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Luincamiel
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 04, 2003 03:02
My first contact with LotR was the animated one. My grandparents had gotten it for me and my siblings one Christmas. I think I was maybe 6... I'm not sure. Anyway... we watched it and it absolutely freaked me out! (I watched it agian recently and it was still freaky!) Then the movies came out! I absolutely loved em! After that I read the books. And now I am obsessed!
Lady~of~the~Shield~Arm
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 04, 2003 08:20
I was first introduced by LotR by seeing the FotR movie.. Before I saw that movie, I'd never heard of LotR.. :blush: But I started to read The Hobbit (In english! ) And so I became a fan..
Ithiahir
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on: July 04, 2003 11:38
my 8th grade english teacher was obsessed! and i mean obsessed! she would read us a few pages a day at the beginning of class of lotr. she even missed a day of school to go see the premiere! so she kinda got me hooked on it. when she was reading the book, i was like, hey! this stuff's perty good!, and i just fell in love w/it. too bad she moved to a different school district the year our orchestra played fotr music at the junior high! now i'm gettin my friend hooked on it. another joins the "special people".
Thranduilsgirl
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 04, 2003 11:59
My Grandpa read me The Hobbit when I was about five years old, and I loved it so my parents got FOTR and TTT and my dad read them to me. LOTR used to be banned where we lived back then, so it was pretty hard to get the books and I had to wait some time before I got ROTK, that was very frustrating!
Faramirs_first_kiss
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 05, 2003 08:47
Well, I'd had the Hobbit for about three years before FOTR came out in the cinemas and about every two months, especially when I was ill, I'd take it down from the shelf and try to read it again. I kept saying that one day I'd have to force myself to finish it because LOTR is a classic and I'm a bookworm and so have to read all the classics, and I hate reading books out of order. About a week before the film I took it down again and said, "right, this time I'm going to get all the way through this blimmin' book if it kills me, because I have to know what happens before I see the film". I'm sorry to say I failed. I kept finding excuses not to read it and still had about a hundred pages to go when I left for the cinema.

I fell in love with the film straight away and when I got home finished the Hobbit in less than an hour and started LOTR as soon as I could get my hands on a copy (almost two weeks later, much to my annoyance). However, having absolutely loathed the adaptation of the Harry Potter books I decided to read the books after seeing the films and I've stuck to that despite pressure otherwise.
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Moogan1689
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: September 17, 2003 05:06
I was first introduced to tolkien when my mom brought me to see fellowship in theatres. I actually didn't really like it cuz i had no idea what was going on. but then i borrowed my mom's bf's bbc lotr cd's and i was hooked! (though i couldn't tell aragorn and boromir apart...)
Neneithel
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on: September 17, 2003 10:57
A highlight of the evenings of my childhood was the bedtime story. My brother would come through into the room my sister and I shared and our mother would read to us. One night she started reading The Hobbit. She did all the voices and was as excited by the story as we were. I still remember her reading the first line and me thinking "What's a Hobbit?" Such a wonderful mother I have!

Neneithel.
tani
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on: September 18, 2003 07:56
I was 10 and I had just fractered both my kneecaps... so I wasn't going anywhere fast. I got carried next to a bookshelf and pretty much left alone all day. So I decided to start reading the old books of my mum. So, there was one with this cool looking cover and a weird title... so I read it the whole way through and really liked it. That weird titled book was Sil and I've never looked back:love:
Shastia
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: December 19, 2003 04:14
Oddly enough, I got an illistrated copy of fotr as a baptismal present when I was 12, but I didn't read it for a few years. Then I never looked back...
Grey_Pilgrim
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: December 19, 2003 08:10
I'd often thought about reading LOTR over the years but was always put off by the length and depth (from what I knew of it) of the story. I thought I wouldn't be able to get back to it regularly enough to appreciate it properly.

Then a couple of years ago before The Fellowship Of The Ring movie was released, a company that sells books through mail order & direct to factories, offices etc. left some samples in my workplace. With them was a box set of the 3 books, plus The Hobbit. As I knew I would definitley see the movies, I decided this was as good a time as any to read the story since I much prefer reading books before seeing film adaptations. After reading The Hobbit & just about to start on TFOTR, I remember thinking: "Why didn't I do this before now?"

Judging by a lot of the comments here, I'm very much a latecomer to Tolkien's work, but better that than not at all!
thegreendragonmaid
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 11, 2004 05:20
The first time i saw Lord of the Rings my ant had rented and said it looked stupid.So we started watching it and we thought it would be Dumb but we fell in love.It was the first one and the 2 was about to come out
TopazDragon
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 12, 2004 01:35
Thirty Eight years ago I picked up the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in a second hand book store. Thought it looked interesting. I had read a couple of Tolkiens books before now and thought I would give it a go. I was so enthralled that I did not put them down until I had read the complete 4 volume set of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Since them I have read and reread the books countless times.

I read them as bedtime stores to my children and when my son grew so did his love for Tolkien’s works.

I continued the tradition by reading them to my grandchildren and when the movies came out they recognized them as the stories that their grandmother read to them.

Peace
ElvenShieldmaiden
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 12, 2004 02:13
I saw the Rankin-Bass version of "The Hobbit" when I was seven and wasn't really intrigued by it, but I read the book a year later anyway. It didn't interest me very much at all, and I didn't know that Tolkien had written more books about hobbits.

Fastforward to the fall of 2001. My brother and his friends, most of whom had read LotR, were excited about the movie FotR. They're normally not very excitable, so I wanted to see what made them tick. Result: I tagged along to the theatre on 27 Dec. 2001.

Three-and-a-half hours later, I was at home. By that time, I'd stolen my brother's copy of FotR from his shelf and begun reading it.

And it just snowballed from there...

Ciao!
outlawgirl09
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 12, 2004 06:46
On a trip to california my mom played a recorded unibriged version and then I was like "I think there is a movie out about that." And so we whatched the movie and then I read the books and have been hooked ever sence.
iarfalaswen
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 12, 2004 09:02
i would like to have some amazing story about first reading the tolkien books as a child and just letting the obsession grow.. but i dont..

i first got into it when the FotR came out at the movies. I think i saw it January 7th.. yeah i don't know why i retain that useless bit of information.. as soon as i started watching it i was hooked on it. lol practically controlled my life for years. i have to admit, i'm not into the trilogy as i was, but this summers project is reading LotR and maybe another Tolkien book too. Havent decided yet.
hobbitmom
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 12, 2004 10:11
My Husband introduced me to the books. I love reading Fantasy as it is so it wasn't hard for me to get hook. :rolling:.

When my children were old enough and reading, we did a family time of reading the books out loud. We each had our own set of Books. We also read our own characters we liked. My Husband made a list of all the main Characters, good and bad. We started with the Hobbit. We would read when we could as a group. It was lots of fun to do. After my Daughter got married she carried on the tradition and did the same with her family .
alduya
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 12, 2004 12:47
One year a while back I was at day camp. There was this councellor, Matt, and every day at lunch he would tell stories. Normally it was stuff like Star Wars that I didn't care about, but I didn't have anything better to do while I ate so I listened anyway. One day it was LOTR. After listening to it for a couple days I really liked it so I went out to Borders and bought the trilogy, read it loved it, etc.
mírfain
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 13, 2004 05:44
I hadn't heard about Tolkien or LotR befor the FotR film came. At first I actually thought that LotR was just a bad "wanna-be Harry Potter" film... (which I'm not very proud of...) but, my mum talked me into seeing it, which I am very glad for now!

And I absolutly loved it! :love: (and still do)... I bought The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and loved the books as well... (even though I just skipped the part where frodo and sam are just walkin and walking and walking because I found it very boring...which I don't do now, btw)and now I spend houres on LotR sites, reading LotR etc.
_Laeriel_
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 13, 2004 08:38
The first time I heard about LotR was in december 2001 and everyone around me was talking about the FotR-movie. All I heard for days was how good it was and that I really should go see it, but I was convinced that I didn't like that kind of movies. Well well, how wrong you can be

When the film was released on VHS my dad went out and bought it, and on the question why he did that his answer was "it's a big movie, and everyone say it's really good...".
So I watched it. The result? I was hooked after the prolouge - my dad fell asleep after 10 minutes

_Laeriel_
Lauz
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 14, 2004 07:51
I read half of the hobbit and then sort of forgot about it, because in all honesty I don't really like reading. I then watched The Two Towers in the theatres and was immediately hooked on LOTR. I read the rest of the hobbit and then saw FOTR and then read the whole trilogy. I liked the books. I guess the visuals of the movie made the books more interesting and made me want to read them.
goldberry
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 15, 2004 08:05
Well , for me, my introduction to Tolkien was quite a few years back.(cant remember exactly but way way before the movies came out, perhaps 15 years ago?) Anyways I brought a poster (which I still have hanging in my room ) that I liked the look of and across the top it had "Lord of The Rings". I knew there was a book by that name, so I when straight to the library and borrowed it and was totally hooked! And have been ever since :love:
Hanulas
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 22, 2004 05:21
There was this new guy in fifth grade who was always talking about the books, and I mean he never stopped talking about it!
Hehe, I remember we had to do a book report and he mentioned a ring that made you invisible and had to be destroyed, and I was like, "What's the deal? It only makes you invisible, why does it have to be destroyed?"
And so after all the fuss, I just had to watch the movie and see what it was all about. And so, here I am, 3 years later, a member of a HUGE LOTR site, rich in Tolkein knowledge and mythology, and (according to my brother:love with LOTR written all over my face.
Funny little world, ain't it?
sairina_star
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 23, 2004 05:26
I saw the coming attractions for the FotR and I saw the movie and I loved so I read the books and all the other works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Now I'm so obessed with Tolkien's work
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legolas_luver2
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 23, 2004 03:58
i first heard of Tolkien by one of my friends who was reading them. i got my sister the Hobbit for Christmas but i never read it until this month, after i saw the movies. the movies were the ones that actually got me started.
Morwinyoniel
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 24, 2004 11:42
What, I haven't posted in this thread yet?

I first became aware of the LOTR when the animated movie was released, and also the books became very popular. At that time, I wasn't interested, though - I was a deadpan Star Wars and Star Trek fan. Then, a few years later, I saw a one-volume copy of LOTR in a friend's bookshelf, and knowing that this friend doesn't read just any crap, I got curious to find out what it was all about. I borrowed the book, and was just enthralled by the story. Now, I have in my bookshelf the LOTR, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and the History of Middle Earth series... and, both the TEs and the first two EEs of the movies.
Annûniel
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 24, 2004 11:56
Jeez, I thought I'd already posted here!!

Anyway, in 10th grade high school, we were doing British author projects. I actually chose Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but someone in my class chose JRR Tolkien. And when he did his report on FotR and TTT I became interested. They sounded like amazing fantasy stories. Well after asking my dad about them, I bought The Hobbit and the trilogy. I read the Hobbit but didn't get past Weathertop in FotR, that is, until I saw the movie. Then I got VERY interested and finished FotR and TTT before the second movie came out. And well every since then my obsession has only grown.
TheElvenPrincess
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: July 24, 2004 01:53
i think i was introduced to it last year. my parents were watching TTT and i got interested ansd wanted to be able to understand it. now i'm a LOTR freak. lol.
Celedë_Anthaas
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 13, 2005 12:40
Revived in the name of TRUCK!

I think it all started when I was 10, or 11. My dad got a LotR board game for Christmas and my entire family played it. I didn't understand it at all Then we were having fish for dinner and my brother started imitating Gollum. He told me about this creature that had lived underground, which could see in the dark with his big eyes and ate raw fish. I wanted to know more. I first read the Hobbit a month or so before FotR came to the cinemas. My parents both love LotR, so they wanted me to start reading Tolkien books too. I thought the Hobbit was okay, so I read LotR next. I've been obsessed ever since
Mrs_Boyd
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 19, 2005 10:15
Oddly enough, it was amy evil step-mother that I must thank for introducing me to Tolkien's world. She basically dragged me to the theatre. So, as much as I hate her, I hafta love her for intorducing my to LotR.
~Celebwen~of~Ithilien~
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 22, 2005 10:03
I was forced by my mum! Seriously, I was! She took me, my dad and my sister to see the Fellowship in the theatre. She really wanted to see it, because she had read all the books. After that, I started reading them for myself and became an addict.
Carnesir
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 22, 2005 07:42
Let's see now. I'm 17 right now so about 12 years ago my dad read to me and my little brother the Hobbit. When he finished that we went strait into the LotR. I love 'em. Now i have the LotR trilogy, the Silmarillion, the Hobbit, the Lost tales 1 & 2, the unfinished tales, the lays of beleriand, the atlas of middle-earth, the shaping of middle-earth, and the lost road and other writings. Still a few i want to buy, including the languages of Tolkiens middle-earth.

Carnesir
Silmaure
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 23, 2005 04:24
I was around 6 when my brother read the Hobbit to me. It was gone from me for a few years until 7th grade when I refound LOTR.
scots56
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 23, 2005 07:40
*brings out old crystal ball, blows dust off and peers into the long ago past*

Year: 1976

Scene: visiting then-boyfriend at his parents house in the summer.

I was bored, and since I have always been a book addict, I was searching for something to read. He recommended The Hobbit to me. So, being the obliging young thing that I was back then, I took him up on it. I was absolutely blown away! I just had to read more. So he gave me the trilogy, and the rest they say, is history. I've been a serious Hobbit-freak ever since. Well, at least one good thing came out of that relationship. LOL

My husband has always been very supportive of my addiction. So much so, that for an engagement present (not the One Ring mind you) he gave me the leather bound edition of The Hobbit. Then 9 months later gave me the leather bound edition of The Lord of the Rings for Christmas. Gotta love that man!

In the almost thirty years since that time, I've read those books more times than I would even be able to count. I played Nori in our college production of The Hobbit (hated that glued on beard!!!) For the ritual nighttime stories when our son was young, of course it was LotR! He read them on his own at about the age of 8 or 9 and has loved them ever since as well. Plus, since I teach, I have LotR stuff all over my classroom and have managed to infect several of my students with the same addiction. I consider my job well done!

These stories have made such an impression on my life, you have no idea. Well, maybe this crowd does... I find myself wandering back into Middle Earth on a regular basis and am so glad to be at home again when I do.

[Edited on 23/6/2005 by scots56]
MinasTirithMS
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: June 25, 2005 09:00
It's great to see that some moms have introduced their children to Professor Tolkien's work. I read the Hobbit to my sons when they were young and they both remain fans (at ages 27 and 29). I'm awaiting the time I can introduce The Hobbit to my grandsons.

As for me, the year was 1972 when I heard a classmate talk about a book she was reading, The Hobbit. I found it several months later and read it in a day. Life went on busily for me until I was married with very young children. For some reason I was in a book store and The Fellowship of The Ring caught my eye. I bought it, read it, and soon went back for the other two books. I have read and re-read them many times over the years. I have read and collected Tolkien's other works. I wish I could get in touch with that friend in high school who told me about The Hobbit. I'd thank her most graciously.

MT
cirdaneth
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Post RE: How were you.......?
on: March 03, 2007 09:22
It was 1956 … yep! that long ago. I returned to my co-ed boarding-school after the summer holidays to find a huge papier-mâché relief map on a table in the Lower 5th Common Room. It was Middle-earth. As autumn came on we sat around the stove in the evenings and read bits of LotR to each other, but most of us had prep and other tasks, so missed whole chunks and it was hard to make sense of it.

Family problems meant my removal from the school at the end of that term, and while waiting for a new place I haunted my the Colchester public library. Pulling out a book at random one day I opened it and read about Aragorn running up the hill following hobbit-prints and later finding Boromir full of arrows. I realised it was the book we’d been reading at school. It was the Two Towers. I found Volume 1 and devoured the whole trilogy. I was 14.

What happened next in my life was so awful that it was only Tolkien’s characters that saw me through it. Their perseverance and bravery was an example and has remained so for 50 years. I have read the books 27 times, frequently aloud to others. Its lessons are always a little different, depending on my circumstances and my growing experience. Without it I would not have survived.
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