Public Research: How did you become Tolkien-lover?

[Cailín]

Well, this is rather well known.

I joined the Downs.

[Kath]

My dad read the books as a child and still had them from all thos years ago. When I was about 3 or 4 he and my mum read The Hobbit to me and to be honest I think they soon started to regret it as I demanded to be read it every night. This, I believe, is why they didn't tell me about LotR til a few years later! I got into other books for a while and then reread The Hobbit for myself when I was 7 and continued on to LotR (which my parents finally told me about ).

So definitely the parent option!

[elronds_daughter]

Heren, you need another category!

I cast my vote as "Watched the movies", because my dad heard about the movies, and decided to read the books to us as a consequence. So, I discovered Tolkien because of the movies, but for me, the books came first.

I suppose I might have chosen "Been read his work by a parent", but I decided the movies deserved some credit.

[Nogrod]

Even though I have loved to hang around here as a non-sex, non-age character, I guess I can't help revealing something for the sake of a story.

It's interesting, that 34% of the people here have come to know Tolkien's works through parents reading them aloud (even though it's not reflected fully in the messages written here). After the Qu'aran, and the Bible, I can't quite imagine, which would be the third most read-aloud book in the world, if it's not the Lord of the Rings (and I even suspect, that if the Qu'aran schools were excluded, LotR would really be number one).

My father started reading LotR to me and my sister during the seventies, when I was less than 10 -years old. That reading never got further than Buckleberry ferry, but I read the rest by myself. Then I read the Silmariillion, Unfinished Tales etc., many times...

But why has no-one talked about the cartoon version by Bakshi? That film was shown in television in my country at 95' or something (I had seen the paper-version of it around 80' and the fil version at cinema a couple of years later). I had two children and took it on video to show them later on. Fortunately they saw that there was a cartoon in dad's VHS, and after a little discussion, we decided to look the film together (my daughters were then something like 5 & 4 years old). After that there was no end in begging: we want more!

So, getting better of my father, I managed to read the LotR to my girls from the beginning to the end. It took about half a year, reading almost every night. Then we read The Silmarillion, and next the Unfinished Tales.

After that, we started roleplaying together. My older daughter has read the LotR about twenty times (of which about one third in English), and is a regular visiter, player and commentator, at the Barrow Downs (she made me come to see this place in the first place).

So that way it also goes. Mothers & fathers passing on stories they like to the younger generation - and by times, themselves getting off the ground by those stories.

So: oldtimer's getting youngsters to get those same oldtimer's to get involved in the things they have made the youngsters to get interested in...

What do you call that?

Living tradition...

PS. Sorry for aggressive-looking avatar: it's here for the "outracing..." RPG, where it fits to my character better than the earlier one...