I read the books before the movie. The first time I was exposed to Tolkien was when I was six, and my Aunt rented The Hobbit cartoon for us. I'm among the people who thought the cartoon stunk(my personal opinion, don't hurt me ). So when I first saw the trailer for the movie(although it looked interesting), I immediately thought of the cartoon and said "no way am I seeing this". However my friend kept telling me how good LOTR was and finally out of curiosity I started reading them. After the first paragraph I couldn't put the books down, and needless to say, I saw the movie.

I knew of Tolkien long before the movie, and I always thought that some day I'd read the books. Someday, in the future. When the movie release started approaching, I thought I'd read the book first - I always do that, awaringly seeing a movie based on a book without having read the book itself knowing that you'll appreciate the book is like sacrilege for me. Then I learnt that FotR was to be released worldwidely at the same date (well, in more countries than the USA to be exact). So I read FotR within a month before the Dec-19. Needless to say I was hooked. Right now I'm into Book V. Okay, I'm really slow, I had to finish another sci-fi novel at the same time. But I don't just read past the pages, I deepen every narrative. And I like to make pleasure last.