Strange place to read a book.
 

I have a battered old copy of The Lord of the Rings. I have taken it all over the world with me. These are some of the places I have read it:-

1. The Sudanese Desert.

2. On Mount Kenya.

3. On the River Nile.

4. On Guard at Buckingham Palace.

5. Spandau Prison.

Where is the strangest place you have read the works of Tolkien.

I fore see this topic being moved by the powers that be. (i.e. Lord Wight or one of the other moderators)... but still;

The Strangest place I've read The Lord of the Rings was at the top of Blackpool Tower. Nothing dramatically interesting, but that’s about as exciting as my life gets.

Hmm... let's see....

1) on the back of a tractor in an Illinois cornfield

2) in a stadium in Indianapolis waiting for Andy Roddick to walk out onto the court

3) leaning against the car in the 125 degree heat at the lowest spot in the Western Hemisphere (Death Valley)

4) on a rock in the middle of the Snake River

5) in the shadow of the tree known as General Sherman, the most massive living thing in the world

I haven't read it anywhere well known, but much of my very first reading was carried out while I was sitting beneath stacks of old school chairs with canvas seats. I found a very good hiding place where these had been stored in an old cloak room, and by crawling beneath them I came to a clearing where the light shone through a window and all was silent, so much so that I ended up late for a fair few lessons. ;) I have also read Tolkien in various sheds, including a poultry shed, in a van and while sitting with my feet in a river.

Oh I feel slightly better about admitting to reading Tolkien sitting in an extremely uncomfortable and un-mallornlike apple tree pretending to be an elf.... I was about 10 :o

1) On a raft floating down the Mississippi

2) Various ski lifts and Gondolas

3) Kalalau Beach, Kuai (a vicious day-long hike from civilization)

4) Various debris huts constucted in the North Carolina Appalachians, the Tetons and the Utah Rockies

5) Backstage during several plays

6) The uppermost level of a seven-level Pagoda in Shenjiang, China

7) A 24hr train ride to Hong Kong (believe me, it was a wierd place)

But the crowning glory would have to be:
In the cave of Guru Deva, Rishikesh, The Himalyas, India

I stored all my LOTR related books in a plastic bag inside a stack of old tires in the hayloft of our barn for a whole year once...

I was going through an 11 year old's frantic desire to be an artist and that was my "studio" while I attempted illustrations.

Can't say I've read it anywhere strange, though, so hope this qualifies. ;)

Excellent idea.
 

Oh my gosh! You people have been to some pretty cool places! :eek: I'm sad to say I've never left the U.S. and have only been to about 10 states (not counting the ones I've flown over).

Let's see... I haven't been any where interesting...

• In a canoe in the middle of a lake in the Tushar Mountains near where I live.
• On Newport Beach in California.
• Disneyland parking lot! :D
• The roof of my old house.

And just about every where else I've been. I don't leave home without it.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add Rivendell. Actually it's Riverdale, a city here in Utah. I've called it Rivendell several times before through a slip of the tongue. ;)

The most interesting place I've ever been was a fireplace in a college Student Center.

The reason I started this thread was to show why LotR is the most read(Fiction) book in the world, and that it has been read in every corner of this planet.

Long live the Greatest Story ever told.

Random Titles in a clasified location....
 

Darn, you beat me to it! ;) I read ROTK backstage during a dance interpretation of "Alice in Wonderland"

How bout reading the Sil in an english class exactly half-way between the North Pole and the Equator? :p

i like this thread
 

I re-read some parts of the The Hobbit at an old cemetary in Kiev, Ukraine on a sunny day once.

I read LotR during AP Modern European History my senior year of high school while paying zero attention to the lesson. I was a naughty girl.

This is interesting! Here are three additions:

1. In a hospital room in the early stages of labor, before I delivered my son.

2. Clinging to a deck chair in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, trying not to toss my cookies, while the ship was assaulted by gale force winds. (I stayed up on deck as long as the crew let me because being in a small, enclosed cabin was not good for my stomach.)

3. In an emergency room waiting for the doctors who took forever to get to me. There were some folk much more seriously injured who understandably came first. However, I had broken two ribs and was willing to try anything to take my mind off the pain.

1) Somewhere above the North Atlantic.

2) During choir rehearsal.

the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

under the Kurt Cobain Bridge in Aberdeen, WA.

Um... I've read it in some really funny positions like sitting upside down and sitting in the mud behind a dog kennel.

The most interesting place I've read it though is The Energia Space Co-operation Hotel in Korolev, Russia. I went to the International Space Olympics in 2004 and took a copy of LOTR and The Sill with me. Oh, so that means that I also read it in the car park of the place where they train their cosmonauts and astonauts.

Other than that it's just pretty normal and dull. Though I did get away with reading it in a compulsory Religious Education lesson that I didn't want to be in. Well for 45 mins anyway. The teacher was very mad when he found out. He didin't appreciate the works of Tolkien!

Heh heh... I read Lost Tales 1 in my Math SAT Prep class... but that's not LotR.

I haven't really read it anywhere exceptionally exciting, but I'm probably going to go see the Gates in Central Park, so I shall make a point to read LotR under them. I'll need something to read for the train ride, anyway.

Oh! I read RotK in the Majestic Theatre waiting for the curtain to go up for the Phantom of the Opera. That's sort of exciting.

This isn't the strangest place, but the most peaceful. I read LotR once in a teeny, tiny garden, in Madrid (Spain). It was the middle of spring and the garden had lovely walls with roses growing all around them. And right in the middle of the garden was a huge fountain and the water flowed all over the mossy cobblestones and watered all of the plants that grew around it. So picturesque...

The weirdest place...
I dunno, in a cabin in Quebec on a bed the size of a breadbox, French Canadian people talking outside, mosquitos everywhere, pictures of hobbits crossing Abbey Road on the wall...

I only have the three-volume set, so in lines for amusement park rides, or waiting for a friend to finish a test at the Slippery Rock Language Competition, or standing around at the train station, I'm usually found reading that Guide to Tolkien's 16 Middlearth Languages...

...while sketching a picture of the Phantom of the Opera... *violent sigh* *love*

Random Words and the Roar of an Engine
 

Now that I think of it, I have read the Lost Tales in the backseat of a Toyota Camry-on a highway-in a lush green national forest-on the way to the Coast-of the Pacific Ocean.

The most memorable place I have held a most memorable copy of LotR in my hands: Last summer, several Downs members met in Oxford to go to Tolkien's grave and see the sights. We stopped at the 'Eagle and Child', the pub where JRRT, C. S. Lewis and others met regularly, and there Squatter showed us (and let us page through) his first edition copy of LotR.

I must go to a funeral of o person I don´t realy know so well. It was very boring, so I took my Manga out and read it secretly under the bench.
Well, that was not very pious, but the dead man don´t grumble me.

In the Philippines. Isn't that country strange? :D

hi. been a while, hasn't it?

The strangest place I ever read Lord of the Rings was when I entred an all-night dance-off with my boyfriend. We were so bored and weary after about three hours that I read all of the Two Towers and part of The Return of the King hanging over his shoulder while he read The Fellowship of the Ring hanging over my shoulder.

I read The Silmarillon on top of Signal Hill, St. John's Newfoundland (Canada). The most Eastern point in North America. (I know it isn't very exciting, but it's something)

How romantic!

This weekend, I read RotK under the Gates (as promised) and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, choosing to refresh my memory of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields rather than look at a bunch of creepy fur and feather outfits.

(1) Standing and swaying in the Kiev, Ukraine, metro, riveted by the sheer grandeur of the language in the Pelennor Fields chapter.

(2) Reading FotR aloud to three brothers, two cousins, and their friend (all male), all of us in authentic American Civil War garb, sitting on the top of a hill in a stiff March breeze with the camps spread out below us.

(3) Reading all of the LotR aloud to my father this summer, during our 35 minute (each way) drive to work.

(4) Skimming the Silm for riddle material during geology lecture - two weeks ago.

(5) Finishing FotR for the first time at my brother's Little League game. (That's when I first discovered that the LotR is one story, not three related stories.)

I know there's more, but I'm so used to having a book with me anywhere and everywhere I go that I can't separate the occasions. Fun topic!

1- During an endless trial at the Local Court of Justice, pretending to be reading the case files (if my boss ever knew...).

2- Inside a 40 feet Container laden with 25 pound bags of Canadian lentil during the stevedores' lunch break.

Hm. I haven't read Tolkien in any really weird places... well, no. I have. My room is the weirdest place you'll find on Earth. :p

- In Nijniy Novgorod, Russia

- In Boston, Massatchusette (I still can't spell that, even though I've lived there for over 2 years...) USA

- In Toronto Ontario Canada... where I've read most of it... but that's not weird...

- In the middle of nowhere in a cabin. Well, not exactly "nowhere" - it was northwestern Ontario.

- In the middle of nowhere in northeastern Ontario, but this time in a tent

- In a car

- On a bus

- On a plane

- In Varadero, Cuba

- In school, when I think that the lesson is not important enough for me to listen

- When my parents think I'm doing homework... (me bad girl! :))

- When my friends are talkin about a topic that I'm not passionate about (one of them says that I look up every time she calls my name, even though I don't pay attention to what they say. Weird!)

- In a bathtub (I stopped reading Tolkien there after I accidentlly dipped a tip of The Sil in the watter... It dried, but it's a bit lumpy now. It's not pretty. But I read other books like that - books that I don't care about how they look as much.)

- At night with a flashlight.



Long useless list, most of which applies to everybody. :rolleyes:

On a porcelain throne.

Yup. Been there, done that.

I used to cart along my copies of LotR with me everywhere. They've been all over Alaska, down the Alcan, stayed in Washington, and even been to Britain. Yes, I had a bag full of Tolkien books in Britain. They were heavy.

I read Tolkien at the Girdwood Forest Fair (emphasising the word 'exotic'). Which really isn't the most exciting place, but I was surrounded by hippies.
I've read Tolkien driving across lakes in the middle of winter, and at the Moose Dropping Festival (yeah, there is actually such a thing).
I have also read Tolkien in Yellowstone.

The best place to read Tolkien, though, is outside under a tree on a warm summer's day. :)

You'd be suprised how much of The Lord of the Grins I wrote on The Porcelain Throne :)

I agree with that 100%.

I disagree. I prefer reading on a tree. (I forgot to say that in my last post for some reason). I love climbing trees! Almost as much as reading Tolkien. ;) But under a tree is good as well. :)