# Tolkien: A guy thing?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-a-guy-thing/68158>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [June 9, 2001, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-a-guy-thing/68158 "2001-06-09T06:20:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2001, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-a-guy-thing/68158/41 "2001-06-11T14:59:13Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> (And as a female reader, I’m having a lot more trouble with Dune than I ever had with LotR…)
> 
> * * *

Pepper Mill is now trying to work her way through **Dune** , and apparently it’s not yielding easily.

Of course, she hasn’t read **The Hobbit** or **LOTR** yet either. Surprising, considering that we picked each other up at the World SF Convention.

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**Author:** ![Zumba\_The\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/779978/32.png) [@Zumba\_The\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zumba_The_Cat)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2001, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-a-guy-thing/68158/42 "2001-06-11T15:14:43Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Kallessa \*  
> \*\*This did not screw up my gender identification, in fact, Strider, quite naturally, became the romantic leading man in my healthy adolescent fantasies as soon as I was ready to have them. \*\*

I am glad to know that I wasn’t the only young girl who was in love with Strider.

I read The Hobbit when I was in fifth grade. My teacher gave it to me because I read everything we were suppose to read too fast. She was just trying to keep me busy.

The next year I started the LOTR series which took me most of the year to read.

I still re-read them every few years. (And there aren’t many books I re-read)

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**Author:** ![lno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a8b319/32.png) [@lno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lno)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2001, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tolkien-a-guy-thing/68158/43 "2001-06-11T15:22:42Z")

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Dear GOD was I a geek. They don’t come much worse than I did back in junior high. I won’t go into specifics, but suffice it to say that I was horribly embarrassed by it later on.

('course, I still read the books every few years, and I’m going to see the movie, but I expect to be disappointed by it since it can’t do justice to a kid’s imagination.)

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