How were you introduced to Tolkien?

[Zigûr]

For some reason when I was, I think, ten years old, my mother decided to read "An Unexpected Party" to me. I don't know why she did, I was certainly very much grown out of having books read to me by that age, but I think she just wanted to get me interested in a new book and thought this was a good way to do it.

The thing that captured my attention the most, for whatever reason, were the Dwarves. Much like Bilbo is temporarily enraptured by their song, I found the Dwarves very interesting. In any event I promptly read the rest of The Hobbit on my own, followed by The Lord of the Rings (I was at first resistant, confusing its title with Lord of the Flies of which I had been told before, and not interested at that time in reading about boys trapped on an island!). I even attempted The Silmarillion all before age eleven but it wasn't until a few years later that I was really able to get to grips with that and start working on bringing the whole legendarium into focus.