Are there any pre-1977 readers here?

[Marileangorifurnimaluim]

Close. I was reading the LOTR in 1979-80. My father noticed I was reading fantasy and sci-fi, reached over and handed me a boxed set of paperbacks from his bookshelf: "Here, try this." My seventh grade teachers would've cursed his name if they'd known, because I couldn't put them down, not even for class. Spellbound.

The Silmarillion, I appreciated the sections with a clear arc, especially the early biblical section, but it faltered and became disjointed. I was disappointed, it obviously an unfinished work--and not just a little bit unfinished, but radically so.

[littlemanpoet]

To this day I remember back in about 1975, my brother, eight years my senior, making an educated guess that Sauron had been Feanor. Not a bad guess, considering, but no.

[CSteefel]

I read LOTR back in 1965. Discovered the books somehow and then disappeared into my grandfather's bomb shelter (which he built in the nuclear war scare in the earliest 1960s, despite being located in southern Minnesota) for 2-3 days for non-stop reading.

Beyond that, the legend of the Elder Days only came through in the stories from Gandalf, the song of Luthien and Beren on the approach to Weathertop, and then in Rivendell. But I cannot say I remember absorbing all of the Legendarium there. Most of the additional information came from the Appendices of course...