How old were you?

[Helcaraxë]

I read the hobbit AFTER LotR, strangely enough. I read LotR when I was 9 or 10, and the hobbit and the silmarillion in the same year. I'm reading HomE now.

 

[Lúthien Séregon]

I first had the Hobbit introduced to me by someone when I was 6 ( they read excerpts from it, but I didn't get to hear the whole story ), but then I read it for myself when I was 7. I also read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy when I was 7, but didn't discover the Silmarillion until I was 13, and the Unfinished Tales until I was 14.

 

[Lord of Ry'leh]

I read The Hobbit when I was around 11, then I read the Fellowship at 11 (didn't really comprehend everything at that time, skipped over a lot that I thought was 'boring' at that age). I re-read Fellowship and the rest or LoTR at 16 and now at 17 I'm reading the Silmarillion.

 

[Estella Bolger]

I was about 12 when I read the Hobbit and 14 when I first attempted LotR. I gave up on the Council of Elrond, then tried again at 15. The rest I have read recently.

 

[Starflower]

I was given the Hobbit as a present on my 9th birthday , loved it, and read LoTR a couple of years later, i was about 11 going on 12... then I just kept going, I haven't read all the HoME , I read the first three and gave up.
I have a niece who got "converted" at the tender age of 10, we read LoTr for her out loud as bedtime reading lucky she didn't have nightmares!



Starflower

 

[Gilgallad II]

I was 10 when I read the Hobbit. Then read it again at 12 . I read LOTR when I was 11 and the Sil when I was 12. I loved them all!!!!!

 

[baragund]

I was 13 or 14 when I read The Hobbit for the first time. I read LOTR about a year later, and I was 17 when I made my first attempt at The Silmarillion (I found it too dense the first try and set it aside when I was about half way through).

 

[Kelonus]

I read The Lord of The Rings Trilogy at 16-17. The Hobbit I haven't read. I do plan to buy the book and read it.

 

[Captain]

I read The Hobbit at 12, LOTR at 13, and The Silmarillion at 14.

 

[Kahmûl]

I was 13 when I read the Hobbit and LOTR.

 

[Beleg]

Fourteen when I first read Hobbit, Fourteen when I read all the books except HOME VII, parts of VIII, VI, V, IV and most of HOME III, II, I and Vanyar Tengwar.

 

[Eru]

I was about 11 when I read the Hobbit and about 13 when I read the other books in the series. When I was 13 we were required to write a creative story for English, so I composed a historical account of an event in Tolkiens history.

My main characters, however, had names that I latter realised I stole from Tolkien's other works (Silmarillion) which I have not read.

If anyone wants to sound like they know a bit more about Tolkien than they truly do, have the compendium by J.E.A Tyler with you!

 

[Retired Manwe]

I was about 10 when I read The Hobbit and 11-12 when I read LOTR series. Im yet to finish The Silmarillion

 

[Gil-Galad]

Well I read LOTR a little bit older than you.I was 16.Then I read The Hobbit,then The Silmarillion -in 2001 and UT some months later.And now I'm trying to read BOLT 1 and BOLT 2.

 

[Elfhelm25]

I was 11 when I read the Hobbit ( in 6th grade we did a play for it ) and I enjoyed it very much then. Wasnt at all interested in reading anything else until Gr 10 english class when I started reading FOTR cause I forgot my reading book. And that was the beginning of a now 4 year love affair with LOTR.

 

[Weathergirl2006]

i was 14 for all of the above..i read them all close together

 

[elf_queen]

I was 10 when I read The Hobbit, and 11 when I read LOTR.

 

[Halasían]

17 when I read The Hobbit, and 18 when I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Was 21 when I read the Silmarillion, and was 27 when I read Unfinished Tales.

Lets see if I can remember back ....

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 Hobbit paperback and said he was starting on the Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring. I Read through The Hobbit and liked it, but thought it to be a bit juvenile. My neighbor 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.

I then read Two Towers when 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.

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 past due to read it through again.

 

[celebdraug]

i was 13 when i read the hobbit, and about 14/15 when i started on lotr!

i started the sil now!

 

[Saermegil]

When in was 14 I saw the first LOTR movie, I liked it a lot and the read the other books (in the order that I read them): the lord of the rings, the hobbit, the silmarillion and unfinished tales. I finished the latter about a month ago