If you are interested in Hobbits you learn a lot more about them in The Lord of the Rings:
1. THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
2. THE TWO TOWERS
3. THE RETURN OF THE KING
Little did I know! That was the postscript at the end of the incredible story I'd just read, when I was nine or ten. Not much of a hint, really, let alone a spoiler, but enough to make me race back to the library as soon as I could to seize these additional three--three!--books the author had promised me. The problem was, they had #1 and #3, but #2 was on sabbatical. When was it coming back? It didn't matter, it wasn't there then...and by 'then' I mean 'now' or rather, '
NOW'. I took what I could, and told myself that by the time I was done with the first book, the second would certainly be available.
But I read
Fellowship in about a day, and I don't think I really considered for more than a moment waiting to start
Return. I finished that the same weekend, untangling the knotted plot strings as best I could, knowing where the ends were, but very unclear about the middles. By the time the missing book finally came into my hands, a long time (by my standards) had passed, and I'd read the other books at least once more.
I've read The Two Towers many times now, but there's still a little bit of a strangeness to it that I don't get from the other books. I don't truly know if or how much of that is due to me jumping ahead back at the beginning, but it does feel like maybe a little spark of unfamiliarity is still smoldering there.
Anyway, that's the story of how I spoiled the entire middle portion of LoTR for myself, back in the depths of time.
(I'm glad this topic has come up. Among other things it has made me ponder a bit on how ridiculously tempting spoilers are for me in general, and how much my pleasure in rooting about in HOME might be coming from a neighborhood in my heart just a few blocks over from that.)