[red]

I am a SHE and I do not check the boards every hour, so please forgive me for not having responded yet, mark. I'll get to it later and edit this post here.

Ok, here's the story. My Tolkien adventures began in 7th grade (1985). I was not a reader then (I'm the Math/Science type). I only read when a book report was required and even then I grumbled about it constantly. The first 7th grade report was assigned and we could choose any book we desired. Our teacher had a big, circular table with piles of books if we needed help deciding. I looked over the selection and the only one that caught my eye was The Hobbit. Judging solely by the cover, it appeared to be the least horrible of all the choices. I took it home reluctantly and started to read it late one night. I was riveted!! The chapter about the giant spiders kept me awake all night in terror. (This is a good thing. Even now I partially judge a book by its ability to elicit some kind of emotional response be that fear or anger or sadness.) When I finished it, I was excited to learn that there were even more books about Middle-earth. I attempted to read LotR, but I got lost during the Council of Elrond and gave up for a while. It wasn't until my last year of high school that I picked it up again. That time I breezed through it, moved on to the Silmarillion, breezed through that... moved on to Unfinished Tales... you get the idea. I was hooked. I've lost track of rereads since then.

btw.. Nowadays I am an avid reader, but I still absolutely hate writing.

[ November 30, 2002: Message edited by: red ]