The 150 million number isn’t the total number of sales of each volume. It’s an estimate of the total number of “sets” sold because Tolkien viewed it as a single novel. See here.
I read The Hobbit in 3rd grade. (It was written as a children’s story, right?) My dad had the hardback edition with cool runes and maps which I loved to look at. It would be a few years later before we found in the basement his LotR paperback set. Read The Hobbit again to prep and even used the appendix at the end to translate the runes on the front of The Hobbit.
For the record, I have planned that my kids will read/be read The Hobbit before seeing the movies. It’s a must. And for the scoring, my wife has read The Hobbit but not LotR. It was a trade. She read it and I read Pride and Prejudice. (The non-zombie version)
So they’re saying 150 million of each - FOTR, TTT, and ROTK? Gotcha - that makes more sense. I read it as the other way around.
Yes, that’s how I read it.
Honestly, the animated version wasn’t that bad, and was reasonably true to the book. I think it gets a bad rap from association with the two animated LotR movies.
I thought everyone liked the Bakshi film.
I liked it when I was eleven, because I was in love with the books and the Bakshi film was all I had available to me. I grew to hate it: the rotoscoping, especially rotoscoped characters taking to conventionally animated characters; the horrible voice casting; the liberties taken with the story; the failure to bring aboard an actual Tolkien scholar, or even someone who had read the appendices (even at 11, I knew they were pronouncing things like Celeborn and Sauron wrong); the lack of even the slightest attention to continuity (e.g. they decided halfway through production to start calling Saruman “Aruman,” without bothering to go back and rerecord the previous utterances of his name).
Great orchestral soundtrack, though. I think I might even prefer it to the sountrack of the Peter Jackson trilogy. 
Uh, I thought everyone HATED the Bakshi LotR. (Except, of course, for all the 11 year olds who saw it at that age and were super impressed. These people should cherish that memory and NEVER WATCH IT AGAIN.)
FYI: A Critique of Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings
On the other hand, I DO still have a certain soft spot for the Rankin Bass version of The Hobbit.
Maybe this is like Labyrinth. I saw both when I was about 11 and loved them. Then, when I watched Labyrinth as an adult I was too busy being terrified of David Bowie’s crotch bulge to enjoy it at all.
Wow, Airk, that link brings back memories. That’s the same site that has the truly epic summary for people who need to do a book report.
I call it the Bowie Constrictor. :eek:
I remember it well. My aforementioned sister gave me the Hobbit reprint with illustrations from the cartoon, and I really liked it. I actually prefer the look and proportions of the Dwarves from that cartoon to the actors playing Thorin & Co. in the PJ movies: http://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original/1t1scnPumwugILHcw0R9pmo4Ecu.jpg.
I like it just fine. If it hadn’t been a musical, it would have been even better.
Lord of the Rings was written as a single work, tell a single story, and intended to be published as such; it was divided into three volumes for financial reasons. The Potter novels were not written all at once and tell seven separate stories.
Yes, this was explained earlier.
That was different for me. I grabbed the *Silmarillion *the instant it was published. I enjoyed the Ainulindalë and Valaquenta, but then got bogged down in the epic sections. I didn’t read it all the way through until almost 20 years later. When it was first published was when I turned 18 and started college at the same time, and I thought Ainulindalë was one of the best things I’d ever read. Creation through song, like in the Kalevala. And the original music can still be heard in the sound of water, which impressed me the most of all. Only thing I wasn’t too happy about was the description of Melkor’s evil music, which seemed like a potshot against jazz.
I saw all of these when I was young and liked them all. I’m sort of afraid of going back to watch them again. I just checked on Netflix and neither the Rankin/Bass Hobbit or Return of the King are available. So no temptation I guess.
I always hear Mars the Bringer of War when reading that bit.
I always think of postmodern atonal crap - Stockhausen, or Glass on a bad day.
Personally, I associate Melkor’s music with really bad jazz. Good jazz is what his part was supposed to sound like, in the score.