Are there any pre-1977 readers here?

[Saurondil]

I discovered LOTR in 1977.

I wondered about a lot of the references to (what was in fact) the Sil, and accepted them as part of the feigned history of that world. Reading the Sil was a definite bonus, which certainly added to LOTR, much as restoring a familiar painting adds to the painting. But just as a painting need not be restored to be appreciated, I never felt the lack of the Sil while it was still unpublished, while reading LOTR. LOTR was sufficiently complete and self-contained to be enjoyed on its own, without knowledge of The Hobbit, except for what is said of TH in LOTR. The references to the ancient past were mysterious, but they were not distracting, and they did not make themselves felt as things which one had to know about in order to enjoy the book that one was reading. In other words, one could take them, or leave them.

Now that I have read the Sil, I think it is in some respects even better than LOTR. It adds, not so much to LOTR, as to knowledge of the past from which the events in LOTR flow. In that indirect way, it adds greater depth and weight to the events told of in LOTR.

[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

Close. I was reading the LOTR in 1979-80. My father noticed I was reading fantasy and sci-fi, reached over and handed me a boxed set of paperbacks from his bookshelf: "Here, try this." My seventh grade teachers would've cursed his name if they'd known, because I couldn't put them down, not even for class. Spellbound.

The Silmarillion, I appreciated the sections with a clear arc, especially the early biblical section, but it faltered and became disjointed. I was disappointed, it obviously an unfinished work--and not just a little bit unfinished, but radically so.

[littlemanpoet]

To this day I remember back in about 1975, my brother, eight years my senior, making an educated guess that Sauron had been Feanor. Not a bad guess, considering, but no.

[CSteefel]

I read LOTR back in 1965. Discovered the books somehow and then disappeared into my grandfather's bomb shelter (which he built in the nuclear war scare in the earliest 1960s, despite being located in southern Minnesota) for 2-3 days for non-stop reading.

Beyond that, the legend of the Elder Days only came through in the stories from Gandalf, the song of Luthien and Beren on the approach to Weathertop, and then in Rivendell. But I cannot say I remember absorbing all of the Legendarium there. Most of the additional information came from the Appendices of course...