I first read The Hobbit at about age 8 or 9, LOTR a year or so later.
What Exit? and jayjay must be out playing together or something, to miss this thread thus far.
I think it was 9th grade? The Hobbit was easy, but I initially got a little bogged down on The Fellowship…, but then hit that sweet spot, and flew right through it.
Same thing happened to me w/ The Stand.
Thank GOD I persevered!!!
I first read it at age 50 (after several attempts inwhich I couldn’t make it through the first book just like Fretful Porpentine), and found it to be a mildly interesting if overlong fantasy with loads of technical problems that would make any author blush.
I have been loudly proclaiming here ever since the movies made the boards almost as tiresome as the Shire that Tolkien fans are exactly those who read it as youngsters, and that no one who first reads it as an adult can understand what the obsession is about.
There’s been one or two people who have challenged me on this, but the overwhelming 99+% majority have conformed to my expectations. As have those in this thread.
I really can’t explain why this dichotomy is so pronounced for this book. It’s certainly true for most classic books of children’s literature, but LotR was not written for children. It’s a publishing freak. More power to him, but it’s not for me.
I read the Hobbit and then the LotR in 6th grade, right before the first airing of the Xerox Hobbit Cartoon Special on TV. My BIL had the Silmarillion so I read that next and found Smith Wootton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham in the school library. I then reread the Hobbit and the LotR. I have since reread all of them too many times.
These are my favorite books by far. See my location.
Hi, GingerOfTheNorth & **Mr Bus Guy **, I just saw it, I was busy wasting my time on a refinishing a dresser for my son. 
Jim {Actually, Middle-Earth is an obsession for me}
Hobbit = 1st Grade. Started LotR in 5th grade and finished in 6th. Ah, memories.
I first read LotR in 1969 when I was 10. I’ve been rereading it my whole life since. It makes the top of my all-time favorites, hands down. Nothing else comes close.
There was so much going on in it that my 10-year old brain didn’t grasp upon first reading; didn’t matter, it captivated me anyway. At each rereading as I got older more and more depth of meaning opened up to me. My daughter was just having this conversation with me the other day, she’d just discovered the effect herself. This is why it makes such a great perennial favorite.
I’d read The Hobbit when I was 9, and instantly knew it was a unique find in juvenile literature, having already read a lot, but nothing like this. I was so hooked on it that when a publisher’s blurb at the end mentioned LotR, I did not rest until I got my hands on it. Once I was done devouring that, in one of the Appendices in the Return of the King, I caught an offhand reference to the Silmarillion as the book where the ancient stories referenced in LotR were told in full detail. So I immediately demanded a copy of the Silmarillion. The girl at the bookstore knew her Tolkien. She said the Silmarillion probably wouldn’t be published until after he died, because he could never quit revising it.
Her prediction finally came true in 1977, after Christopher Tolkien’d had four years to work on crafting his dad’s raw material into something that read like a book. It was the beginning of my freshman year at college, I immediately pre-ordered a copy, been waiting for 8 years!
I first read them at age 18, back in 1965, and have loved them ever since. I read THE HOBBIT to my kids at young ages; my son read LotR in early teens, then read other fantasy works, and came back to read LotR after college. At that point, he said he understood why I always said it was such a wonderful work.
Hobbit at 7, FOTR at 7, TT & RotK at 8. Bored of the Rings in middle school, and the Silmarillion when it was published. Various other Tolkein in between.
I first started reading LOTR in my early teens. “The Fellowship of the Ring” was the first book I ever started reading and gave up before finishing. All the fooling around in the forest with Tom Bombadil was just too twee.
When I was about 17, I read The Hobbit and liked it enough to give the trilogy another try. But the only way to get through it was to buy a copy of Bored of The Rings, because everyone assured me that you had to read the trilogy first (they were right). So I slogged through the first book, and finally found it becoming interesting with The Two Towers. Eventually, I read the whole thing – and found Bored of the Rings delightful.
I have no desire to reread them. To paraphrase Steve Brodie, “I read it oncet.”
Read The Hobbit as a kid (eight? Ten?) and didn’t much like it. Read LotR at twenty, because of the bullying of an ex-boyfriend. “You haven’t read the Lord of the Rings? What is wrong with you?”
Loved it. Read the whole thing in three days. I thought I was an Ent. Actually, I still sort of think that.
I’ve read the trilogy probably twenty times since then.
I did not read The Hobbit or the LOTR trilogy until my 40s but enjoyed them very much. Ditto for the wife.
My father read the books (Hobbit and LOTR) to us over the course of a summer, when I was about 12 or 13 years old. Since then I’ve re-read everything at least a dozen times.
I read the annotated version of the Hobbit when I was nine and loved it. I distinctly remember tracing the map in the back and looking up what the runes on the front cover meant. I didn’t realize there was a “sequel” until my older sister borrowed the LotR when I was 14. She was in the middle of the Two Towers when I finished FotR so I did a dumb thing and went ahead to Return of the King. Oh well, I read it enough after that to become familiar with the proper sequence of events. A year later, I noticed these strange books in the Tolkien section full of his old notes. I checked out the ones they had then when I returned them, I noticed that most of them had actually been complied into a narrative, the Silmarillion. The History of Middle Earth stuff made way more sense after that. What can I say, I really love backstory.
Here’s where I admit I don’t own a copy of the Lord of the Rings. Shameful, I know.
I read The Hobbit when I was around twelve or thirteen. I read The Lord of the Rings about two years later.
My mom would periodically get on a kick of reading to me at bedtime long after I’d mastered reading for myself. One of the fruits of this was having The Hobbit read to me a chapter each night when I was about 11.
She gave me LOtR (the Ballantine paperback edition) when I was in eighth grade. Soon after I told her I was sad the book was over. She suggested I read the sequel and so was surprised to discover I’d finished not just Fellowship, but the whole trilogy. Four years later, I got The Silmarillion for Christmas, but by then my interests had shifted, so I’ve never read the whole thing. On the other hand, I’ve reread LOtR several times, most recently in 2003.
Our class (under 10s, then under 11s) used to get an end-of-day story from the teacher. We had The Hobbit read to us, and later the first part of LOTR as far as “Flight to the Ford” (ran out of term by then). It wasn’t until I was 15 that I managed to get hold of a copy for myself, and I wasn’t even looking for it at the time. I devoured it in about three days - on the beach, on the campsite - and then, IIRC, had to go back and start all over again.
I tend to skip the odd word or two in reading, but I read it in turn to Mrs M as a bedtime story the year she was pregnant with No. 2 son, so I now know I have read every word of it.
The Hobbit was on the list of books I was assigned to read before my freshman year of high school. That led me to the trilogy, which I began reading that same summer, 1968. I’ve reread the trilogy a few times as an adult.
My BIL gave me the boxed set of paperbacks for Christmas when I was 11. I just about wore them out re-reading them over the years. Bought them again when I was about 25, still have 3 of them (loaned The Hobbit out and never got it back). Last year Johnny L.A. had to go and post that these are available. How could I resist? $300 worth of JRRT sitting on the shelf, waiting. At least the next time the urge strikes, I’m ready.
Precious books, all mine NO YOU CAN’T BORROW THEM !!!.. precious
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Precious, Precious? You call that Precious? I have the first edition of the complete Red book bound in Red as a single book in a protective cover. Only $50 at the time. I have two Boxed Hobbits to go with it that I found for $10 and $5 respectively. One is Gold and One is Green. 
I first read them at age 11. I still reread them about once a year.