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I have just picked 18 as the legal coming of age. So how many of you have been reading LotR and other Tolkien books for at least 18 years? Please tell us how long ago you first read the book(s); if you like, your age at that time and what prompted you to read Tolkien.
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I dont think I have seen this thread, or have and never opened it. I did a search on my member number to see if I have posted here and it didn't come up with this thread, so here goes...
It was the summer of 1975 when my neighbor and I were out on a walk when he started telling me of this book he was reading. It was called the Hobbit. He told me about Hobbits and how they liked to sit about and eat and smoke. I was mildly interested, and so when he was done he loaned it to me. I read it and liked it, and so he passed his copy of Fellowship when he was done as well. The trouble was I fell in love with the story, and I seemed to read faster than he. So I waited awhile for him to finish Two Towers, and I quickly consumed it all. Well, he had not started Return of the King by the time I was done with Two Towers, so I went to the library and checked out Return of the King.
My senior year in high school started that fall (That will give ya my age [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]) and I was toting and reading Return of the King during lunch and when ever I could, and the cement wall by the flag pole was a nice spot. There I met a girl who was also into the Lord of the Rings, and we got to know each other pretty good. We even had fun with the Tengwar in the appendices, passing notes and such. There was some construction going on nearby the flag pole, and one lunch they poured fresh cement curbs, so we decided to cut a class and we imprinted 'Friends' in Tengwar using our fingers! We did a fair job with only one small mistake being we were in a hurry to finish before being spotted. That curb remained until last winter, when the high school went through a complete renovation and it was destroyed. I visited it just before, and had I known it would be destroyed, I would have sat and chisiled it out and took it home.
So I was into Tolkien before the release of the Silmarillion. I was at a 'line party at a Walden Books for the release of the Silmarillion, for it was the first 'new' Tolkien writings to be released since the 1950's. I suffereed through the Rankin-Bass & Bakshi era, and was again suprised in a grocery store in 1984 to see in one of those checkout counter racks 'Unfinished Tales'! I impulsivly bought it, and the stories re-kindled my love in Tolkien's writings. I have since read the Lord of the Rings complete with appendices, and Unfinished Tales several times. I find the Silmarillion a harder read, and only read it a few times.