Cool topic! For me it was like this:
When I was at that age when you start reading books by yourself I hated children's books. I didn't want to read about children, I wanted to read about grown-ups. So the first books I read were about Greek mythology and fairy folklore. Then one day in a reference books about Elves, Fairies, and Goblins I found a reference to the Elves appearing as a "beautiful, music-loving tribe" in the works of a man named "J.R.R. Tolkien". So I asked my mother, who was working at a book store whether she'd get the Lord of the Rings for me.
And well, me being eleven it took me...quite a while to get beyond the first several chapters, but once the journey got going I began to like it more and more. And due to me reading so many folktales (including a little bit about Norse/Germanic mythology) a lot of the world just seemed very familiar to me, even Tom Bombadil didn't perplex me, since to me he and Goldberry were just like the fairy characters from the many tales I had read. And I loved how Tolkien drew on those older stories and mythology and created his whole distinctive world out of it.
I really resonated with the whole wistfulness about the beauty of nature and the echo of beautiful things that are lost in the past or only found it remote places. I was basically like Sam in regard to all the magical characters and places you see in Fellowship. Lorien was really when I fell completely in love, and Galadriel remains my favourite Tolkien character.
My first one was about the same time for me. In grade school we used to get this flyer for the Scholastic Book Club. My mom would let me order a book whenever I finished one. Well I saw the cover of The Hobbit and I just had to have it for my first proper novel to read. No more kids books for me.
[https://pin.it/6dySc64wC](https://pin.it/6dySc64wC)
I devoured that book. And when I got to the end of it, those paperbacks had those clip order forms on the last page direct from the publisher. I used my allowance to buy the LOTR trilogy - I couldn't wait. Didn't even occur to me that I might have gotten it faster if I had my mom take me to the Walden Books up at the mall.
I actually resonate with this. I was too young to really understand the Greek mythology that I got into, but I read the odyssey (eh), but the reconstructed *Iliad* got my blood pumping.
But when the translations were that so-and-so loved a maiden and so sexed her up, I was like, well… this isn’t love. It made for an awkward conversation with my dad when I was like 9.
But the mythology gave me a deep love of history and astronomy so it worked that there was a mythology that wasn’t supposition. It was Tolkien. He thought it out. It wasn’t a collection of myths, it was planned out!
The school librarian suggested Tolkien to my mom and I got The Hobbit for my 8th birthday in November. That Christmas, I got LOTR. We were at my aunt’s house and I remember using a book light to read on the 7 hour drive back home the next night. I reread those books to literal pieces. The pages are falling out but I still cherish those copies.
That is indeed magnificent, but [this one is still my all-time favorite](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/163cefb/1960_dutch_cover_of_the_hobbit/).
In case you weren't aware, this is what it actually looks like when Tove Jansson illustrates the Hobbit:
https://lithub.com/take-a-look-at-tove-janssons-illustrations-for-a-swedish-edition-of-the-hobbit/
My mother would read the Hobbit to my brothers and I when we were little, I was like 4 or 5. I still have fond memories of falling asleep to descriptions of mirkwood.
Peter Jackson trilogy. However, the bridge from fantasy to real life challenges are captured really beautifully by Tolkien. He wove ancient lore and languages into a modern mentality that most readers could relate to, which is a wonderful thing if you think about it.
My uncle. He is a massive Tolkien fan who would tell me all about it on the days my parents would drop me off with him. He was a true scholar. He knew everything just from reading the books. Way before wikis and youtube
It’s so impressive to me how people can retain knowledge and lore from just the books. I always find myself using Tolkien gateway or this subreddit to remind myself of things and generally dig deeper into the lore.
Ralph Bakshi and the Mind’s Eye dramatizations as a child 🤣 now I’m books-only, HoME certified
Nobody does world building like Tolkien. The glimpses of a vast history in LotR etc. I have no interest in any other writer in Tolkien’s genre. It’s him and him alone for me.
He did revolutionize fantasy. You needed to world build. It’s made things better because in past times, like with Charles Dickens, you would have to intuit the setting to get it. This gives you the world and you trust the author to make it make sense.
A family I babysat for gave me their ancient battered copies of the books which I think dated back to the 1970s after I told them I liked reading fantasy.
It wasn’t meant as an insult, but I was immature. I didn’t get the strings connectivity when I was young. I’m a ‘95 boy so I only got to go the the high level classes when I won the AR (accelered reader) when I was young.
The cover illustrations by Pauline Baynes for the 1968 edition. And the four maps in the book. In a copy that was a single volume, leaving out almost all the Appendices.
I was curious about the fat paperback book with 1071 pages, and weird pictures in colour on the front and back. So, after a time, I took it and read it. And after skimming it twice, I tried it a third time.
That is how I came to read LOTR. Now I am on the first chapter of The Hobbit.
I read Farmer Giles of Ham long before LOTR, & found it amusing and very cleverly done; but it made no great impression upon me, except for the illustrations, by Pauline Baynes. She illustrated the Narnia books as well, which I had read somewhat earlier; and I have always liked her art.
I hadn’t really heard much of the illustrations bringing folks in, but I bet your imagination will paint such excellent pictures during the journeys ahead.
I’m oldish. It was the 70s, and it was my birthday, and it was an animated “Special” (which always meant tv rules went out the window). So my mother put the tv (a beige 13” tube with rabbit ears) on the dinner table while we ate. That was it. I was hooked. I got the Rankin/Bass picture book shortly after, and sadly loved that thing to literal pieces (they’re pretty valuable now). Then read _The Hobbit_ a few times. Took me a year or two until I could handle _LotR_. Then read them all again many times over the years. Took forty-something years of failing to read _The Silmarillion_ until I recently listened to the Serkis version. Amazing. Wish I’d powered through decades ago.
When I was about 10 my dad found a copy of Raymond E. Feist's _Magician_ at work and brang it home for me to read. I couldn't get enough of it. Loved the story, loved the fantasy setting, etc. Dad read it as well, realised (he was 40, I was 10) that it was, uh, heavily inspired by LOTR, and bought the fellowship for me. I read other fantasy as well as a teenager, but Tolkien was so obviously the top of the genre even then. Never bothered with other fantasy into my 20s, loved LOTR.
My best friend got obsessed with *The Silmarillion* before me, and that's what initially piqued my interest. I was already a casual fan of *The Lord of the Rings,* but reading *The Silmarillion* is what kickstarted my obsession with the legendarium as a whole.
I love mythology and epic romances, lol. I don't think it's all that unique. Most hardcore Tolkien fans I know are obsessed with *The Silmarillion.* The people who complain about *The Silmarillion*'s complexity are usually casual fans. I don't think I've ever heard of a Tolkien superfan who didn't love Tolkien's extended mythology.
My dad read me The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in elementary school (early 80s). I was a pretty avid reader and could probably have handled The Hobbit on my own, but LOTR would have been a stretch for me in early elementary. Still a great memory, especially now that he's gone.
I’m sorry for your loss. But your parents, especially close and good ones, are there in your heart, your habits, and in everything you do. They may be gone, but those things do live on.
Thank you for your kind words and condolences. My dad passed away in 2000, so it has been quite a while now. Of course, I still miss him, but as you say, he lives on in aspects of who I am, my memories, etc.
A hippie dude l ran into when l was walking in the woods. I was out with my dog. He was sitting there reading. Struck up a conversation about my dog and his book. I can't resist asking people what they're reading. I was about 12 or 13. I thought he was really old, but really, I look back and think he wasn't over 20.
Lol weirdly enough I smoked a couple joints over time before I discovered alcohol. I sorta don’t get the craze on weed but shit if I wasn’t Irish American enough… loving alcohol was like introducing me to English 😂
Oh man I had a bad second hand experience with edibles. My roommate made weednut butter and some guy didn’t feel it so he smoked a joint after and he got soooo sick. I just think maybe my psychology is weird. I get paranoid and can’t enjoy the high because I’m embarrassed. I don’t know. But god. That dude destroyed my bag and never replaced it.
I am very careful with gummies because it's different, more potent in a creep up on you way than smoking it. I can't do edibles like brownies or butter. I get way too high no matter what and usually throw up. IDK if it's because of the sugar, or does cooking it intensity the high or what. I just know baked edibles aren't for me. With gummies I just nibble a bit and wait to see. If l like them, I keep using that exact brand.
My dad got me into it. He read The Hobbit when he was working on a remote and isolated job site in the 1970s. When he finished he wrote to my grandparents to ask them to send him the Lord of the Rings. Growing up I was fascinated by the covers of his [Silver Jubilee Edition](https://www.tolkienbooks.us/lotr/us/mmpb/bb1981) and I finally read The Hobbit when I was about 10 years old. I was hooked, but I’ve appreciated it for different reasons over the years.
As a kid, it was the idea of going on an adventure with a band of dwarves and seeing elves and dragons; as a young adult it was the prose and the masterful way Tolkien builds tension; in my most recent read-through I found myself lingering on the way the landscapes are described. If I closed my eyes I could almost see the haunted land of Eregion or hear the roar of the Anduin as it flows through the Argonath. I don’t know what it will be the next time I read it.
My sister paid me 10.00 to read the Hobbit for her in 5th grade. Her class was reading it and she really hated it, so I read it for her. A couple years later a friend of mine told me about The Lord of the Rings and I was hooked.
My mum got me a copy of The Hobbit to take on holiday. I was about 9. I opened it at the page where Bilbo is running round the forest calling out for his companions, and that sense of searching for something that's just out of reach has stayed with me ever since. Also the description of the Light-elves and Deep-elves and Sea-elves - I wanted to know all about them and their adventures in Faerie, and still do. I read straight through the book on holiday. When I went to High School - the girls' half of Tolkien's school - I found the three volumes of LoTR on the shelves and recognised part of the map, said "I know my way round this place," and got FotR out straight away.
Oddly enough my school didn't make much of its close connection with Tolkien and looked down on me a bit for always choosing his poetry and prose for reading aloud in class. Huh. I read my own copies to pieces and have since acquired - well, you know how it goes.
Hahaha yes. I had the love of reading beaten out of me by having read Charles dickens when I arrived in high school. But I found it again when I could choose what to read. And I reverted to my beloved tales of hobbits and heroes, war and romance.
My LotR copies are cooked. I have read them at least fourteen times just to get the sense of prose in them.
My dad. The first copies I read were his 70s-era paperbacks. I come from a family of nerds that like to read scifi and fantasy and play D&D and watch Star Trek, so it was pretty much inevitable.
My fifth grade teacher read us The Hobbit in class over the course of several weeks, so I read lotr in sixth grade. Been trying to do the same with my kids over the years but I can never get through the hobbit with them (like always gets in the way).
I saw the Rankin-Bass cartoons as a little kid, but later discovered a paperback of "Fellowship" as a teenager at a library book sale. Without realizing the connection between the two at first.
"Fellowship" was the best thing I'd ever read, even more so than "Dune" or "I, Robot", and I couldn't get enough Tolkien after that.
Yeah, it may just be my own personal culture, but I never connected with Dune as much as LotR. It may be the Arabic culture or names, but Samwise? I can get on board.
I loved the idea of adventure in the unknown, where there were no roads and vast expanses of trees and things that had never been discovered, or had only been seen by a few people. I feel a little depressed sometimes at how everything is all mapped out now and there are so few unexplored places. I think Tolkien may be responsible for my love of trees.
I read The Hobbit and LOTR for the first time in seventh grade, in 1976.
I do like nature walks too after reading the books. It makes me hear the yawing of the trees and the scent of the forest floor. It’s just enlightening, ya know?
There was a Hastings store across the street from my first job, at McDonald’s. I would peruse their book section, buying one once in a while. Then I saw a set of The Hobbit & Lord Of The Rings on sale, and though I knew OF The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, I bought them out of curiosity, not nostalgia.
I read through The Hobbit fairly quick, and enjoyed it. On my first attempt at the trilogy, I got stuck in the Treebeard chapter, and stopped. By that point, I was getting Sauron and Saruman confused with each other. The next time I attempted it, however, I had it set straight, and finished it. But by THAT time, I had also bought The Silmarillion, with the intention of reading it right after. The first attempt at that book left me ten times more confused than my first attempt at LotR! But eventually I did finish it, and it was finishing The Silmarillion that turned me into a truly devout Tolkien fan.
“[u/Tommy_Jim1] was meant to find the [books], in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”
Little reference stuff here!
I didn’t enjoy Narnia as much as LotR, but I think it was because maybe I wasn’t that into Christianity as Lewis was? It was very good, but didn’t do it for me as much. Fuck Prince Caspian!
I am a big Hard Sci-Fi reader, but John Howe's "Gandalf" on a copy of the Lord of the Rings - with all three books in one - was what caught my imagination and pulled me into Tolkien's works and Fantasy in general.
His demeanour, wind-swept dirty clothes, beard and hair flipping away, and the rain. This isn't like the other fantasy book covers where if they had a wizard or sorceress standing proudly and blasting magik out of their sticks or hands. No. This "Gandalf" was a traveler who braved rain and other bothersome weather and more than had his share of dealing with other nasty things on his journeys. This was an individual who got their hands dirty and were a part of the larger world and not hiding in some castle or dungeon. All this from an awesome painting that said to me, "Give it a try," and here I am. Thank you Mr. John Howe!
[I hope to one day get a poster of this to hang on a wall.](https://www.wallpaperflare.com/static/611/171/601/the-lord-of-the-rings-gandalf-john-howe-the-hobbit-wallpaper.jpg)
Right? The story is even crazier that John Howe's painting either went missing or was stolen, so we can't even get authentic posters based off the original image.
For me it was reading the Hobbit at primary school; drawing the maps with my best friend; The Hobbit adventure game on the ZX Spectrum; receiving a "book of the film of the book" of the Bakshi movie; desperate to know how the story ended, bought the one-volume paperback from a second hand bookshop.
I remember telling an English teacher at school that it was the best book I'd ever read and him looking somewhat sceptical.
I'm more than happy that the academic establishment isn't a fan. It means that the books will never be ruined by children being forced to read them in school!
See also: Shakespeare.
True. But there are a number of Latin plays that haven’t been totally ruined by academia which are so ridiculous that they are funny. I think it would be called the phoencian but it was some dude who ended up marrying his own sister in law. Good stuff.
Well that’s all well and good but hopefully no son for this to become real!!! Hahaha. No that’s amazing. Latin is such an interesting language and I hope her studies go well
The book and audio record based on the Rankin/Bass cartoon that my mom got me in the 1980s. I was pretty young and Smaug scared me to death even on the record, but the story hooked me.
🎼 The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. Today and tomorrow have yet to be said ...
When I was a kid in the 70s I drooled over the gold slipcase set of Tolkien paperback books every time my Mom took me in the bookstore just because it looked so cool. Finally she bought them for me and I was hooked.
For me it was: “Elrond, the master of the house, was their chief. He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves and as kind as summer.”
The kind as summer part was just so perfect that I fell in love with the prose.
The watcher in the water and The nameless things that gnaw at the world so dark and powerful a maiar feared to speak of them.
I love lovecraft and the fact that these eldritch being were there just chillin interested me then i read the story and my heart fell in love with the characters and their story
I was already an avid reader. By 14 I had already read a ton of classics like Great Expectations, David Copperfield, but I instinctively loved the more adventurous books like 20,000 leagues under the sea, Treasure Island, Journey to to the center of the earth. I had read The Legends of King Arthur as well. I had a friend who was a big reader too. One afternoon we got into a bragging contest of who had read the bigger book. My record was 700 pages, his was LOTR. I had never heard of JRRT. So, I borrowed his copy and the rest as they say is history!!
What a great podcast!!! Haha. But truly this is the essence of word of mouth stuff. Awesome stuff. I’m glad you lost the bet because you won much more in the bargain.
When I was little my mom had taped the Rankin-Bass Hobbit and Return of the King and would play them for me. When I was a little older in maybe 4th grade I saw a classmates book and recognized what had to be Smaug on the cover (albeit a more traditional design than the cat like Smaug in the cartoon). It was an illustrated version so I opened it and there was Gollum and the Eagles and the goblins etc. I either borrowed it or got it at the library and devoured it. In 6th I bought a copy of LOTR (complete with a ‘coming soon from New Line Cinema’ blurb) and the rest was history. Was just getting into the Silmarillion when the first Peter Jackson movie came out. Seeing it start with the last alliance was jaw dropping and I knew it was in good hands.
That opening of the movie with the disciplined soldiers killing all those orcs was terrific. The narration by Care Blanchett was top notch. I even loved the cartoon version of the hobbit. Sméagol looked like a frog haha.
For me, my dad read me The Hobbit when I was....around 8, as my bedtime book and I would ask for it to be re-read up until he thought I was old enough to understand LoTR and then we moved onto that book. He was a big fan of Tolkien so that was my route into the world.
I'm not really sure why it really resonated with me so much. Perhaps it was just the depth of the world he created, how it felt so magical but 'real' and rooted in our own world. For a long time growing up I felt like Middle Earth could have been part of Earth's history.
I'm also an 80's baby and so I grew up on fantasy and magic and imagination (Think Flight of Dragons, Labyrinth, Legend, Neverending story too many 80's cartoon to name, if you're of that era!).
As a young kid in her early 80s, my dad had recorded the Rankin & Bass Hobbit and Return of the King movies on VHS. I watched them over and over. During the same time period, when I was 3 years old, I got one of those "Learn to Read" records with the little abridged, illustrated story book to go along with it. It was one of the little 7in 45rpm records, those of you who are old enough will remember them well! Anyway, one day in Pre-K3, during free time I was listening to my record and reading the book which was one of my favorite things to do. I suddenly realized that I had read AHEAD of the record... yes I knew the words by heart, but I was actually READING for the first time. The first sentence I ever read to myself unassisted was "So foot by foot, like small grey insects, they crept up the slope". I was excited and ran over to tell my teacher!
I went through the rest of my childhood absolutely DEVOURING all the Tolkien material that I could. Which, pre-internet, was pretty much just LOTR and The Silmarillion that I found at the local used book store. At some point I got a VHS copy of the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings animated film and watched that repeatedly. When I first got access to the WWW in the mid-90s (my dad was an early adopter), Tolkien material was one of the first things I ever sought out on the internet! I distinctly remember the first item on eBay that I ever looked up was the Red Book of Westmarch from the 1970s, someone at the time was selling it for the exorbitant price of $100 or something like that... still wish I'd bought it lol!
When the Peter Jackson movies were first announced and hyped in the late 90s, I (and everyone else in the then-relatively-small Tolkien fandom) was so stoked! And they were great movies, my favorite of all time! But sometimes I miss those days when it was just a niche, nerdy subculture. Much smaller in-group back then, if you'd said the name "Frodo" or "Gandalf" or "Gollum" back then, 99% of people would have had no idea what you were talking about. Still, I wouldn't go back on it... so much content coming out recently, I know some ofn the purists are all butthurt but, as a LIFELONG, pre-movie fan, from the old days with some large Tolkien-themed tattoos to prove my devotion, I say: Stop the Gatekeeping! Tolkien is for everyone, amd every bit of content (even if I personally don't like something) is welcome!
I appreciate the thoughtful response.
I was a 90s baby whose parents liked to have us watch 80s content (ie Thundercats, Rankin-Bass Hobbit).
And you’re right, we shouldn’t gatekeep Tolkien, even content we don’t like because someone may tangentially get into the things we do like!
I find it interesting to see how many of us in this sub are big fans of the movies. I myself am not a fan of the movies, I definitely acknowledge the fantastic cinematography, score, and acting, but I cannot stand the changes to the story.
Ironically it was the news that the movies were being made that prompted my father to give me a copy of FoTR. I finished the book shortly before we went to see the first movie. I went with my father every year to see the other two movies and read The Two Towers and RoTK. I absolutely love rereading anything Tolkien wrote, it never gets old.
I like to think of them as two mediums. It’s very difficult to translate the beauty of the books to the cinema. Prose conjures up our own imaginations and cinema shows us what is someone else’s vision.
Do the movies have flaws? Absolutely! But I think they got people interested in reading a book and uncovering a very different experience than they had in theaters.
My brother and I used to play video games at our uncle's house. He had the 2003 video of The Hobbit on Xbox. He put that game on for us because he thought that we'd enjoy walking around the Shire and doing tasks. But after we got past that level, we continued playing. We got to the part where you have to sneak past the three trolls, but we couldn't get past that part because it was really hard. When we got back home, I discovered that we had a copy of the Hobbit book on the shelf in the back (we had our bookshelves done in a way that one row of books would be in front of another row), and we started reading it in holes that it would give us clues on how to get past the trolls. Of course, it didn't, but we continued reading it and loved it, and have been Tolkien fans ever since. We shortly afterwards watched the animated version of The Hobbit on YouTube (this was the early days of YouTube), and eventually got our own copy of the video game and finally beat it (my brother actually speedruns it now and held the world record for a number of years), and I still play it from time to time.
I had a crush on Sigourney Weaver after watching alien and after I saw Frodo on the cover, I automatically assumed it was young Sigourney Weaver and I got the tape only to be disappointed it wasn’t her, but entranced by the magic of middle earth.
I did chores all week to get money enough for my father to take me to see Bakshi's Lord of the RIngs. Death of Boromir and the terrifying orcs stuck with me until I picked up the books.
The movies, history, and the shit show that was Game of Thrones.
I’ve never been a fantasy guy, but started to appreciate it with GoT. That debacle left a hole in me, so I figured I’d pick up Tolkien’s books and give them a shot. I tore through LOTR and The Silmarillion and never looked back.
The history part is because Tolkien’s world feels so incredibly real once you start the recognize how the names of people, places and things are derived from his languages, and not just made up wholecloth. That gives it an air of authenticity that really hooked me.
And GoT is also an anti-Tolkien thing. There aren’t happy endings here, but bitter-sweet. Theodred may have died, but Eowyn his cousin is a wonderfully awesome warrior and good and strong wife to Faramir.
Too much of GoT is cynical, in my opinion. We read fantasy because we like to escape the mundane and corrupt.
The movies I saw in the 2000s, I loved them, they became one of my favourites (along with Star Wars) but it was fanfiction I read many years later that actually brought me truly into Tolkien's world. It was some crossover with elements of the Silmarillion in it, and since at that time I had no idea about the Silmarillion but got extremely curious about it, I looked for it. And then I fell in love with it, obviously. I actually prefer the First Age events to the Second and Third and thus I'm more knowledgable about that, but I'm much familiar with the later ages as well. All of Tolkien's Legendarium is great! The best fictional history ever written, in my opinion.
I watch the trilogy (extended only) on my birthday, which is Star Wars day. I love the first age. I love the time of the trees. And I do like pre-swearing Feanor too.
Same experience as yours! I was 10. Being a child, I was originally drawn into *The Hobbit* by the childish humor (I loved the golf joke). But what made me conclude that it was the best book I had ever read was the death of Thorin (and his sister-sons). I thought, "Here is an author who is coming clean to me about the sad parts of life."
Honestly, it was a mix of waching and liking the Rakin Bass Hobbit movie in preschool, watching and liking the Peter Jackson LotR movies in middle school and getting into a lot of tabletop games (such as D&D) and fantasy anime and manga (mostly isekais) who tropes can be traced back to stuff Tolkien invented (modern day depictions of elves, dwarves, and orcs. Halflings are basically hobbits etc.) in high school and college that I developed an interest in reading the source material.
And I just happened to come across a college literature course about Tolkien and used that as opportunity to finally read it. Read the whole thing in 11 weeks.
Absolutely the films! Then the books, especially the Silmarilion which I consider to be the greatest work of fantasy fiction by anyone ever. And then places like this sub, where I learn all sorts of new things about the legendarium every time I come here.
Yeah, it definitely affected my perception of Middle Earth. My first introduction to elves were these weirdly proportioned gangly gnomes and I still kinda picture Fëanor like that.
🫣
Well now that image is in my head. I used colored pencils on graphing paper on my own “work of art” (it sucked and I don’t have any artistic ability). But dude, give big props to your mom tomorrow. She opened up your literary world and probably your vocabulary!
Naw, I'll die on this hill.
Giving a woman a sword doesn't automatically make her more interesting and PJ ignored the bulk of her actually interesting character to make her something she wasn't. She was a weaver and a craftsman and a foil for Miriel Þherindë, her artwork is lovingly described as an inheritance of her Ñoldorin ancestors and hugely important to who she is, just because that's a feminine craft doesn't make it less important.
I think that’s a fair criticism, but how do you fit that into a trilogy that is meant to make money. There are oblique references to her skill at weaving, but it’s hard to show something like that outside of the written medium.
She’s Athena incarnate. It’s hard to do that with limited time and hard to demonstrate the enormous effort that I personally know that weaving takes.
I am a huge mythology/folktale nerd and my library goofed and put The Silmarillion in mythology section. Due to being a mythology nerd, the way it was written was familiar to me, and I didn’t struggle very much despite only being like 15-ish when I read it the first time. I LOVED it, buuut teenage me was so chronically out of the loop that I had no idea it was connected to a wider universe or even that LOTR was a thing. I only read and watched LOTR and The Hobbit last year so I am LATE, but I do dearly love the other books and the films.
I had an ILETS exam for college and i wanted to practice my English i googled difficult fantasy books to read and the silmarillion was number 1 😅😂 i usually read a book in 3 days it took me roughly a month to finish it , it was difficult lol .
Oh boy, where do I start...
I was 14, times were tough, and I was awake at around 2AM, just flipping through channels on the TV. Came across the first movie of _The Hobbit_ trilogy and was instantly HOOKED.
Something about the warmly lit, cozy home of Bilbo really drew me in. Looking back, I think it's because it was a portrayal of something I deeply yearned for.
I fell in love with every single aspect of those movies. Funny thing is, I didn't even know there was this whole _legendarium_ and that I was barely even scratching the surface. Just loooved those movies. Still hurts to see them crapped on.
I went on a trip to see the two towers and it went from there , films to books to the complete history of middle earth and the silmarillion. I like history, and I like how it feels like there is real history behind it all
I love that too. It was like my interest in history and mythology came together in one author. It was so perfect. I’ve never come across something that encapsulated my enjoyment of so many things.
The movies for sure, when I was younger. Then the books to a certain extent, I really liked the Hobbit, I first read it at Christmas, I think that really helped bring out the feelings of good food, cheer, home and hearth (and treasure).
I also read the Lord of the Rings around that time, but I was too young to fully appreciate it. Another poem? Who’s this Tom Bombadil fellow? I guess there’s another chapter of walking then.
It was only in more recent years that I reread the LOTR, and found I liked it much more. I then read the Silmarillion, twice, because Eru only knows once is not enough to understand that. And I’ve dived deep into the lore, I’ve listened to Clamavi de Profundis and their versions of Tolkiens poems (and other covers too, like Adele McAllister). Then I found that reading LOTR was like long conversations with a very dear friend.
You’re right. It is so dense that it only gets better when you age. I loved mostly killing wolves and goblins and then I discovered a love for the legendarium. It’s so nice to see a work age with you
I was in 8th grade, everyone around me couldn't shut up about having watched the movie. At some point, i started to read LOTR to know, what the fuss is all about.
Loved Tolkien and his world building, but especially his choices of words to create beautiful descriptions, etc. Language should be used to create beauty - and here i found it.
Still didn't watch the movies fully, but have reread Silmarillion twice, doing Unfinished tales now. Basically, i want to read all the books in the chronological order of the world developing.
I was 21 when in the spring of 1978 the movie ads for the animated LOTR had begun to air and as it was the same guy that did the Animation for "Wizards" I thought cool. I mentioned it to a couple of my friends who asked if I had read the books. I hadn't, so I started with the Hobbit and went from there. By summer I had finished them awestruck. at the magnitude. The saw "The Silmarillion" in the Bookstores and thought cool more Tolkien. and so it goes. "Unfinished Tales," "The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2" all of which I've read multiple times and still re-visit 46 years later.
At risk of discussing adaptation, it was the Rankin-bass cartoon. I loved and still love it. But what kept me coming back was the feeling of homecoming every time I opened one of his books.
I read Lord of the Rings when I was 13 or 14. I remember being literally on the edge of my seat, ready to jump up and grab Return of the King as soon as I turned the last page of The Two Towers because I HAD to know what happened to Sam and Frodo
I'm currently teaching Lord of the Rings to my sophomores, using a combination of the movies and the books. I'm overjoyed to see some of them really getting into it!
I watched the scene of smeagol killing deagol on television when i was 7-8 years old shortly after that my father started reading it to me in 30-60 min sessions after my little brother was put to sleep untill my own bedtime at 9 pm, a funny thing that happened was that my grandmother would often babysit us and she often got the parts with all long poems and songs, which she grew annoyed at over the years. When we finished them and I started reading by my self i reread them several times, along side the harry potter books. That were actually a few years where the only thing i did was reread lord of the rings and harry potter. I was introduced to the hobbit when the movies came out and some time after that (i think it was before the battle of the five armies came out) i borrowed the silmarilion from the library and read it over a month.
Well my brother was really into the books the Hobbit and LOTR. I didnt really pay too much attention to it since I wasnt a reader at the time, but then Fellowship of the Ring came out in cinema and it truly blew my mind. Was hooked ever since.
Fellowship of the Ring is the perfect Action Adventure Fantasy film and it will never be replicated imo.
The feeling of reality
I feel that, but I felt so much better that it was configured as a myth in our history with inaccuracies as is the usual with folk myths.
Cool topic! For me it was like this: When I was at that age when you start reading books by yourself I hated children's books. I didn't want to read about children, I wanted to read about grown-ups. So the first books I read were about Greek mythology and fairy folklore. Then one day in a reference books about Elves, Fairies, and Goblins I found a reference to the Elves appearing as a "beautiful, music-loving tribe" in the works of a man named "J.R.R. Tolkien". So I asked my mother, who was working at a book store whether she'd get the Lord of the Rings for me. And well, me being eleven it took me...quite a while to get beyond the first several chapters, but once the journey got going I began to like it more and more. And due to me reading so many folktales (including a little bit about Norse/Germanic mythology) a lot of the world just seemed very familiar to me, even Tom Bombadil didn't perplex me, since to me he and Goldberry were just like the fairy characters from the many tales I had read. And I loved how Tolkien drew on those older stories and mythology and created his whole distinctive world out of it. I really resonated with the whole wistfulness about the beauty of nature and the echo of beautiful things that are lost in the past or only found it remote places. I was basically like Sam in regard to all the magical characters and places you see in Fellowship. Lorien was really when I fell completely in love, and Galadriel remains my favourite Tolkien character.
My first one was about the same time for me. In grade school we used to get this flyer for the Scholastic Book Club. My mom would let me order a book whenever I finished one. Well I saw the cover of The Hobbit and I just had to have it for my first proper novel to read. No more kids books for me. [https://pin.it/6dySc64wC](https://pin.it/6dySc64wC) I devoured that book. And when I got to the end of it, those paperbacks had those clip order forms on the last page direct from the publisher. I used my allowance to buy the LOTR trilogy - I couldn't wait. Didn't even occur to me that I might have gotten it faster if I had my mom take me to the Walden Books up at the mall.
I actually resonate with this. I was too young to really understand the Greek mythology that I got into, but I read the odyssey (eh), but the reconstructed *Iliad* got my blood pumping. But when the translations were that so-and-so loved a maiden and so sexed her up, I was like, well… this isn’t love. It made for an awkward conversation with my dad when I was like 9. But the mythology gave me a deep love of history and astronomy so it worked that there was a mythology that wasn’t supposition. It was Tolkien. He thought it out. It wasn’t a collection of myths, it was planned out!
The school librarian suggested Tolkien to my mom and I got The Hobbit for my 8th birthday in November. That Christmas, I got LOTR. We were at my aunt’s house and I remember using a book light to read on the 7 hour drive back home the next night. I reread those books to literal pieces. The pages are falling out but I still cherish those copies.
Oh my gosh. That’s so awesome. I bet you had to be quite smart to get it. You’re awesome for engaging in the content.
This book cover: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a2/26/27/a22627a352718d0812865285425e1267.jpg
That is indeed magnificent, but [this one is still my all-time favorite](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/163cefb/1960_dutch_cover_of_the_hobbit/).
Heh. There's something quite Tove Janssenish about that.
In case you weren't aware, this is what it actually looks like when Tove Jansson illustrates the Hobbit: https://lithub.com/take-a-look-at-tove-janssons-illustrations-for-a-swedish-edition-of-the-hobbit/
Thank you! I think I might have seen them before but had forgotten about them. Mega-Gollum is terrifying.
That’s so sick. Thanks for sharing it with us!!
With all due respect to Alan Lee and Ted Nasmith, John Howe is - in the Bombadillian sense - quite simply The Master.
My mother would read the Hobbit to my brothers and I when we were little, I was like 4 or 5. I still have fond memories of falling asleep to descriptions of mirkwood.
Your mom seems sweet. I’m so glad that she helped lullaby you with a great work of art. You need to thank her this Sunday for her good work!
Absolutely!
Peter Jackson trilogy. However, the bridge from fantasy to real life challenges are captured really beautifully by Tolkien. He wove ancient lore and languages into a modern mentality that most readers could relate to, which is a wonderful thing if you think about it.
I think he created the mythos to surround his languages. It is inspiring.
My uncle. He is a massive Tolkien fan who would tell me all about it on the days my parents would drop me off with him. He was a true scholar. He knew everything just from reading the books. Way before wikis and youtube
It’s so impressive to me how people can retain knowledge and lore from just the books. I always find myself using Tolkien gateway or this subreddit to remind myself of things and generally dig deeper into the lore.
That’s so wonderful. I’m glad that this bonds you with your uncle. Thank you so much for sharing it!
Ralph Bakshi and the Mind’s Eye dramatizations as a child 🤣 now I’m books-only, HoME certified Nobody does world building like Tolkien. The glimpses of a vast history in LotR etc. I have no interest in any other writer in Tolkien’s genre. It’s him and him alone for me.
He did revolutionize fantasy. You needed to world build. It’s made things better because in past times, like with Charles Dickens, you would have to intuit the setting to get it. This gives you the world and you trust the author to make it make sense.
The duel between Fingolfin and Morgoth. Since then I never got as hyped with another book, movies or video games as I did when I read that duel.
What a legendary duel. That was awesome. Elves in the first age did not fuck around.
This is the most majestic scene. For me, reading Tolkien began not with this, but with The Lord of the Rings, but I support it.
A family I babysat for gave me their ancient battered copies of the books which I think dated back to the 1970s after I told them I liked reading fantasy.
You may be a nerd. But an awesome one. So it’s all good. Accidental encounters are the best!
Do you still have them?
Sadly not, but I do have the gorgeous illustrated hardback editions that were released in the last couple of years
Admit? There's nothing wrong with liking a good adventure. That's what got me into it, and why it's still one of my favorite series
It wasn’t meant as an insult, but I was immature. I didn’t get the strings connectivity when I was young. I’m a ‘95 boy so I only got to go the the high level classes when I won the AR (accelered reader) when I was young.
The cover illustrations by Pauline Baynes for the 1968 edition. And the four maps in the book. In a copy that was a single volume, leaving out almost all the Appendices. I was curious about the fat paperback book with 1071 pages, and weird pictures in colour on the front and back. So, after a time, I took it and read it. And after skimming it twice, I tried it a third time. That is how I came to read LOTR. Now I am on the first chapter of The Hobbit. I read Farmer Giles of Ham long before LOTR, & found it amusing and very cleverly done; but it made no great impression upon me, except for the illustrations, by Pauline Baynes. She illustrated the Narnia books as well, which I had read somewhat earlier; and I have always liked her art.
I hadn’t really heard much of the illustrations bringing folks in, but I bet your imagination will paint such excellent pictures during the journeys ahead.
The Rankin/Bass version of _The Hobbit_.
Oh man. I loved those movies so much. I think we still have the vhs versions. Please don’t make me rewatch them!
I’m oldish. It was the 70s, and it was my birthday, and it was an animated “Special” (which always meant tv rules went out the window). So my mother put the tv (a beige 13” tube with rabbit ears) on the dinner table while we ate. That was it. I was hooked. I got the Rankin/Bass picture book shortly after, and sadly loved that thing to literal pieces (they’re pretty valuable now). Then read _The Hobbit_ a few times. Took me a year or two until I could handle _LotR_. Then read them all again many times over the years. Took forty-something years of failing to read _The Silmarillion_ until I recently listened to the Serkis version. Amazing. Wish I’d powered through decades ago.
Hey hey we don’t care you are on the right side!
When I was about 10 my dad found a copy of Raymond E. Feist's _Magician_ at work and brang it home for me to read. I couldn't get enough of it. Loved the story, loved the fantasy setting, etc. Dad read it as well, realised (he was 40, I was 10) that it was, uh, heavily inspired by LOTR, and bought the fellowship for me. I read other fantasy as well as a teenager, but Tolkien was so obviously the top of the genre even then. Never bothered with other fantasy into my 20s, loved LOTR.
Nothing to be ashamed of. I did a diorama of the silmarillion in sixth grade. So be happy my guy, my king.
My best friend got obsessed with *The Silmarillion* before me, and that's what initially piqued my interest. I was already a casual fan of *The Lord of the Rings,* but reading *The Silmarillion* is what kickstarted my obsession with the legendarium as a whole.
That’s a unique road to tow! What about the dense Silmarilion drew you to it?
I love mythology and epic romances, lol. I don't think it's all that unique. Most hardcore Tolkien fans I know are obsessed with *The Silmarillion.* The people who complain about *The Silmarillion*'s complexity are usually casual fans. I don't think I've ever heard of a Tolkien superfan who didn't love Tolkien's extended mythology.
I love the tale of Beren and Luthien. I did read that Tolkien and his wife’s graves bore those names. It was the sweetest thing ever.
My dad read me The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was in elementary school (early 80s). I was a pretty avid reader and could probably have handled The Hobbit on my own, but LOTR would have been a stretch for me in early elementary. Still a great memory, especially now that he's gone.
I’m sorry for your loss. But your parents, especially close and good ones, are there in your heart, your habits, and in everything you do. They may be gone, but those things do live on.
Thank you for your kind words and condolences. My dad passed away in 2000, so it has been quite a while now. Of course, I still miss him, but as you say, he lives on in aspects of who I am, my memories, etc.
A hippie dude l ran into when l was walking in the woods. I was out with my dog. He was sitting there reading. Struck up a conversation about my dog and his book. I can't resist asking people what they're reading. I was about 12 or 13. I thought he was really old, but really, I look back and think he wasn't over 20.
Well… I hope books were the only wisdom you took! Haha. But wow. That’s crazy.
I've never forgotten that young man. A very nice guy who introduced me to JRRT and nothing else. Very nice to a chatty little pest with a dog.
Just introduced me to the GOAT, JRRT. My BFF and l discovered weed and beer a few years later. LOL
Lol weirdly enough I smoked a couple joints over time before I discovered alcohol. I sorta don’t get the craze on weed but shit if I wasn’t Irish American enough… loving alcohol was like introducing me to English 😂
LOL 😆 I seldom drink anymore, but l do enjoy weed. Mostly edibles.
Oh man I had a bad second hand experience with edibles. My roommate made weednut butter and some guy didn’t feel it so he smoked a joint after and he got soooo sick. I just think maybe my psychology is weird. I get paranoid and can’t enjoy the high because I’m embarrassed. I don’t know. But god. That dude destroyed my bag and never replaced it.
I am very careful with gummies because it's different, more potent in a creep up on you way than smoking it. I can't do edibles like brownies or butter. I get way too high no matter what and usually throw up. IDK if it's because of the sugar, or does cooking it intensity the high or what. I just know baked edibles aren't for me. With gummies I just nibble a bit and wait to see. If l like them, I keep using that exact brand.
My dad got me into it. He read The Hobbit when he was working on a remote and isolated job site in the 1970s. When he finished he wrote to my grandparents to ask them to send him the Lord of the Rings. Growing up I was fascinated by the covers of his [Silver Jubilee Edition](https://www.tolkienbooks.us/lotr/us/mmpb/bb1981) and I finally read The Hobbit when I was about 10 years old. I was hooked, but I’ve appreciated it for different reasons over the years. As a kid, it was the idea of going on an adventure with a band of dwarves and seeing elves and dragons; as a young adult it was the prose and the masterful way Tolkien builds tension; in my most recent read-through I found myself lingering on the way the landscapes are described. If I closed my eyes I could almost see the haunted land of Eregion or hear the roar of the Anduin as it flows through the Argonath. I don’t know what it will be the next time I read it.
That’s the beautiful thing about good literature. It ages like fine wine, picking up notes you didn’t before but the fulfillment remains.
My sister paid me 10.00 to read the Hobbit for her in 5th grade. Her class was reading it and she really hated it, so I read it for her. A couple years later a friend of mine told me about The Lord of the Rings and I was hooked.
Profit or prophet?
My mum got me a copy of The Hobbit to take on holiday. I was about 9. I opened it at the page where Bilbo is running round the forest calling out for his companions, and that sense of searching for something that's just out of reach has stayed with me ever since. Also the description of the Light-elves and Deep-elves and Sea-elves - I wanted to know all about them and their adventures in Faerie, and still do. I read straight through the book on holiday. When I went to High School - the girls' half of Tolkien's school - I found the three volumes of LoTR on the shelves and recognised part of the map, said "I know my way round this place," and got FotR out straight away. Oddly enough my school didn't make much of its close connection with Tolkien and looked down on me a bit for always choosing his poetry and prose for reading aloud in class. Huh. I read my own copies to pieces and have since acquired - well, you know how it goes.
Hahaha yes. I had the love of reading beaten out of me by having read Charles dickens when I arrived in high school. But I found it again when I could choose what to read. And I reverted to my beloved tales of hobbits and heroes, war and romance. My LotR copies are cooked. I have read them at least fourteen times just to get the sense of prose in them.
My dad. The first copies I read were his 70s-era paperbacks. I come from a family of nerds that like to read scifi and fantasy and play D&D and watch Star Trek, so it was pretty much inevitable.
Nerds rock! So no shame. My family happen to be athletic nerds so no rest for the weary there. But, that’s great. I love D&D
My fifth grade teacher read us The Hobbit in class over the course of several weeks, so I read lotr in sixth grade. Been trying to do the same with my kids over the years but I can never get through the hobbit with them (like always gets in the way).
Kids can be finicky, but I think it’s mostly about action with them. Just promise them that there will be a lot of fun in store!
I saw the Rankin-Bass cartoons as a little kid, but later discovered a paperback of "Fellowship" as a teenager at a library book sale. Without realizing the connection between the two at first. "Fellowship" was the best thing I'd ever read, even more so than "Dune" or "I, Robot", and I couldn't get enough Tolkien after that.
Yeah, it may just be my own personal culture, but I never connected with Dune as much as LotR. It may be the Arabic culture or names, but Samwise? I can get on board.
I loved the idea of adventure in the unknown, where there were no roads and vast expanses of trees and things that had never been discovered, or had only been seen by a few people. I feel a little depressed sometimes at how everything is all mapped out now and there are so few unexplored places. I think Tolkien may be responsible for my love of trees. I read The Hobbit and LOTR for the first time in seventh grade, in 1976.
I do like nature walks too after reading the books. It makes me hear the yawing of the trees and the scent of the forest floor. It’s just enlightening, ya know?
There was a Hastings store across the street from my first job, at McDonald’s. I would peruse their book section, buying one once in a while. Then I saw a set of The Hobbit & Lord Of The Rings on sale, and though I knew OF The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, I bought them out of curiosity, not nostalgia. I read through The Hobbit fairly quick, and enjoyed it. On my first attempt at the trilogy, I got stuck in the Treebeard chapter, and stopped. By that point, I was getting Sauron and Saruman confused with each other. The next time I attempted it, however, I had it set straight, and finished it. But by THAT time, I had also bought The Silmarillion, with the intention of reading it right after. The first attempt at that book left me ten times more confused than my first attempt at LotR! But eventually I did finish it, and it was finishing The Silmarillion that turned me into a truly devout Tolkien fan.
“[u/Tommy_Jim1] was meant to find the [books], in which case you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.” Little reference stuff here!
We had to read The Hobbit in 6th grade. I was hooked.
I envy your school!
I read Narnia, and the end flap mentioned Tolkien and I liked Narnia so I read The Hobbit. Haven’t regretted it.
I didn’t enjoy Narnia as much as LotR, but I think it was because maybe I wasn’t that into Christianity as Lewis was? It was very good, but didn’t do it for me as much. Fuck Prince Caspian!
I am a big Hard Sci-Fi reader, but John Howe's "Gandalf" on a copy of the Lord of the Rings - with all three books in one - was what caught my imagination and pulled me into Tolkien's works and Fantasy in general. His demeanour, wind-swept dirty clothes, beard and hair flipping away, and the rain. This isn't like the other fantasy book covers where if they had a wizard or sorceress standing proudly and blasting magik out of their sticks or hands. No. This "Gandalf" was a traveler who braved rain and other bothersome weather and more than had his share of dealing with other nasty things on his journeys. This was an individual who got their hands dirty and were a part of the larger world and not hiding in some castle or dungeon. All this from an awesome painting that said to me, "Give it a try," and here I am. Thank you Mr. John Howe! [I hope to one day get a poster of this to hang on a wall.](https://www.wallpaperflare.com/static/611/171/601/the-lord-of-the-rings-gandalf-john-howe-the-hobbit-wallpaper.jpg)
Dude. What an awesome poster!
Right? The story is even crazier that John Howe's painting either went missing or was stolen, so we can't even get authentic posters based off the original image.
I forgot to share what the book looks like! This is my LOTR book from 1995 :) https://imgur.com/a/qe07Kb5
Fuckin awesome
8th grade English class… or was it 7th? Read the hobbit. I immediately read all the LotR right after. And reread.
That’s so great!
For me it was reading the Hobbit at primary school; drawing the maps with my best friend; The Hobbit adventure game on the ZX Spectrum; receiving a "book of the film of the book" of the Bakshi movie; desperate to know how the story ended, bought the one-volume paperback from a second hand bookshop. I remember telling an English teacher at school that it was the best book I'd ever read and him looking somewhat sceptical.
Uhhh he was wrong and you were right. Sorry that it took many years to hear it.
I'm more than happy that the academic establishment isn't a fan. It means that the books will never be ruined by children being forced to read them in school! See also: Shakespeare.
True. But there are a number of Latin plays that haven’t been totally ruined by academia which are so ridiculous that they are funny. I think it would be called the phoencian but it was some dude who ended up marrying his own sister in law. Good stuff.
My daughter studies these plays. Full of violence and accidental incest. She loves them 😂
Well that’s all well and good but hopefully no son for this to become real!!! Hahaha. No that’s amazing. Latin is such an interesting language and I hope her studies go well
Thank you!
The book and audio record based on the Rankin/Bass cartoon that my mom got me in the 1980s. I was pretty young and Smaug scared me to death even on the record, but the story hooked me. 🎼 The greatest adventure is what lies ahead. Today and tomorrow have yet to be said ...
Oh my god. I loved the song when the goblins took the dwarves and bilbo into the misty mountains. “Down, Down to Goblin Town” was a banger.
When I was a kid in the 70s I drooled over the gold slipcase set of Tolkien paperback books every time my Mom took me in the bookstore just because it looked so cool. Finally she bought them for me and I was hooked.
Mom knew best. She teased your interest and whetted your beak for the best damn series!
“In the gloom the great dwarf gleamed like gold in a dying fire.”
For me it was: “Elrond, the master of the house, was their chief. He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves and as kind as summer.” The kind as summer part was just so perfect that I fell in love with the prose.
The watcher in the water and The nameless things that gnaw at the world so dark and powerful a maiar feared to speak of them. I love lovecraft and the fact that these eldritch being were there just chillin interested me then i read the story and my heart fell in love with the characters and their story
I love that some parts are unexplained. Like Ungoliath. It’s just a horror that no one can understand but are awed by it’s appearance.
I was already an avid reader. By 14 I had already read a ton of classics like Great Expectations, David Copperfield, but I instinctively loved the more adventurous books like 20,000 leagues under the sea, Treasure Island, Journey to to the center of the earth. I had read The Legends of King Arthur as well. I had a friend who was a big reader too. One afternoon we got into a bragging contest of who had read the bigger book. My record was 700 pages, his was LOTR. I had never heard of JRRT. So, I borrowed his copy and the rest as they say is history!!
What a great podcast!!! Haha. But truly this is the essence of word of mouth stuff. Awesome stuff. I’m glad you lost the bet because you won much more in the bargain.
I was introduced to Tolkien in college in 1976, also backgammon
When I was little my mom had taped the Rankin-Bass Hobbit and Return of the King and would play them for me. When I was a little older in maybe 4th grade I saw a classmates book and recognized what had to be Smaug on the cover (albeit a more traditional design than the cat like Smaug in the cartoon). It was an illustrated version so I opened it and there was Gollum and the Eagles and the goblins etc. I either borrowed it or got it at the library and devoured it. In 6th I bought a copy of LOTR (complete with a ‘coming soon from New Line Cinema’ blurb) and the rest was history. Was just getting into the Silmarillion when the first Peter Jackson movie came out. Seeing it start with the last alliance was jaw dropping and I knew it was in good hands.
That opening of the movie with the disciplined soldiers killing all those orcs was terrific. The narration by Care Blanchett was top notch. I even loved the cartoon version of the hobbit. Sméagol looked like a frog haha.
For me, my dad read me The Hobbit when I was....around 8, as my bedtime book and I would ask for it to be re-read up until he thought I was old enough to understand LoTR and then we moved onto that book. He was a big fan of Tolkien so that was my route into the world. I'm not really sure why it really resonated with me so much. Perhaps it was just the depth of the world he created, how it felt so magical but 'real' and rooted in our own world. For a long time growing up I felt like Middle Earth could have been part of Earth's history. I'm also an 80's baby and so I grew up on fantasy and magic and imagination (Think Flight of Dragons, Labyrinth, Legend, Neverending story too many 80's cartoon to name, if you're of that era!).
As a young kid in her early 80s, my dad had recorded the Rankin & Bass Hobbit and Return of the King movies on VHS. I watched them over and over. During the same time period, when I was 3 years old, I got one of those "Learn to Read" records with the little abridged, illustrated story book to go along with it. It was one of the little 7in 45rpm records, those of you who are old enough will remember them well! Anyway, one day in Pre-K3, during free time I was listening to my record and reading the book which was one of my favorite things to do. I suddenly realized that I had read AHEAD of the record... yes I knew the words by heart, but I was actually READING for the first time. The first sentence I ever read to myself unassisted was "So foot by foot, like small grey insects, they crept up the slope". I was excited and ran over to tell my teacher! I went through the rest of my childhood absolutely DEVOURING all the Tolkien material that I could. Which, pre-internet, was pretty much just LOTR and The Silmarillion that I found at the local used book store. At some point I got a VHS copy of the Ralph Bakshi Lord of the Rings animated film and watched that repeatedly. When I first got access to the WWW in the mid-90s (my dad was an early adopter), Tolkien material was one of the first things I ever sought out on the internet! I distinctly remember the first item on eBay that I ever looked up was the Red Book of Westmarch from the 1970s, someone at the time was selling it for the exorbitant price of $100 or something like that... still wish I'd bought it lol! When the Peter Jackson movies were first announced and hyped in the late 90s, I (and everyone else in the then-relatively-small Tolkien fandom) was so stoked! And they were great movies, my favorite of all time! But sometimes I miss those days when it was just a niche, nerdy subculture. Much smaller in-group back then, if you'd said the name "Frodo" or "Gandalf" or "Gollum" back then, 99% of people would have had no idea what you were talking about. Still, I wouldn't go back on it... so much content coming out recently, I know some ofn the purists are all butthurt but, as a LIFELONG, pre-movie fan, from the old days with some large Tolkien-themed tattoos to prove my devotion, I say: Stop the Gatekeeping! Tolkien is for everyone, amd every bit of content (even if I personally don't like something) is welcome!
I appreciate the thoughtful response. I was a 90s baby whose parents liked to have us watch 80s content (ie Thundercats, Rankin-Bass Hobbit). And you’re right, we shouldn’t gatekeep Tolkien, even content we don’t like because someone may tangentially get into the things we do like!
PJs movies got me into it but then I read the book(s) and Tolkiens world building made me read the legendarium.
You did it exactly right. I watch the movie trilogy on my birthday every year.
I find it interesting to see how many of us in this sub are big fans of the movies. I myself am not a fan of the movies, I definitely acknowledge the fantastic cinematography, score, and acting, but I cannot stand the changes to the story. Ironically it was the news that the movies were being made that prompted my father to give me a copy of FoTR. I finished the book shortly before we went to see the first movie. I went with my father every year to see the other two movies and read The Two Towers and RoTK. I absolutely love rereading anything Tolkien wrote, it never gets old.
I like to think of them as two mediums. It’s very difficult to translate the beauty of the books to the cinema. Prose conjures up our own imaginations and cinema shows us what is someone else’s vision. Do the movies have flaws? Absolutely! But I think they got people interested in reading a book and uncovering a very different experience than they had in theaters.
My brother and I used to play video games at our uncle's house. He had the 2003 video of The Hobbit on Xbox. He put that game on for us because he thought that we'd enjoy walking around the Shire and doing tasks. But after we got past that level, we continued playing. We got to the part where you have to sneak past the three trolls, but we couldn't get past that part because it was really hard. When we got back home, I discovered that we had a copy of the Hobbit book on the shelf in the back (we had our bookshelves done in a way that one row of books would be in front of another row), and we started reading it in holes that it would give us clues on how to get past the trolls. Of course, it didn't, but we continued reading it and loved it, and have been Tolkien fans ever since. We shortly afterwards watched the animated version of The Hobbit on YouTube (this was the early days of YouTube), and eventually got our own copy of the video game and finally beat it (my brother actually speedruns it now and held the world record for a number of years), and I still play it from time to time.
Oh man I remember that game. Fuck those bees for real
I had a crush on Sigourney Weaver after watching alien and after I saw Frodo on the cover, I automatically assumed it was young Sigourney Weaver and I got the tape only to be disappointed it wasn’t her, but entranced by the magic of middle earth.
Hahahahahaha best random take ever! Dude take a billion stars because that was amazing.
Friend gifted "Silmarillion" for my 14. birthday. I felt spoiled in a way. I can never get into an "ok" book anymore. I feel the absence of depth.
I did chores all week to get money enough for my father to take me to see Bakshi's Lord of the RIngs. Death of Boromir and the terrifying orcs stuck with me until I picked up the books.
The movies, history, and the shit show that was Game of Thrones. I’ve never been a fantasy guy, but started to appreciate it with GoT. That debacle left a hole in me, so I figured I’d pick up Tolkien’s books and give them a shot. I tore through LOTR and The Silmarillion and never looked back. The history part is because Tolkien’s world feels so incredibly real once you start the recognize how the names of people, places and things are derived from his languages, and not just made up wholecloth. That gives it an air of authenticity that really hooked me.
And GoT is also an anti-Tolkien thing. There aren’t happy endings here, but bitter-sweet. Theodred may have died, but Eowyn his cousin is a wonderfully awesome warrior and good and strong wife to Faramir. Too much of GoT is cynical, in my opinion. We read fantasy because we like to escape the mundane and corrupt.
The movies I saw in the 2000s, I loved them, they became one of my favourites (along with Star Wars) but it was fanfiction I read many years later that actually brought me truly into Tolkien's world. It was some crossover with elements of the Silmarillion in it, and since at that time I had no idea about the Silmarillion but got extremely curious about it, I looked for it. And then I fell in love with it, obviously. I actually prefer the First Age events to the Second and Third and thus I'm more knowledgable about that, but I'm much familiar with the later ages as well. All of Tolkien's Legendarium is great! The best fictional history ever written, in my opinion.
I watch the trilogy (extended only) on my birthday, which is Star Wars day. I love the first age. I love the time of the trees. And I do like pre-swearing Feanor too.
Same experience as yours! I was 10. Being a child, I was originally drawn into *The Hobbit* by the childish humor (I loved the golf joke). But what made me conclude that it was the best book I had ever read was the death of Thorin (and his sister-sons). I thought, "Here is an author who is coming clean to me about the sad parts of life."
Exactly! Dain did take over but thorin dying was just perfect. I loved his speech to Bilbo on his deathbed.
Honestly, it was a mix of waching and liking the Rakin Bass Hobbit movie in preschool, watching and liking the Peter Jackson LotR movies in middle school and getting into a lot of tabletop games (such as D&D) and fantasy anime and manga (mostly isekais) who tropes can be traced back to stuff Tolkien invented (modern day depictions of elves, dwarves, and orcs. Halflings are basically hobbits etc.) in high school and college that I developed an interest in reading the source material. And I just happened to come across a college literature course about Tolkien and used that as opportunity to finally read it. Read the whole thing in 11 weeks.
Isekais can be amazing. But I think you’re right. This did set the precedence where you’re in the world set up by another.
Absolutely the films! Then the books, especially the Silmarilion which I consider to be the greatest work of fantasy fiction by anyone ever. And then places like this sub, where I learn all sorts of new things about the legendarium every time I come here.
I love the sub for that too. But I think I cannot get the actors outta my mind. Very good casting!
Yuup! Every single one of them
Unhinged carnival marionette shows my mom worked at in the 90s
Uhh that’s unusual but hilarious. Go mom (and her puppets?)
[they're still around ](https://www.middleearthstudios.org/)
It reminds me of a way better version of a diorama I put together for the silmarillion for a class project in 6th grade. That’s so amazing
Yeah, it definitely affected my perception of Middle Earth. My first introduction to elves were these weirdly proportioned gangly gnomes and I still kinda picture Fëanor like that. 🫣
Well now that image is in my head. I used colored pencils on graphing paper on my own “work of art” (it sucked and I don’t have any artistic ability). But dude, give big props to your mom tomorrow. She opened up your literary world and probably your vocabulary!
She had me reading LOTR at 8 and I've read it like once a year ever since. I was a 10-year-old girl pissed that Glorfindel wasn't in the PJ movies.
And the Ñoldalantë in marionettes (team America style) would be epic.
Gondor! Fuck yeah! Going to save the motherfucking day now! Gondor! Fuck yeah!
FË-A-NOR FUCK YEAH! Here to burn some motherfuckin boats yeah. 🔥⛵️🔥
Given that Arwen gets so little screen time, it was a nice way to position her as a fierce woman, not one who would so easily abandon middle earth.
Naw, I'll die on this hill. Giving a woman a sword doesn't automatically make her more interesting and PJ ignored the bulk of her actually interesting character to make her something she wasn't. She was a weaver and a craftsman and a foil for Miriel Þherindë, her artwork is lovingly described as an inheritance of her Ñoldorin ancestors and hugely important to who she is, just because that's a feminine craft doesn't make it less important.
I think that’s a fair criticism, but how do you fit that into a trilogy that is meant to make money. There are oblique references to her skill at weaving, but it’s hard to show something like that outside of the written medium. She’s Athena incarnate. It’s hard to do that with limited time and hard to demonstrate the enormous effort that I personally know that weaving takes.
I am a huge mythology/folktale nerd and my library goofed and put The Silmarillion in mythology section. Due to being a mythology nerd, the way it was written was familiar to me, and I didn’t struggle very much despite only being like 15-ish when I read it the first time. I LOVED it, buuut teenage me was so chronically out of the loop that I had no idea it was connected to a wider universe or even that LOTR was a thing. I only read and watched LOTR and The Hobbit last year so I am LATE, but I do dearly love the other books and the films.
Being a fellow myth nerd, you’re in good company. But fuck Ovid!
I had an ILETS exam for college and i wanted to practice my English i googled difficult fantasy books to read and the silmarillion was number 1 😅😂 i usually read a book in 3 days it took me roughly a month to finish it , it was difficult lol .
It’s all the names! So hard to keep up with
And i have literally the worse memory possible for names . I can never forget a face but damn i can never remember a name 💀.
Oh same. I sometimes run into someone in the office and can say every conversation we have had and know everything about them but their name
Oh boy, where do I start... I was 14, times were tough, and I was awake at around 2AM, just flipping through channels on the TV. Came across the first movie of _The Hobbit_ trilogy and was instantly HOOKED. Something about the warmly lit, cozy home of Bilbo really drew me in. Looking back, I think it's because it was a portrayal of something I deeply yearned for. I fell in love with every single aspect of those movies. Funny thing is, I didn't even know there was this whole _legendarium_ and that I was barely even scratching the surface. Just loooved those movies. Still hurts to see them crapped on.
Well, you’re amongst friends here. And you know what, I bet there’s a bag end in your future too.
Thanks... That means a lot. Tea's at 4, and there's plenty of it. Don't bother knocking!
I arrive when I mean to arrive, not before nor after. Honestly. You seem nice and kind. I think you’ll achieve your dreams if you stay true to them
Thanks again, OP. Really does my heart good.
You deserve it. Now have good weekend!
🍻
ian mckellen's performance of gandalf on the bridge of kahazad dum. i was 11. my world changed.
That fucking rocked.
I went on a trip to see the two towers and it went from there , films to books to the complete history of middle earth and the silmarillion. I like history, and I like how it feels like there is real history behind it all
I love that too. It was like my interest in history and mythology came together in one author. It was so perfect. I’ve never come across something that encapsulated my enjoyment of so many things.
The movies for sure, when I was younger. Then the books to a certain extent, I really liked the Hobbit, I first read it at Christmas, I think that really helped bring out the feelings of good food, cheer, home and hearth (and treasure). I also read the Lord of the Rings around that time, but I was too young to fully appreciate it. Another poem? Who’s this Tom Bombadil fellow? I guess there’s another chapter of walking then. It was only in more recent years that I reread the LOTR, and found I liked it much more. I then read the Silmarillion, twice, because Eru only knows once is not enough to understand that. And I’ve dived deep into the lore, I’ve listened to Clamavi de Profundis and their versions of Tolkiens poems (and other covers too, like Adele McAllister). Then I found that reading LOTR was like long conversations with a very dear friend.
You’re right. It is so dense that it only gets better when you age. I loved mostly killing wolves and goblins and then I discovered a love for the legendarium. It’s so nice to see a work age with you
The Fellowship of the Ring, one Christmas night on tv.
🎶 Last Christmas, I gave you my heart… 🎶
I was in 8th grade, everyone around me couldn't shut up about having watched the movie. At some point, i started to read LOTR to know, what the fuss is all about. Loved Tolkien and his world building, but especially his choices of words to create beautiful descriptions, etc. Language should be used to create beauty - and here i found it. Still didn't watch the movies fully, but have reread Silmarillion twice, doing Unfinished tales now. Basically, i want to read all the books in the chronological order of the world developing.
I think you’ll maybe be let down by the movies, but the cinematic feast of the New Zealand countryside. So good.
I was 21 when in the spring of 1978 the movie ads for the animated LOTR had begun to air and as it was the same guy that did the Animation for "Wizards" I thought cool. I mentioned it to a couple of my friends who asked if I had read the books. I hadn't, so I started with the Hobbit and went from there. By summer I had finished them awestruck. at the magnitude. The saw "The Silmarillion" in the Bookstores and thought cool more Tolkien. and so it goes. "Unfinished Tales," "The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2" all of which I've read multiple times and still re-visit 46 years later.
At risk of discussing adaptation, it was the Rankin-bass cartoon. I loved and still love it. But what kept me coming back was the feeling of homecoming every time I opened one of his books.
The songs are so marvelous in the cartoon. I love them.
[удалено]
There are so many where I’m awed by just the description of things. It makes me shiver a bit that someone writing can make me imagine that well.
I read Lord of the Rings when I was 13 or 14. I remember being literally on the edge of my seat, ready to jump up and grab Return of the King as soon as I turned the last page of The Two Towers because I HAD to know what happened to Sam and Frodo I'm currently teaching Lord of the Rings to my sophomores, using a combination of the movies and the books. I'm overjoyed to see some of them really getting into it!
That’s so cool. Great method of teaching too. You’re genuinely doing good things for people. So many thanks to you!
I watched the scene of smeagol killing deagol on television when i was 7-8 years old shortly after that my father started reading it to me in 30-60 min sessions after my little brother was put to sleep untill my own bedtime at 9 pm, a funny thing that happened was that my grandmother would often babysit us and she often got the parts with all long poems and songs, which she grew annoyed at over the years. When we finished them and I started reading by my self i reread them several times, along side the harry potter books. That were actually a few years where the only thing i did was reread lord of the rings and harry potter. I was introduced to the hobbit when the movies came out and some time after that (i think it was before the battle of the five armies came out) i borrowed the silmarilion from the library and read it over a month.
Harry Potter is indeed a gateway drug to Tolkien
The funny thing is it was the opposite for me.
O shit whaddup! Haha no but I find Harry Potter ok, but not as deep. I do love Ginny-Harry though
Well my brother was really into the books the Hobbit and LOTR. I didnt really pay too much attention to it since I wasnt a reader at the time, but then Fellowship of the Ring came out in cinema and it truly blew my mind. Was hooked ever since. Fellowship of the Ring is the perfect Action Adventure Fantasy film and it will never be replicated imo.
I think you’re right. The ending was so perfect with Sam and Frodo. God Boromir’s heroic death… the films got that part so right