I read LOTR in my Senior Year of High School–class of 1966–the year the paperback editions came out. Loved it & read it several times in the following years. Also read The Hobbit. Also read The Once & Future King that year, so I also had an interest in the Arthurian Thing.
Myth, legend, history have remained big favorites–leading through Joseph Campbell to Jung. (& back again.)
When I heard that this guy in NZ was making a movie about LOTR, I re-read it–so I’d have it fresh in my mind & could not be “ruined.” I was pleased how much I still liked the books–& the movie didn’t “ruin” anyything. Perhaps I wouln’t have made all the same changes in the plot, but the visual images were wonderful. The Houston Natural Science Museum had the show featuring props & costumes–I went twice. www.hmns.org/exhibits/past_exhibits/the_lord_of_the_rings.asp
Finally made it through the Silmarillion–really, it picks up after the first few chapters! And I’m working up my strength to continue with the History of Middle Earth.
When I was growing up we only had 1 car and the library was not nearby, BUT we had a bookmobile that came once every 2 weeks. One week there was nothing I wanted to take out, and the lady asked about it. She said I should try the Hobbit. I read about 20 pages and brought it back 2 weeks later. The lady said I should try again. I did.
This was 7th or 8th grade.
[I can still picture that bookmobile with the little office around the driver’s seat, and I am grateful.]
Did you enjoy them but not bother to read them again or have you gone back to them time and time again like those on the thread who first read them as youngsters?
I first read The Hobbit in junior high school. I tried LOTR several times during high school, but usually lost interest right after they left Rivendell. The first time I made it all the way through was during college.
Well, shortly after the first Peter Jackson movie came out, I learned that one of my aunts is a fan of the books. She would have been in her 30s when they were first published. So maybe it’s only 98%.
I don’t really remember how old I was the first time I read the books. I do remember trying to discuss them with my 4th grade classmates and not being able to find anyone else that had even read The Hobbit. I was 8 in 4th grade so I probably read them when I was 7, might have even read The Hobbit at age 6.
I re-read the LOTR books probably every year, in fact I just re-started on Fellowship about 9 days ago.
I first read it when I was 12, which seems to be about the optimum age. A guy at school gave me a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring on the last day of class, just saying “Here, you’d probably like this.” I had no idea what it was about; I’d only vaguely heard of it, having seen an ad for the books in the Saturday Evening Post (“Come to Middle Earth!”) and then noting a passing reference to Tolkien in a Mad magazine article about hippies. I devoured the trilogy during summer vacation, followed by The Hobbit and The Tolkien Reader. I still have those same paperback copies from 1968, though they’re a little worse for wear nowadays. I don’t know how many times I’ve reread it over the years; probably still less than ten. The last time I read it was just after the Fellowship movie was released.
I received The Hobbit and LOTR for my 11th birthday (1982). I finished them within a week. Since then, I would say that I have read them every 3-4 years, on average. They are better every time. I find them very comforting - like a visit from a dear, old friend. I find that I tend to schedule my readings for periods when I know that I will be able to dedicate a significant amount of time to the reading.
In contrast, I read vol’s I and II of the HOME in 8th grade when I had the chicken pox but was not able to get through the rest (including The Silmarillion) until my early 20’s.
Read them for the first time in 1973, at the age of 12. Read LotR straight through, under the covers at night, not stopping until 3 am or so each day. During school. BOY was I tired.
Have read them at various intervals ever since, more times than I would care to count. Most recently, polished them off again just prior to the third movie.
I first saw the Hobbit cartoon in school (yeah…must have been near the end of the school year, or maybe a rainy recess?). I found it terribly interesting.
To be honest, I still get that song stuck in my head (where they’re trapped in the pine trees right beore the Eagles save them):
*Fifteen Birds
In five fir trees
Their feathers were fanned
By the fiery breeze
What funny little birds,
They had no wings
O what shall we do
With the funny little things?*
I read the Hobbit soon after (X-Mas gift from my dad) and then read the LOTR (around age 12 or so…1982)…I felt very grown-up at that point. I tried the Silmarillion at that point, and got bored quickly.
I tried the Silmarillion again in 1988 (age 18), and was stunned by the breadth of the story. I have since re-read LOTR about 6 times, and Silmarillion about 10-15 times.
Still haven’t seen the movies…may never do so. I like what’s in my head better.
I first read LOTR when I was about 13 or 14, around 1966 (I don’t remember exactly). I still have those paperbacks; have carried them with me every time, every place I have moved since then - and that’s many times. can’t begin to know how many times I’ve reread it. I love it.
(Interestingly enough, I may have read the Hobbit all the way through just once. Have read many volumes about Tolkien and his writings, but never completed the Sil. Lost my original edition of Bored of the Rings, drat it all)
I first tried to read LOTR when I was 8 or 9, just after I finished The Hobbit, but lost interest after Bilbo disappeared from the story at his birthday party and didn’t get past Gandalf explaining about the Ring.
I picked it up again when I was 14, and read it straight through for the first time. I’ve read it maybe 25 times since.
I read it when I was home with chicken pox for a couple of weeks at about thirteen. I re-read it in a few years. I did find it a bit tedious at times and even as a kid thought the Tom Bombadil part felt like a separate short story shoehorned into the main narrative. It is still one of my favorite books, but I’m not afraid to criticize it. I actually thought that The Hobbit was a better story overall, though it obviously doesn’t have the depth of The Lord of the Rings.
Got it with a book token I got from doing well at school (that really dates it!) so there’s a congratulations note from my old headmaster inside the front cover as a bonus. I like to point out to mate, a Tolkien fan, that my copy doesn’t say “now a major motion picture” on the front cover
I read The Fellowship and got somewhere over halfway through The Two Towers when I was somewhere in the 10-12 year old range.
My impression at the time, having read a lot of fantasy already, was that while as the books had probably originated the rest of fantasy to come, I’d already read so much that had copied from and bettered what Tolkien had started, that reading Tolkien was just like reading a substandard and trite version of what I was always reading.
And Tolkiens gradual tendency to spend more and more time going over the history of each and every single rock, archway, rune, and race as the books proceeded was putting me off. Personally, I just can’t enjoy a book that takes twenty pages off between every advancement in the story. It just strikes me as being intellectual wanking off, rather than seeking to entertain and teach your readers. I don’t care for authors who don’t care for me.
And no, the books weren’t just too difficult for me. At the same time as I was reading them, I was reading Shakespeare on my own (in fact, I started with Shakespeare several years before the Lord of the Rings.)
I did enjoy the Hobbit though, and thought that he did a perfectly good job as a storyteller on that one.
I read *The Hobbit * when I was very young…3rd or 4th grade. I’ve been reading LOTR since I was 10 or 11. I re read it practically every year, and am currently reading Fellowship of the Ring again, at 35.
I tried to read The Silmarillion when I was about 14 or so and just couldn’t get into it. I finally picked it back up in my mid-twenties because I just had to know abut the 1st age. Since then I think I’ve re-read *The Silmarillion * at least twice a year.
One of my best friends didn’t pick the books up until after she saw Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the Ring. She was in her late 20’s at the time and has also started to re-read the books herself, as well as listen to the entirety as an audio book.
I find that I can’t read most fantasy books because they are so derivative of LOTR and not in a good way, which is sort of the same thing **Sage Rat ** mentioned only in reverse. Of course, I like all the nit-picky details and the depth of the history. I find that each time I read it, a different part of the story strikes me in a way it hadn’t before. When I was a kid, say, my favorite part of the book was the Barrow Downs. Now, my favorite would have to be either the betrayal of Smeagol or the Ride of the Rohirrim. But over the years I’ve cycled through the whole series as my favorite and just keep going through it again and again. I don’t know if I’ll ever get tired of it.
I read the Lord of the Rings as a kid. I must have been about 10 or so. I wore the first set of books out and have replaced the replacements several times.
I read them all when I was 20 or 21. I thought “The Hobbit” was a nice kiddie book, and that LOTR was meh. I was reading stuff like “The Song of Roland” and “Tristan and Iseult” at the time, and was hoping for something a bit more from LOTR, since Tolkien was such a noted scholar and all. I was quite disappointed.
I do like Jackson’s movies quite a bit, though. IMO, good acting plus good script writing (even if “YES” is a bit overused) rescued a good story line from Tolkien’s clumsy prose, and dreadful poetry.
It is not lost on me that Tolkien was dealing with big themes, which the movies tended to shuffle off to the side for the sake of keeping things going. I don’t think he did it very well, though. Perhaps if he had spent less time on inventing new languages, and more on English, it would have been better. But then, I suppose without his compulsion to invent languages, the books wouldn’t have been written at all.
I was maybe 12 or 13 and started with worn used bookstore paperbacks. I think I started with The Fellowship of the Ring rather than The Hobbit. I do remember I hard a hard time getting started on the Fellowship book with all the big party stuff at the beginning. I think I started the book several times. Things got much much better after the slow beginning.
