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How old were you?
I remember my brother playing that game! The graphics were based off of the Hildebrandt illustrations. It came with a big map of Middle Earth, which I found and had on more wall for a while, but when we moved it vanished and I can't find it, which is currently driving me bonkers.
 
LOTR- 15 (reread about 1.75 times)

Hobbit- 15

Simarillion- 16 (rereading it again and loving every page)

UT-16

HoME (1-8)- TO BE DETERMINED (as I have the books but felt it a good idea to reread the Sil first)
 
I think that when I started to read LoTR I was 16 years old, and when I read the Hobbit too. I was kinda happy when the first movie came out because finding the book was quite hard back then (at least where I live) and I had like 2 or 3 years looking for it.
 
When I was in 4th grade (10 years old?) I got The Two Towers from the school library because I had heard of the LOTR movies, which my parents didn't let me see then. Needless to say, starting with TTT didn't make the story make much sense to me! I liked the way it was written and the imagery but I basically had NO IDEA what was going on. I think in 5th or 6th grade I started with The Fellowship of the Ring, and that's where it all began! I also read The Hobbit around then. In 7th grade, my English teacher (bless her heart) had us read The Hobbit as one of our major subjects for the year, and I was one of the few people who LOVED it.

I read The Silmarillion in high school and wasn't really that impressed, except by the more exciting parts, but it grew on me a ton. I also read The Children of Hurin in high school and wasn't that impressed, and... now I basically cry while reading it. I also read and re-read LOTR and The Hobbit all through high school. Now, I recently graduated college, and I've read a solid chunk of Unfinished Tales and the first 5 Histories! Now the challenge is to retain the information from those!

I am super excited about the Beren and Luthien book that just came out, and I'm hoping to see a similar one for The Fall of Gondolin soon!!
 
King Elf said:
How old were you when you first read this series? Personally I was 12 when I read the Hobbit, and was 15 before I read LOTR.
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I was super young when I read the Hobbit. I was 8 when I read LOTR, I was 10 when I read Unfinished and Untold tales and I was out of high school when I finally read Sir Gawain.
 
I read The Hobbit at eleven years old; by then I had been into the Peter Jackson Trilogy of movies for a few years. And before That I had been playing Dungeons&Dragons since i was about seven. Then when i was Fifteen i Finally got around to reading the Lord of the Rings! At Sixteen i first read The Silmarillion. i own Unfinished Tales, but never got around to reading it.
 
The very first time i learned about Tolkien was when my brother showed me an article in a magazine about a LOTR movie being made and i remember that it showed a photo of the plains were the battle at the prologue was fought, 1999/2000?. Between 14/15 years old. I had no idea what this series was about but my brother said "man, this is going to be great!". Once the movie came out, everyone watched it but me. When it was released on DVD i picked it up and when i saw the scene: "A last alliance of elves and men marched against the armies of Mordor..." I was like "Wut?, Thank you very much for this!"

The only book i have read is the Silmarillion, which my mom had for a long time. I started reading it around 2006/2007. Between 22/23 years old. At first i found it hard to read since i wasn't familiar with the archaic English but i was fascinated non the less. The moment i read that music gave birth to Arda i understood that this truly was something else. I was reading through it while pausing now and then and checking artworks on the internet from Ted Nasmith, John Howe and Alan Lee which really helped me get even more immersed into the mythology. This book is the best thing ever and is definitely where my chief interest lay
 
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While I was in my teens when I first read the trilogy, it took a few more years to get around to The Hobbit. As for the Silmarillion, HoME series and other works, it is still an ongoing battle. I have skimmed/scanned the Sil dozens of times, looking for sections that elucidate elements of LOTR, but I still cannot manage to read it straight through, cover to cover. True confession.

At one point, I swore to myself that I WOULD get through The Sil, and armed myself with notecards on which I listed each character, his/her connections to other characters, the 'house' or clan to which each belonged, etc. Yeah. That lasted about 6 months, and I still wasn't at the back cover. Giving it up as a bad job, I resigned myself to a life of perpetually snacking on the Sil, rather than enjoying it as the full repast which it seems to be for so many others. "No accounting for taste" as my gaffer used to say.

(A note for the chronologically curious, I habitually misrepresent my birth date on-line. Like the elves, I am far older than I appear at first glance.)
 
If it counts, I think I was probably around eight when my mother first read The Hobbit to me, and maybe 11 when she read the trilogy. And as I remember it wasn't until I was maybe 23 that I finally read the whole trilogy on my own, though I'd read The Hobbit a couple of times by then. My memory about events in LotR had faded and muddled considerably by the time I read it on my own, which made for a lot of confusion in family conversations - all of my siblings are familiar with it. In fact, a few years ago, we all got together and took turns recording chapters of the Hobbit as a present for Mom.
 
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