How were you introduced to Tolkien?

[Galadriel]

I was introduced to LOTR when I was around eight, when I watched the Bakshi films and was morbidly fascinated with all the blood and the twisted woods and the odd men with no pants (!). But that was all it remained for me for the next few years: a strange story that somehow both appealed to my inner child and revealed a starkly cruel world. Then, of course, the books happened. My mother had an old, battered copy of The Lord of the Rings, complete with yellowed pages and pencil marks and all else. I had just failed at reading War and Peace, and, out of stubbornness, wanted to finish a really fat book.

I got obsessed so quickly, I may have lost some friends. :/ I regret nothing! Nothing, I tell you!

[xMellrynxMaidenx]

I loved reading as a kid, so around my fourth grade year is when I picked up the Fellowship of the Ring. My mother and I ventured off to the public library, browsing around, and I happened to stumble upon the book. Being the kid I was, I asked my mom if she thought it would be interesting to read (I was a bit odd, what my mom thought was cool so did I) and she said it looked interesting enough.

Mind you back then I didn't quite grasp the concept of the plot being so young and all. I was no kid genius that was for certain. As I got older though, I picked up the rest of the books and read through them, finally being able to understand them a bit better.

[Galadriel55]

My mother first read LOTR to me when I was about 5 or 6. I re read it again (by myself) when I was 9, and that's when I begun understanding and really liking the book. I got hooked up on it at around 11 - took me long enough.

[Durelin]

I have to make a confession. When I was in grade school, something like 2nd grade, I picked out the Hobbit from the library cause it looked so cool and I think I was kinda aware of it being a classic of sorts. I started it, and didn't like it. I think my problem at that point in life was that I was really more interested in animals than people. I adored the Wind in the Willows. But I also couldn't get through The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. As soon as it got toward the end and the beavers and fox and etc. didn't really matter anymore, I gave up. Or maybe I just got too upset about Aslan. I don't remember.

Anyway, however many years went by...when the very first teaser came out for the LotR films, my dad saw it and said, "oh cool!" I think he'd rather forgotten Tolkien for the most part, but he owned copies of LotR. I think his brother might have been more into Tolkien than he ever was.

So he found the Bakshi movie (which he had seen in theatres, haha) and watched it with my brother and I, and then the Jackson flms came out, and it was ME-mania for a while...

I'm surprised and glad to see some others who were introduced by the Bakshi movie. Say what you want about it, but I think it was interesting!

[Snowdog]

Lets see if I can remember back that far....

It was 1975 and summer was in full swing in Seattle. I was walking about with my neighbor one warm night, and as we shared some pipeweed all rolled up in a ZigZag, he told me about this book he just read and enjoyed very much called The Hobbit. I asked what a Hobbit was, and he told me they were short care-free folk who like eating, drinking, & smoking! Said I'd be interested in reading it since I had finished one of Asimov's Foundation books and wanted something different to read. So he loaned me the paperback and said he was starting on the Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring. Read through The Hobbit and liked it, but thought it to be a bit juvenile. He said Fellowship Of The Ring was better and loaned me that paperback as he had just finished it. I read it through and indeed I enjoyed it much more than The Hobbit, so I read Two Towers as he had finished it. By this time I was eating the tale up, and I finished Two Towers while he had stalled a third of the way into Return of the King. After a couple weeks of bugging him about whether he finished it yet and he getting annoyed at me, I finally checked out an old 1957 copyright hardback of Return of the King out of the library and read on through. Loved the big fold-out map that was in the back of that hardback edition, so when I returned it I checked out Fellowship and Two Towers hardbacks and started reading the Trilogy all over again! When I checked out Return of the King the second time and finished it, I delved into the appendices and all they had to offer. Started learning the elven scripts and, lo & behold, I met a Tolkien geek babe in my senior year in high school. We would practice our Tengwar scripting and pass notes to each other, and sit by the flag pole at lunch telling tales to each other. When they started doing some renovation work on the bus-loading zone near the flag pole, we saw they had just poured fresh curbing, so we decided to cut the class after lunch and imprint 'Friends' in Tengwar. We made a couple mistakes, but it remained in that curb until 2005 when they totally re-worked the school and dug up the curbs and flagpole.

So yeah, I was a Tolkien geek since the summer of 1975. When word got out that the Silmarillion was going to be published, we geeks were overjoyed! Went to a book release line party and got my copy! Tried to read it, and couldn't get into it at all. I finally skipped the biblicy creation beginning and got into the meat of the book. Aside from a few takes of the Noldor and of Turin, it never really did that much for me. I enjoyed more Unfinished Tales when it came out, and I really enjoyed Children of Hurin when it came out a few years ago. Thought it was a proper treatment of the tale. I will always come back to read the Trilogy every now and again. I think I'm up to 11 readings in 38 years. Sadly, I have only read it through once since those PJ movies came out. I'm way passed due to read it through again.

[Snowdog]

Originally Posted by Galadriel

Sure it was...when I was obsessed with gore in cartoons O.O I watched it later and went O.O what the heck? Aragorn looked like a Red Indian, Boromir was a Viking, and the Balrog was a bear with bunny slippers. Gollum was good though.

Still, it has some atmosphere in it, and I suppose that's what I like about it.

I saw the Bakshi movie in a theatre when it came out, being hungry for anything Tolkien in those days. Yes, it was a rather interesting movie considering they did it all old school clip-art. Thought the real imaging of the orc bands from Isengard was pretty cool. Galadriel was quite the Disney Princess in it though.