Female. The Hobbit is only one of two books that was *so boring *I never finished it even after attempting it a second time. (wuthering heights is the other) I won’t read any of his books.
Female, read the Hobbit when I was about 7 (Mom thought it was too old for me…at the same time as thinking I was too grown up for dragons & elves…guess I have my father’s taste in books), read LOTR shortly after & have reread it about 5 or 6 times since then (hey, I do have other SF&F stuff to read you know & a job and a need to sleep & a girlfriend in another timezone…something had to give ;)).
I even managed :yawn: The Silmarillion at 11 & The Lost Tales at some point & got 98% in The Hobbit computer game (would be 100% but Bard wouldn’t shoot the dragon…I carried him to the right point, set him down, the dragon is hacking down the lake towards us, the wind screaming in his wings, the laketown burning in his wake, and I say to Bard “shoot the dragon”. You’re going to die if you don’t, so what have you got to lose? He refused, we died. I got pissed off & didn’t reload it…I still have the saved game somewhere & the list of directions underground to find the ring. Yes, it was a text based game, but I have a vivid imagination).
I’m female, and I love The Hobbit and LotR. In fact, I just started re-reading the books for the fifth time or so. My mother loves the books too. Mr. Winkie has never read them, but then he’s not much of a reader (how I ever married a non-reader still mystifies me. But I guess he has other redeeming qualities 
)
I’m really torn on seeing the movie, for just this reason. I want to see the beautiful cinematography, but I really love what’s already in my head. I know that if I see the movie, that’s all I will be able to picture the next time I read LotR .
Mom was the one who handed me a copy of The Hobbit.
Been hooked ever since.
My own Mom-- a book pusher. <sob>
I used to re-read the Ring Trilogy, and the Chronicals of Narnia every January. And I am female.
I did that for ten years…sort of an annual reading of books I love. I don’t know exactly why I quit…I am going to dig them out and re-read them now!
Female here and I have my own copies of the books so I can read the over when I want. I got caught up in the fantasy of it all.
Female. Read the trilogy too many times to count.
Male. Only read The Hobbit… once owned the entire trilogy but never got around to getting halfway past The Fellowship of the Ring. Now I feel compelled to go to the library next week and check out the trilogy to render gender equity.
Male. I’ve read it 12 times since 1975–but I didn’t really get obsessed until the third time!
Female. I’ve read The Hobbit and LoTR so many times the covers are falling off the books. I’ve also read and enjoyed The Silmarillion, but I’ve found the Books of Lost Tales to be heavy slogging.
[hijack]LoTR provided me with my first encounter with censorship. I’d read “Riddles in the Dark” as a 6th grader, found out there was a book, went to the public library and checked out The Hobbit. Loved it. Got to the end and found out there were THREE MORE BOOKS!! Got my mom to take me back to the library so I could check those out–and was told by the librarian that I wasn’t allowed to check them out because they were “adult books” (that is, they weren’t in the childrens’ books sections). Got my mom to check them out for me. Silly librarian.[/hijack]
Thank you all for your replies.
Mr. Rilch has read this thread, but unfortunately, he still holds to his assertion that “very few” females read Tolkien. He won’t let go of the Tolkien/D&D connection. He insists that roleplaying is dominated by males*, and from that he leaps to the conclusion that people who don’t roleplay don’t read Tolkien, ergo, very few females read Tolkien.
Gar! I’d like to hit him over the head with his LOTR compendium! The problem is, he was raised and attended high school in a very uppity community, where he was an oddball by virtue of reading anything, and then to a jock college where there weren’t any roleplaying groups at all. It wasn’t until he went to art school that he finally realized he wasn’t unique, but he still likes to think of his geek interests as being shared by only a tiny, fanatic cult.
Oh well. As Friend stated to me a couple weeks ago, “[Mr. Rilch’s real name] is never wrong.” 
*I didn’t allow myself to be sidetracked by this, not for very long, anyway. I informed him that there are females who roleplay, but he said, “If you get five chicks together, they’re not going to play D&D; they’re going to do each other’s hair and talk about boys.” He also claims that there aren’t a significant number of females in the SCA, because “How many chicks want to dress up as Maid Marian on a regular basis? It’s about guys doing swordfighting!”
Please tell Mr. Rilchiam that when I was in the SCA, I rarely dressed up as Maid Marian—because I was too busy keeping my ARMOR in order! You’d be surprised at how hard a 130 pound woman, with a fast, light sword, can hit a big 200 pound man, and how fast she can get out of the way before he can bring his big, heavy, manly sword around. Let’s just say I won my share of fights.
On the other hand, I’ve always had the build for Elizabethan style gowns (think cleavage), for Twelfth Night and other fancy occasions, so when I wasn’t in armor, I was treated as a Lady. Especially by tall men. . .
More statistical info on my wife and I: I was heavily into role-playing in Junior High, my wife never was.
I do not believe that readers of fantasy are all role-players, but the reverse is more likely than not true. I do agree with him on his male vs. female roleplaying angle. While there are female role players, I think the vast majority are male. Also, it still is a ‘fringe geeky’ thing to do. A small minority of America has ever gotten into the stuff.
Your comments about “Mr. Rilch” being from what you consider an ‘unusual’ formative year situtation are reversed I think from reality. I would guess that his school age years represent the majority’s situation. Role Playing Readers of Tolkien are a very small minority.
More documentation for Mr. Rilch’s ongoing survey of gender-based bias in selection of reading material and role-playing game participation and behavioral correlations and linkages in same.
I am female. I was heavily into RPGs in college. My primary RPG group at that time contained more females than males. (Also observed: the females tended to be the better role-players.) The ratio was approximately 2 females for every 1 male, and that held fairly constant through the years I was a part of groups.
My Loved One is also female. She, too, was into RPGs in college. She was a part of the same groups I was.
We both still play when we can find the time. Even though there are no men around this house to make us. We’d play more if we could find a group, but no luck so far, and adventures for one (with the other GMing or DMing) are hard to write and play.
Oh, and as for reading material:
I have read The Hobbit and part of Lord of the Rings. I thought TH was sort of OK and that LotR was really…slow. Dull. Blah. I like some fantasy books, and even really love some, but in the speculative fiction genre I tend to prefer science fiction - the ‘harder’ the better.
LO has read The Hobbit and most of the LotR books. She really liked TH. She thought LotR was boring, and gave up on the series halfway through the last book. When it comes to SF, she prefers the fantasy end of the spectrum.
I’d say we don’t fit most of Mr. Rilch’s hypotheses. Skew? Or genuine data points? Only time can tell.
(One more thing that may astound Mr. R, if he was a part of a standard AD&D group: both LO and I very much prefer playing clerics, basically to the point of exclusivity.)
New Math?
I’m female. I read LotR for the first time over a summer break from college. I was working in a auto parts factory, making ashtrays and hubcaps for Chevy, and I listened to all three books on tape on my Walkman. It was a wonderful first reading, because listening to them helped me appreciate the poetry of Tolkien’s language. It also helped me hate my job a little less.
It never occurred to me that it might be a guy thing or a girl thing. It is definitely a people-who-can-read thing, and I sort of resent the upcoming movie for taking that away from us.
By the way, when I was fighting in the SCA, my very favorite thing to do was to use my helpless girlish good looks to lure some macho man out onto the field and then surprise him by kicking his butt.
female. I read Hobbit & LOTR in high school as did several of my girl friends. I’m currently re-reading them and have started many a conversation at the pool with my choice of reading material … all from females.
I can count on one hand the number of guys I know who have read the books. But then, I think I can count the number of guys I know that even read books on two hands. (not a slam, just the fact in my lil world) 
I think the fantasy lit fan-base is definetly skewing towards women these days. I know a lot of girls who have read LotR. Hell, even my MOM read 'em! I have her copy of the series, from '65, with the crappy hippy-art covers and everything.
Rilchiam: The fact that your husband can say things like “If you get five chicks together, they’re not going to play D&D; they’re going to do each other’s hair and talk about boys.” or “How many chicks want to dress up as Maid Marian on a regular basis? It’s about guys doing swordfighting!” and still get married gives me hope for my own romantic future. In my expierience, while all role-players read fantasy, not all (or even most) fantasy readers role-play. Gaming is still a staggeringly guy thing, and still tragically geeky.
Mmmmmm…Strider…
But yeah, I agree with you. I never had problems identifying with male characters, although I wonder how often it works the other way around (men identifying with female characters).
A lot of Tolkien fans do that, despite the fact that LotR is extremely widely read. Not to knock anyone – I kinda have that tendency myself.
:eek:
Further proof of my seminal theory that geeks travel in same-gendered flocks and only discover each other in obscure, rare events.
Expect my dissertation the end of this year…