How old were you?

[King Elf]

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.

 

[Niniel]

I was 14 when I read LOTR, and 18 when I read the Hobbit. Last year I started reading the rest of Tolkien's works (Sil, UT, Letters, HOME), so that was when I was 22.

 

[Zale]

I was 8 when I read the Hobbit, and 13 for the Lord Of The Rings. I think I read the Silmarilion at 14, but I might be wrong there.

 

[Amras Ciryan]

I think I was ~12 when I read The Hobbit. It was my school lecture (I had very nice Polish teacher, I mean I liked her a lot). I found it a little bit childish then, so I didn't want to read LOTR. I did it two or three years later (this time thanks to my History teacher, who was a cool guy ). And I have just finished reading LOTR in English. I mean two weeks ago.

 

[Bucky]

I was at a freind's house on a sunday night in 1977 (i think) when NBC had a special on called 'The Hobbit'.

I saw, I loved, I got the books, I read the books.

The Silmarillion came out in XMAS 1977, so I read them all within 8 or 9 months between 15 & 16 years old.

 

[Confusticated]

Read The Hobbit and LotR when I was 22, and The Silmarillion right before I turned 23.

Used to wonder how much I'd have liked The Hobbit and LotR if I had read them when I was younger, and suspect I enjoy them more as an adult... especially in the case of The Hobbit the children's story. I relate much to Bilbo as an adult, and I love him very much and I went into LotR to get more of him and Gandalf.

But part of me will always wonder what it would have been like to read these as a child.

PS: Started HoME when I was 23, and just turned 24 and have not finished it yet.

 

[MacAddict]

I was 14 when I read the Hobbit, I actually started it the day I saw the trailer for FotR, once I read The Hobbit I went straight into LotR.


~MacAddict

 

[Manveru]

I had read LotR about a year before the movies came out (I hadn't even known there were arrangements for that). I was completely hooked by it (actually LotR was my third work of Tolkien so I knew what it was going to be like---I had read The Silmarillion & The Hobbit earlier---nowadays I like that "chronology" of reading). I was 20 (kinda late... but I consider myself a Tolkien-fan since I was 18---> the time I read The Silmarillion for the first time).

 

[Tilion]

I read the Hobbit first at the age of 12 the LOTR at the age of 14 followed by the Silmarillion at 15 and have yet to read Unfinished Tales but have read the tolkien reader and hope to read all of tokiens work as i am now hooked. I dont think i would have got into LOTR if it had not been for my love of the games workshop products.

 

[Aglarthalion]

I was 8 when I first read The Hobbit, and 13 when I first read The Lord Of The Rings. Of course, I've read each book multiple times since then.

 

[Gandalf White]

I'm not sure of the exact age, but these are close approximates. Hobbit must have been read at age 10 or 11. I liked it so much my Dad rented me LotR from the library, and so I read them at age 12, maybe 13. Didn't read the Sil 'til 15 or 16, and really need to read it again.

 

[Roilya]

i was 15, when i read the lotr and i am still 15 now. i plan on reading the other books next.

 

[Rhiannon]

I was five or six the first time my dad read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to me. He reads them out loud every year (with a few unfortunate exceptions).

When I was twelve I read The Lord of the Rings to myself for the first time, and again when I was fifteen. There are also certain excerpts that I read more often than any others (ie, anything to do with Eowyn, especially The Battle of the Pelennor Fields).

I just realized I have never actually read The Hobbit to myself.

 

[Inderjit S]

14 when I read 'The Hobbit', 15, LoTR, 16, Publsihed Silmarillion,U.T, HoME 1, 2, parts of 3 and 4, 5, 6,7, parts of 9, 10,11,12, quite a bit of Letters of J.R.R.T, Guid to Names in LoTR. It's been a busy year

 

[Turin]

I think I was like 9 or 10 when I first read the Hobbit, and I read LOTR sometime before but in the same year that the first movie came out.

 

[BlackCaptain]

I was 10 when I read the Hobbit, then read The Lord of the Rings two years later. I then read the Sil when I was 13, and now that I'm almost 14 I've completed LotR twice, and the Sil twice

 

[Khôr’nagan]

I read The Hobbit, FotR, TTT, and RotK when I was 14. I read The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The Book of Lost Tales 1 and 2, and The Lays of Beleriand while 15. I am currently still fifteen, though I'll be sixteen on October 26. I have (this past month) just reread The Hobbit, FotR, TTT, and RotK. After seing FotR (the movie), I began reading the books, and I am obsessed with Tolkien now.

 

[Turin]

I think I was 12 when I read UT, and I still haven't read the Sil.

 

[Aranaug]

I was 12 when I read The Hobbit, I started FotR when I was 13 but didn't get very far because I didn't have the time to read. I then started to read it again when I was 14 and was to just before Bree when I saw the FotR movie. I continued to read it and polished off the first two books and started the third in a couple weeks. Once again school work stopped my reading of it for a couple months I then finished it in about a week and the immediately read The Sil.

Actually this has made me think of some thing I hadn't thought about since I got my first copy of the Hobbit and LotR. I was in Science class in eigth grade and was looking at my recent acquirements and my science teacher say me came over and said, "You might want to careful, those books are hobbit forming."

 

[Telëlambe]

i was 8 when the hobbit was read to me, i read it myself when i was 11, LotR I was 12 and the holy grail of Tolkien (the sill) when i was 15, i am 16 now and am doing a higher in-depth study of the sill and am trying to build a collection of the history of me