 7th grade by a teacher that by common consent is just plain nuts. I have very clear memories of her reading aloud "Riddles in the Dark" and screaming at the top of her voice (disrupting other classes, mind you) about how Baggins is a theif and we hates it forever.
Even apart from that though, I loved The Hobbit and finished it ages before my classmates. I was... *counts on fingers* 12 at the time.
It was my brother's fault that I ended up a bigger LotR fan than him. I make a point of not telling him, but I tend to share his interests and so make a point to check up on new things he's doing to see if I might like them as well. He flatly refused to let me read LotR. He wanted to experiment with me and make me wait until after the movies came out (this was a month or so before the Fellowship came out in theatres) to see what kind of fan I would be.
I objected fiercely and "went behind his back" to beg an old, beat up copy of The Fellowship off of his English teacher (who just happened to be my 7th grade reading teacher who introduced me to Tolkien in the first place). She handed one over immediately and ever after, I fell in love. I finished it in a few days, borrowed TTT and RotK and read them fast.
I read The Silm for the first time last summer, and I recently got my hands on an old copy of The Tolkien Reader, which I've started. What kind of a fool throws a Tolkien book (published in the 60s, no less) on a free rack at the local library?
*Fea throws a banana peel to see who will slip on it*
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