Describe the 1st time you read LotR.

[akhtene]

I read The Lord of the Rings in my second year of learning English at the institute. It was the beginning of the term, I remember I had absolutely nothing to do, nothing to read and nothing to think about. And my groupmate just said :"Look, I'm taking this book to the library. D'you wanna try it?" And I took the Fellowship of the Ring just because I had nothing better to do... For the next couple of weeks I couldn't sleep at night, and I think I kept going to the institute just to read at the lectures, and to tell Natasha over and over again what a great book it was. I copied out all the poems from it. When I finally went to the library to get the second part I was shocked when I learned that the book had been borrowed and there was a waiting list several metres long. You can imagine my state... But eventually I read the 2nd and the 3rd volumes, learned half of the poems by heart and only then I came across The Hobbit (in my native tongue) which I found somewhat silly.
A couple of yours ago I got my own 3in1 volume from a friend of mine from Australia. I was the happiest person on Earth (at that moment)