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Old 10-03-2008, 11:12 AM   #21
skip spence
shadow of a doubt
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: Back on the streets
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skip spence is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.skip spence is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
I dunno, to be honest I can't remember exactly how it happened. When I was young, around 10 I suppose, I was briefly into RPGs like Dungeons And Dragons and also read LotR for the first time. I can't remember if I was into RPGs because I read LotR or if it was the other way around but I did like the books, especially FotR. There was much I didn't understand at the time though and it wasn't until I watched the Bakshi cartoon a few years later I realised Saruman and Sauron were different people for example. I'm not entirely sure if I made in through the whole thing although I believe I did. I also owned the LotR RPG and for a good many years I even thought that Balrogs had wings - god forbid! - due to a picture in that game.

Then came puberty and my attention shifted to other fields of study.

It was to be many years before Tolkien came into my life again. In my early 20's - a year or two before the movies came out - I lived in Spain for a while. During a lazy and stoned Sunday afternoon I decided to pick up that copy of the Fellowship of the Ring I had noticed on my mate's bookshelf and was immediately hooked. I finished it within a week then went cold turkey as I wasn't able to get hold of the other two books in English or Swedish - my Spanish wasn't good enough. I had to tell my parents at home to go and buy them for me and then send them by mail. After a what seemed an eternity they finally arrived and I haven't looked back since. The Silmarillion was a revelation when I first read it and Unfinished Tales was a wonderful fix as well. Now I'm digging into the HoME while wishing there were more works by the Tolkien out there. I'm not really a fantasy fan though and can't really bring myself to pick up non-Tolkien works (the few times I did in my teens was a disappointment). Should I?
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Last edited by skip spence; 10-03-2008 at 02:35 PM.
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