[Keeper of Dol Guldur]

I'm happy being a "First Born".

If I was around back when any of it was first written, I'd have been hooked. But hey, 1985 was long after most of it was released.

I remember first getting into it. For starters ... I think I HAD seen the cartoon Hobbit movie beforehand ... but I'd totally forgotten about it, as I'd seen it when I was very little and totally forgot.

So in my Freshman year (I think) we read the Hobbit, and I was like ... OOOOOOOH MAN.

Instantaneously into it.

It was like a Ninth Grade reading class (maybe 8th ... memory fuzziness), and instead of reading any of the other books for the class, I managed to con my LOTR obsessed teacher (our school had a class called Trilogy) into letting me read the entire Trilogy for reading, as a sort of independent study which still counted as reading, instead of reading some real crap.

And because I wasn't reading what the rest of the class was reading, I got to read in her Trilogy classroom, which was a small, air-conditioned room with a table, chairs, and walls plastered with LOTR posters.

What a way for a kid to get into it. That was like ... 1998 or 1999.

I was like ... 13, 14.

I'm a youngin' still, at 19. But hey, I'm hooked forever now.

I had NO clue a movie was being made, and I read it like ten times before I found out. That was a pleasant little shock. As far as the movies go ... I guess I'm a fanatic, in that like any other book reader, I knew what was different, and I used to point it out a lot, but I got annoyed by the constant pointing of it out.

So I just like the movies now. A lot.

They stand on their own as awesome.

Of course, they're not the books.